UK Returns Law: What You Owe an Online Clothing Customer
By The Velocity Wear Team
New UK brands often write a returns policy from scratch, copying bits from sites they admire, and end up with something that is either more generous than they intended or less generous than the law allows them to be. Most of it is not up to you. The Consumer Contracts Regulations set the floor for distance sales, and the Consumer Rights Act sits underneath that for faulty goods.
Knowing where the floor is means you can decide deliberately how far above it to stand.
The cancellation right
For most distance sales to consumers, the customer has fourteen days from receiving the goods to cancel, for any reason or none. They then have a further fourteen days to send the goods back, and you have fourteen days from receiving them — or from evidence they were sent — to refund.
This is not a returns policy you offer. It is a right they have. And it is not conditional on the goods being faulty, on tags being attached, or on the customer explaining themselves.
What the refund has to include
The price of the goods, and the standard outbound delivery cost you charged. If the customer paid extra for expedited shipping you only have to refund the standard rate, but you cannot keep the basic delivery charge.
Return postage is different: you can require the customer to pay it, provided you told them clearly before they ordered. If you did not tell them, you pay it. That "provided you told them" clause is where a lot of small brands quietly lose money by having an unclear policy page.
Handling and diminished value
A customer is entitled to handle goods as they would in a shop. For clothing that plainly includes trying it on. What it does not include is wearing it out, and where handling beyond that reduces the value, you may deduct an amount reflecting the loss.
This is narrower than brands want it to be. A worn-once dress with makeup on the collar is a defensible deduction. A garment returned with the tag removed is not, on its own, grounds for refusing anything.
What you can decide
- Whether to be more generous — a thirty-day window, or free returns — which is a marketing decision with a real cost attached. In apparel, free returns increase both conversion and return rates, and which effect dominates depends on your product and price point.
- How you handle exchanges, which are not covered by the cancellation right at all and are entirely your policy.
- Whether to offer a returns label, and whether to charge for it.
- How you handle sale items, though be careful: the cancellation right applies regardless of discount, so "no returns on sale" is not enforceable against it.
The faulty goods layer
Separately, under the Consumer Rights Act, goods must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described. A short-term right to reject applies in the first thirty days, with repair or replacement rights after that. This runs alongside the cancellation right rather than replacing it, and it applies for considerably longer.
For clothing, the recurring fault claim is a print that has failed. Which is an argument for specifying decoration properly, sampling and wash-testing before bulk, and printing care instructions even though the UK does not require them — a garment washed at 60 degrees against your advice is a different conversation from one with no advice on it at all.
Write it in plain English
The legal minimum, stated clearly, before checkout, is worth more than an elaborate policy nobody reads. Say the window, say who pays return postage, say how long the refund takes. Most returns disputes in small apparel brands are not about the rules — they are about a customer who could not find them.
