How long may a retailer take to refund?

The rule

Article 6:230r(1) of the Dutch Civil Code is unusually explicit: on rescission the trader reimburses without delay and in any event within fourteen days of the day on which the declaration of rescission was received, all payments received from the consumer, including delivery costs.

Three things sit in that which get left out in practice. The period runs from your withdrawal, not from the moment the parcel arrives. The words without delay are not decoration: fourteen days is an outer limit, not a standard processing time. And delivery costs are part of it.

The outbound shipping cost is included

If you paid shipping when ordering, you get it back. Only where you expressly chose a more expensive delivery method than the cheapest standard delivery the retailer offered does the excess not have to be reimbursed. That is paragraph 3, and that paragraph governs nothing more.

Where the right of suspension ends

Paragraph 4 gives the retailer a real power: you cannot demand performance until the trader has received the goods or until you have demonstrated that you sent them back, whichever occurs first.

That last clause is the key and is almost always ignored. As soon as you produce proof of dispatch with tracking, the condition is satisfied. The retailer then does not get to wait until the parcel has been scanned, unpacked and inspected. A reply along the lines of "we refund once the return has been processed" shifts the statutory limit to a moment the retailer picks itself.

The same means of payment

Paragraph 2 obliges the retailer to refund using the same means of payment you used, unless you expressly agree to something else and incur no cost from it. A gift voucher or store credit instead of money is therefore not performance, unless you choose it yourself.

What happens when the deadline passes

Because this is a statutory period, default arises without you having to send a reminder first. That follows from article 6:83(a) of the Dutch Civil Code. From that moment statutory interest runs and you can claim reimbursement of collection costs.

In practice this means sending a reminder is not legally necessary. It is still sensible, because it completes your file: the correspondence must later show that you withdrew, when, and that you sent the goods back.

Worked example

Keep these three things

1. The withdrawal itself, with its date. An email or a confirmation from the returns portal.
2. Proof of dispatch with a tracking code, because that triggers the second limb of paragraph 4.
3. The original proof of payment, so the amount and the means of payment are established.