You sent it back, or tried to, and the answer was no. “It’s been opened.” “You don’t have the original packaging.” “This is change of mind, so it’s not covered.”
Where return rights in practice covers the deadlines, this one starts after they’ve said no.
The first thing worth knowing: a refusal is not a ruling. It’s the other party’s position. Your right to cancel an online order doesn’t depend on the seller agreeing that you have one, and a shop’s returns policy cannot take away a statutory right — it can only add to it.
One note before the routes below: this is general information about how these processes work, not legal advice on your situation. Which route applies, and what it costs, depends on your contract and where you bought.
When a return is refused, which reasons hold up
Refusals are often given without naming any term. That absence is itself worth noticing.
“It’s been opened.” You are allowed to inspect what you bought. The standard is roughly what you could have done in a shop: unbox it, look at it, turn it on. What you can’t do is use it for weeks and then send it back as new. Opening a box to find out whether a screen has a dead pixel is exactly the kind of inspection the rules contemplate.
“You’ve thrown away the packaging.” Not a legal bar. It makes the argument more tedious, which is a good reason to keep the box while the window is open, but a missing carton doesn’t extinguish a right.
“This is change of mind.” For an online order in the UK and across the EU, change of mind is precisely what the cooling-off period is for. You don’t need a fault. What changes with a fault is who pays return postage, not whether you can return it.
“It’s out of warranty.” Different track entirely. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 your rights run against the retailer who sold it, and they’re not bounded by whatever the manufacturer’s warranty says. A manufacturer declining a repair tells you nothing about what the seller owes you.
Where a genuine limit exists — bespoke and made-to-order machines being the common one — the seller has to have made that clear before you ordered, not after you asked for a refund.
Do this before escalating
Ten minutes here saves weeks later.
Get it in writing. If the whole exchange has been on the phone, send the same thing again through email or the retailer’s own contact form. You need a dated record that says what you asked for and when.
Ask which term they’re relying on. “It’s our policy” is not an answer. If they can name it, you know what you are arguing about. If they can’t, their reply becomes part of your file either way.
If you bought through a marketplace, open a case with the marketplace too. The platform and the seller are separate routes, and marketplace mediation can settle it without anyone involving a regulator.
Escalating, in the order that works
Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) first. Once a UK trader has exhausted its own complaints procedure, it has to tell you in durable form — an email or letter, not a phone call — that it cannot settle the complaint, name a competent ADR entity along with its website, and say whether it is obliged or prepared to use that entity.
Read that last part carefully, because it is where people get caught. Naming an ADR body is not the same as agreeing to go to it. The duty is to give you the details; in most sectors the trader can still decline to take part. Where a scheme is binding it is usually because the sector is regulated or the trader’s trade association requires membership.
This framework changed recently. On 6 April 2026 Chapter 4 of Part 4 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 revoked and replaced the 2015 ADR Regulations, moving ADR providers onto a mandatory accreditation framework (commencement, information regulations). The deadlock duty above survived the change. Anything written before 2026 will still be describing the old regime.
One important change: the European Commission’s Online Dispute Resolution platform, which guides have pointed people to for a decade, was switched off on 20 July 2025 and has no direct replacement. New complaints stopped being accepted in March of that year. If you find a guide telling you to file there, it’s out of date. For cross-border purchases inside the EU, the European Consumer Centre network took over that role, and the Commission’s consumer redress site lists the national dispute-resolution bodies.
If you paid by credit card, read this before anything else
In the UK there are two different card routes, and people conflate them constantly. The difference matters.
| Section 75 | Chargeback | |
|---|---|---|
| Card type | Credit only | Credit or debit |
| Purchase value | Over £100, up to £30,000 | Any |
| Basis | Lender is jointly liable with the retailer | Reversal of the transaction through the card scheme |
| Time limit | No fixed statutory limit | Typically around 120 days |
Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 makes your card issuer jointly liable with the seller for a breach of contract or misrepresentation. That is far stronger than a payment reversal: you can pursue the lender directly, and you don’t have to have paid the whole amount on the card. Paying a deposit on the credit card is enough, because the test is the value of the goods, not the amount you put on the card.
A laptop is almost always over £100, so if you paid any part of it on a credit card, this route is open. The Financial Ombudsman Service explains how it treats these claims, and it’s where you go if the card issuer says no.
Chargeback is the fallback for debit cards and for anything under £100. It works, but it’s a card-scheme rule rather than a statutory right, and the clock is much shorter.
If you bought in the US
The legal routes above are UK and EU ones. The habits — get it in writing, name the term they are relying on — carry over, but the law does not. There is no federal cooling-off right for an online order, so the retailer’s own returns policy is the first document to read, not the last.
The FTC’s three-day “cooling-off” rule does not cover you. It applies to sales made away from the seller’s normal place of business — a salesperson in your home, a trade show stand — and not to anything ordered online, by mail, or by phone. Guides that cite it for internet orders are describing a different rule.
What federal law does give you is a shipping deadline. Under the FTC’s Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule, the seller has to ship within the time stated in the offer, or within 30 days if no time was stated. If they can’t, they must tell you and let you choose: agree to the delay, or cancel for a prompt refund. A seller who quietly sits on a late order is breaking that rule, and saying so by name changes the tone of the conversation.
Then the card. The Fair Credit Billing Act treats a charge for goods you never received, or that weren’t what was agreed, as a billing error. Send the dispute in writing, and it has to reach the issuer within 60 days of the first statement carrying the charge — a phone call does not preserve the right. Note the limit: a complaint that the item is poor quality is not a billing error, so describe what is missing or different from what was sold, not that you are disappointed.
Beyond that it is state law. Most states imply a warranty of merchantability into consumer sales, and several add their own returns statutes on top. There is no national ombudsman to escalate to; the equivalent is your state attorney general’s consumer protection office, which takes complaints and, unlike the card issuer, keeps a record that matters to a repeat offender.
What to have ready
Every route asks for the same four things.
- Proof of purchase — order number, date, amount, and how you paid
- Evidence of the fault — photos or video of the symptom, with the date you found it
- The paper trail — your return request, their refusal, and the dates of both
- When you first gave notice — the date you told them, not the date you posted the box
The second one is the one people most often can’t produce. Intermittent faults and screen problems are hard to describe and easy to lose, and once the machine has gone back you can’t produce evidence any more. The detailed check for a device you just bought covers turning a symptom into something that holds up.
The short version
A refusal is a position, not an outcome. Check whether the reason they gave exists anywhere outside their own policy, move the conversation into writing, then work outward: the retailer’s complaints process, their ADR scheme, and then the card — Section 75 in the UK if you paid any part of it on credit and it was over £100, or a written Fair Credit Billing Act dispute in the US within 60 days of the statement. That is usually the strongest card in the deck.
All of it is easier if you gave notice inside the window. If yours is still open, start with return rights in practice.