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What your shop tells shoppers about returns, who pays return postage, and how to declare a sealed hygiene item.
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Under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, a shopper has to be told who pays for return postage before they buy. You don’t have to write that anywhere. We say it for you on every listing and again in the basket, so a change-of-mind return is the shopper’s to pay for.
We make that disclosure for you
You don’t have to write a returns policy or remember to mention postage. Every listing on Luma carries the line before anyone can buy from it:
Changed your mind? You’ll need to cover return postage.
It sits beside the buy button, again in the listing’s Returns section, and again in the basket. Your shop page carries the matching line at its foot. Because it’s shown at the point of purchase, the disclosure is made and .
shoppers cover return postage on change-of-mind returns
Where you pay regardless
Return postage falls to you whenever the fault is yours:
Why it’s coming back
Who pays return postage
Changed their mind
Shopper
Arrived damaged
You
Wrong item sent
You
Not as described
You
Part of the order never arrived
You
That’s the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and no returns policy can sign it away. It stays with you when you ask for an item back to check a claim you doubt: the reason the shopper gave decides who pays, not what you suspect. Nor is the shopper out of pocket on a change-of-mind return where you got something wrong: if the whole order goes back, their original standard postage is refunded too. If they keep any of it the postage stays with you, including an item they could never have returned, because you still paid to post the parcel.
Nothing stops you covering a return anyway as a goodwill gesture.
What a refund costs you
Whatever the reason for a refund, our payment provider (Stripe) keeps the processing fee it charged on the original payment, so that part of the sale doesn’t come back to you. Our commission does: it’s returned with the refund, in proportion to the amount refunded. Platform fees explained walks through the numbers.
Personalised and made-to-order items
The 14-day cooling-off right doesn’t apply to items made to a shopper’s specification. We work that out from the order itself, so if a shopper picked a personalisation option you don’t need to argue the exemption. Set options like a colour or a size aren’t personalisation, and those orders keep the full right.
Sealed hygiene items
Some items can’t be resold once they’ve been opened. If yours are posted in a deliberate hygiene seal, you can declare that per listing in the listing form’s Options section: turn on Sealed for hygiene and write a short justification.
The seal has to be tamper-evident: opening it must leave a mark you and the shopper can both see. Shrink wrap, a hygiene sticker that tears, a heat-sealed pouch. A box, a ribbon, tissue paper or a resealable bag doesn’t count, because any of those can be opened and closed again with nothing to show for it.
So buy the seals before you tick the box. If an item goes out in ordinary packaging, the exemption doesn’t apply to it however the listing is set, and a shopper who opens it can still return it.
It isn’t a returns block. The shopper can still return a sealed item while the seal is intact, and they confirm it’s unopened when they start the return. Once the seal is broken or removed the change-of-mind right is gone, and that’s what the listing tells them before they buy. If it comes back opened, you can contest that with photos when you report the return. We check these declarations from time to time, so make yours accurate.
Anything else you want to say
Every shop is on the same footing here, so there’s no per-shop policy to write. If there’s something particular about how you handle returns, say it in your shop profile or the listing description. It won’t move the postage liability, but it sets expectations.
