What is Distance selling rules?

The information required before payment

• Total price including taxes, and all delivery charges
• A description of the goods or services
• Delivery arrangements and timing
• The trader’s identity, address and contact details
• The right to cancel, how to exercise it, and who pays return postage
• The duration of the contract and how to end it, for subscriptions

Where checkouts commonly fail

Delivery cost revealed only at the final step, contact details reduced to a form with no address, and cancellation terms living in a footer link that is never surfaced during checkout. All three are compliance issues and all three are also the top causes of abandonment.

The exceptions worth knowing

Personalised goods, perishables, unsealed hygiene items and digital content downloaded with express consent are generally excluded from the cancellation right. The exclusions are narrow and specific — a policy that invents broader ones is unenforceable.

Where this is covered in depth

A definition can only go so far. Why checkouts get abandoned, and which fixes belong in the build covers this properly — 2 minutes, free, no email required.

Who wrote this

Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan. These definitions come from client work rather than from a content brief — where an entry describes a mistake, it is usually one found on a real site. More about how I work.