Consumer protection in Finland starts before the online store takes payment
The duties bite at the moment a consumer can see a price, long before anybody clicks pay. Selling online to a consumer is distance selling, which carries its own information requirements and its own right of withdrawal on top of ordinary sales law.
It applies by where the customer is rather than by where you are. A German or Estonian company selling to consumers in Finland is inside the same framework, because the rules come from EU directives that every member state has written into its own law.
The Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority publishes the practical version at kkv.fi, in Finnish, Swedish and English. It is the source worth bookmarking, and most of this article comes from it.
Who counts as a consumer
A private person buying for something other than their trade or profession. That is the whole test, and it does not depend on whether they typed a company name into a form.
A shop selling to both audiences has to work out which set of rules applies to which order. Business customers can be sold to on terms you negotiate. Consumers cannot be contracted out of the protections below, and a term that tries is simply void.
The safe default for a mixed shop is to treat every order as a consumer order unless the buyer identified themselves as a business with a valid VAT number.
What has to be visible before payment
The pre-contract list from kkv.fi is long and specific. The company name, the geographical address of the head office, an email address for consumer contact, a phone number with the cost of the call made clear, the business ID and the register entry, the complaint procedure if it is anything out of the ordinary, and the competent dispute resolution body.
Then the commercial side. The main features of the product, the total price including taxes, delivery costs or a clear notice that they will be added, when the product is delivered or the service performed, the delivery options and any restrictions, the accepted payment methods with any extra charges, and the right of withdrawal with its conditions, deadlines and procedures.
For digital products there is more: how it works, the technical protection measures, and what hardware and software it needs.
The 14 day right of withdrawal
A consumer can cancel most online purchases within 14 days without giving a reason. The notice has to reach you within 14 days of the agreement being concluded, and the goods have to go back at the latest within 14 days of that notice.
Your side of the clock is just as tight. Payments received from the customer go back without delay and no later than 14 days from when you receive the notice of withdrawal.
The return costs fall on the consumer, unless you failed to give the required information about them. That exception is the reason the information duties above are worth taking seriously.
When the 14 days become 12 months
Fail to tell the customer about the withdrawal right and the period stretches to 12 months. The extension starts when the original 14 days would have run out.
Read that as a price list rather than as a legal detail. A missing paragraph on a product page turns a two week return window into a year long one, across every order placed while it was missing.
It is also invisible until it is expensive. Nobody notices the omission in month three, and somebody notices in month eleven.
The withdrawal button
Since the 19th of June 2026 a distance contract concluded through an online interface has to come with a withdrawal function. Article 11a of the consumer rights directive, as amended by directive 2023/2673, requires the trader to make sure the consumer can withdraw by using it.
The directive names the label, 'withdraw from contract here', and says the function must be prominently displayed and continuously available throughout the withdrawal period. Member states had until the 19th of December 2025 to write it into national law, and the measures apply from June 2026.
The scope is broader than financial services. Recital 37 says it covers distance contracts for other goods and services where EU law gives a right of withdrawal, which is ordinary retail. If your shop still handles cancellations only through a contact form, it is behind.
The acknowledgement the customer gets back
Where a withdrawal notice can be submitted on your website, the consumer has the right to an acknowledgement of receipt without delay, on a durable medium, which in practice means an email.
Build it as an automatic message rather than something a person sends on Monday. The requirement says without delay, and a system that waits for office hours fails it every weekend.
Keep the acknowledgement plain and useful. What was cancelled, what happens next, where the goods go and when the money comes back.
The order button and the confirmation
The step where the customer commits has to state that the order creates an obligation to pay, or words to that effect. A button labelled Continue, Finish or Send does not do it.
The Finnish wording most shops use is Tilaa ja maksa, and the English equivalents that work are Order with an obligation to pay, or Buy now and pay. Whatever you choose, the meaning has to survive translation into every language version of the shop.
Right after, send an order confirmation that repeats the price, the delivery time and the withdrawal terms. This is also the moment to give the withdrawal instructions in writing, because a confirmation email is a durable medium and a web page is not.
Products with no right of withdrawal
Some sales fall outside the withdrawal right, and the list is narrow. Goods made to the customer's specification or clearly personalised, goods that spoil quickly, sealed hygiene products once opened, and digital content delivered immediately where the consumer agreed in advance and acknowledged losing the right.
The last one has conditions attached and is the one shops get wrong. The agreement has to be explicit, before the download starts, and recorded.
Everything else keeps the 14 days. A general term saying no returns on sale items is not a valid exception, it is an invalid term.
Delivery times and what you promise
Say when the goods arrive, before payment, in words the customer can hold you to. Dispatched shortly is not a delivery time. Delivered in two to four working days across Finland is.
Promise the slow case rather than the fast one. A shop that promises two days and delivers in four generates complaints, and a shop that promises four and delivers in two generates repeat orders. The cost of the change is nothing.
Show the delivery options and the restrictions with the price rather than at the last step. Discovering at the payment screen that you do not ship to Ahvenanmaa wastes the customer's time and yours, and our note on shipping and returns for a Finnish webshop goes through the wording that works.
Payment, and what you may not charge for
List the payment methods before the customer commits, along with any extra charge attached to one of them. Finnish buyers expect bank buttons and mobile payment as well as cards, and a shop missing the method somebody uses loses the order at the last step. Our piece on the payment methods Finnish customers expect covers the practical set.
Nothing may be added after the customer has seen the total. A handling fee that appears at the final screen is the classic complaint to the consumer ombudsman, and it is also the classic abandoned basket.
Pre-ticked extras are the other one. Anything the customer pays for has to be chosen actively.
A guarantee sits on top of the law, never instead of it
A voluntary guarantee is extra, and offering one never reduces what the consumer is owed anyway. A product that turns out to be faulty is your responsibility under sales law whether or not you sold a guarantee with it.
So the wording matters. A page implying the customer has rights only during a guarantee period is misleading, and the consumer ombudsman treats it as such.
Write the guarantee as a benefit on top and say plainly that the statutory rights continue alongside it.
Where a Finnish customer takes a complaint
To you first, then to the consumer advisory service, then to the Consumer Disputes Board. Your job is to name the route, since the pre-contract information has to identify the competent dispute resolution body.
Give a real complaint channel that reaches a person, with an expected response time you can meet. Most disputes die at this stage when the shop answers within a day.
A shop that hides behind a form with no reply gets escalated, and the escalation is public in a way an email exchange never is.
The parts your shop software will not do for you
Platforms handle the mechanics: the button labels, the confirmation email, the returns flow if you switch it on. What they will not do is write the delivery promise for your products, name your dispute body, or keep the information duties intact in every language version of the shop.
Translation is where compliance quietly breaks. The Finnish pages carry the full text and the English pages carry a summary somebody wrote in a hurry, which leaves the English speaking customer with the 12 month withdrawal right.
A store built and hosted on your own server makes this easier to keep straight, because the text lives in one place rather than inside a theme and three apps. That is one of the arguments in our note on running an online store on your own infrastructure.
A checklist before the shop goes live
Go through these with the site open in front of you, as a customer would.
- Seller name, address, business ID, email and phone, reachable from every page.
- Total price with tax, delivery cost and delivery time visible before the pay step.
- Withdrawal right explained on a page the customer passes, plus in the confirmation email.
- A pay button that states the obligation to pay, in every language.
- A withdrawal function available throughout the withdrawal period, with an automatic acknowledgement.
- The dispute resolution body named.
- The same content, complete, in every language version.
Product pages carry most of this weight, which is why the writing on them matters as much as the terms, a subject we take apart in product pages that sell.