Grace period

The cooling-off period is a period during which your customer can cancel an online purchase without giving a reason. In Dutch e-commerce, there is a statutory minimum cooling-off period of 14 days after receipt of the product.

After your customer has used the right of withdrawal to file a return, your customer still has at least 14 days to return the purchase and this is called the return period.

Is 14-day cooling-off period mandatory?

Offering a 14-day cooling-off period is mandatory for e-commerce under the Distance Selling Act, but not if it is custom-made or if you have set up certain reasonable return conditions as for in the case of used lingerie or daily fresh products.

So with store purchases, this obligation does not apply, and it is up to you as a retailer to think about a return policy that encourages purchases and keeps returns as low as possible.

What does returning within 30 days mean?

If, as an online store, you indicate that customers can return "within 30 days," this means that customers can return purchased product within 30 days of receipt.

Thus, this is a cooling-off period that you as a webshop use yourself and is not the same as the legal 14-day cooling-off period for online purchases.

This is separate from the 14-day return period that starts when a return is notified.