Returns and shipping policy: what the law requires

A belief circulates widely among Indian online sellers that the law grants buyers a fixed window — seven days, or fourteen — in which to change their mind and return anything. It is worth stating plainly that this is not what the Indian rules do.

There is no general statutory cooling-off right for online purchases in India of the kind that exists in some other jurisdictions. What the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, made under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, require is that you clearly display your return, refund and exchange policy. The length of the window is a commercial decision you make; the obligation is to state it before purchase and then honour what you stated.

The distinction matters practically, in both directions. Sellers copying a template written for an overseas market promise a statutory right they never intended to give and then have to argue with a customer holding their own published words. Sellers who assume no rules apply at all miss the disclosure obligations that genuinely do, and those are the ones an aggrieved customer can point to.

The E-Commerce Rules set out information that has to be provided to consumers, and the list is longer than most small store sites carry.

On policies: return, refund, exchange, warranty and guarantee, delivery and shipment, and modes of payment. Each of these is to be stated rather than implied, and 'contact us for details' does not discharge a requirement to display a policy.

On identity: the legal name of the entity, the principal geographic address from which the business operates, and contact details including a telephone number and email. A store trading anonymously behind a form is not meeting this.

On price: the total, with a breakup showing all compulsory charges, so a consumer sees delivery charges and taxes rather than discovering them later.

And on complaints: a grievance redressal mechanism, with the name and contact details of a grievance officer and the timelines within which complaints are acknowledged and resolved. Of everything on this list, that last item is the one most often entirely absent from small Indian store sites, and it is among the cheapest to add.

Setting your own return window does not mean a blanket 'no returns accepted' clause resolves every dispute in your favour, and this is where the freedom to write your own policy ends.

The rules address sellers refusing to take goods back or refusing a refund where the goods are defective, deficient, spurious, delivered late, or not as described in the listing. In those situations the problem is not that the customer changed their mind — it is that what arrived was not what was sold. A policy cannot convert your own failure to deliver as described into the buyer's problem.

The practical implication runs back into how you write listings. Every specification, dimension, colour description and photograph is a representation about the goods, so an over-flattering product page increases your exposure rather than only your sales. A description that says 'runs slightly small' is protective as well as helpful.

So the two categories are worth keeping separate in your own mind. Change-of-mind returns are terms you set. Not-as-described and defective goods are a different matter, and the policy is not where that gets decided.

The requirement is straightforward and specific: appoint a grievance officer, publish that person's name and contact details, and state the timelines for acknowledging and resolving complaints.

For a small business this is administrative rather than onerous. The officer can be the owner. The contact can be an existing email address, provided somebody actually reads it. What is not acceptable is a contact form with no named person and no stated timeline, which is what most small store sites currently have.

There is a self-interested reason to do it properly beyond compliance. A customer with a problem and a visible route to a named person escalates through that route. A customer with a problem and no visible route escalates publicly — a review, a social post, a payment dispute — and all three of those cost more to deal with than an email would have.

Publish the acknowledgement and resolution timelines you can actually meet, and then meet them. A published timeline you routinely miss is worse than a longer one you honour, because it converts a service failure into a broken commitment.

Within the disclosure framework, a considerable amount is yours to decide, and each item should be stated explicitly rather than left to interpretation.

The window, counted from a defined event — delivery rather than dispatch, since the customer knows when it arrived. Who pays return shipping, which is a genuine cost and reasonable to allocate, provided the allocation is stated up front. Condition requirements: unused, original packaging, tags attached, accessories included. Categories you exclude, where there is a real basis for it — perishables, personalised items, and products where hygiene makes resale impossible. Any handling deduction, stated as an amount or percentage rather than vaguely.

Two constraints on that freedom. A term has to be disclosed before the purchase to be relied on, so a condition first revealed in the confirmation email is on weak ground. And a term is not enforceable merely because you published it — unfair terms can be challenged, so a deduction large enough to make returning something pointless invites exactly that challenge, whatever the policy says.

Write it in plain language, on one page, in the order a customer thinks: how long do I have, how do I start a return, who pays, when do I get my money, and who do I contact if this goes wrong.

Link it where the question arises. A policy reachable only from the footer is not where the doubt occurs — the doubt occurs on the product page and at checkout, and a one-line summary there with a link to the full text answers it at the right moment.

Date it and keep the previous versions. A customer's entitlement is set by the policy in force when they ordered, and if you cannot show what that said, you will end up honouring whichever version is more favourable to them.

Then check it against reality: what your courier actually does with returns, what a marketplace imposes on your listings there, and what your staff tell customers on the phone. A policy contradicted by any of those three is a source of disputes rather than a defence against them.

This is a description of what the rules require to be displayed, not legal advice on your specific wording. The text of the rules, and a professional review of the final policy, are the right basis for what you actually publish.