Your right to cancel
When you buy something, you know that it must be of satisfactory quality, fit for it’s purpose and be as described and if any of these rules has been broken you may be entitled to cancel the contract, reject the goods and get your money back.
If you agree to have work done and the supplier misleads you with false statements, you may be able to cancel and get back any money you may have already paid.
There are however some circumstances where the law gives you a right to cancel a contract even if these rules have not been broken.
If you sign a finance agreement away from trade premises you have a ‘cooling off period’ of five days after you have received the second copy of your agreement.
During this period you can cancel the agreement. However, if you sign the agreement on trade premises, such as a garage, you do not have such a right but you might be able withdraw from the agreement before it is executed.
At this stage it is called a prospective agreement but you have to be quick in contacting the finance company. If the agreement is withdrawn you do not need to go ahead with the deal and can claim any money back that has been paid for example as a deposit.
If you buy something by distance selling such as telephone, internet, mail order, you have seven working days to cancel after you receive the goods. There are however some exceptions to this rule depending on what goods you order.
If someone comes cold calling at your home and persuades you to buy something or you agree to work being done you have seven days to cancel and the company should leave you these cancellation rights when they visit. This right does not apply if you invited the person to your home unless they end up selling you something entirely different.
This page was last updated on 24 June 2008
Email this page to a friend
Bookmark this page using:
Find out more about social bookmarking.
These sites allow you to store, tag and share links across the internet. You can share these links both with friends and people with similar interests. You can also access your links from any computer you happen to be using.
If you come across a page on our site that you find interesting and want to save for future reference or share it with other people, simply click on one of these links to add to your list.
All of these sites are free to use but do require you to register. Once you have registered you can begin bookmarking. Each of the sites works slightly differently so use the links below to find out which service best suits your needs.
Find out more about social bookmarking at Wikipedia.
