Written by: Prakhar Rai, Founder, My Legal Pal | Bar Council of India | LL.B, NLSIU Bangalore | Master of Business Laws | Advises on cross-border and EU-facing contracts
Quick answer
Danish consumers have a 14-day right of withdrawal, fortrydelsesret, on distance contracts (online, phone, mail order) and off-premises contracts (a sale made away from the trader’s normal place of business). It comes from the Forbrugeraftaleloven, Denmark’s Consumer Contracts Act, which implements the EU Consumer Rights Directive. The right isn’t universal even within those two contract types: Section 18(2) of the Act lists fifteen specific categories where it doesn’t apply, custom-made goods, perishable goods, sealed hygiene items once opened, and services tied to a fixed date among them. Custom food orders usually fall outside the withdrawal right for two separate reasons at once, they’re perishable and they’re personalised, which is exactly the kind of overlap that trips up businesses drafting their own terms. Get the scope, the exceptions, or the 14-day calculation wrong in a Danish-facing contract, and you’re either refunding orders you didn’t have to, or facing a complaint to the Konkurrence- og Forbrugerstyrelsen for denying a right that actually applied.
The legal basis: Forbrugeraftaleloven
The right of withdrawal in Denmark sits in the Forbrugeraftaleloven, the Consumer Contracts Act, most recently consolidated in the version published in 2025. It isn’t a standalone Danish invention. It implements the EU’s Consumer Rights Directive (2011/83/EU), which is why the substance of the right, the 14-day period, the exceptions list, the refund mechanics, will look familiar to anyone who has dealt with the equivalent implementing law in Germany, France, or the Netherlands. The wording differs by member state, and Denmark has its own numbering and a handful of its own procedural details, but a business already compliant with, say, the German Fernabsatzgesetz framework is not starting from zero when it expands into Denmark. It still needs a Denmark-specific review, not a copy-paste.
Section 18(1) of the Act states the right applies to two categories of contract: aftaler om fjernsalg (distance contracts) and aftaler indgået uden for den erhvervsdrivendes forretningssted (contracts concluded away from the trader’s business premises). Both need defining precisely, because businesses regularly misjudge which of their own sales fall into either bucket.
Where the right actually applies
Distance contracts. Any contract concluded without the trader and consumer being physically present together at the same time, using exclusively remote means of communication up to and including the point the contract is formed. A website purchase is the obvious case. A phone order is a distance contract. An order placed through a WhatsApp catalogue or a Facebook Marketplace chat, if no in-person meeting happened before the deal was struck, is a distance contract too. The test is about how the contract was formed, not how the goods are delivered.
Off-premises contracts. A contract concluded with both parties physically present, but away from the trader’s normal place of business, at the consumer’s home, workplace, or on the street, at a trade fair or exhibition stand that isn’t the trader’s habitual selling location, or immediately after the trader approached the consumer in a public space. A door-to-door sale is the classic example. A sale made on an excursion organised by the trader specifically to sell products (a well-known pattern in Denmark with, for instance, kitchenware or health-product sales trips) is treated the same way.
What falls outside both categories, and therefore outside the withdrawal right entirely, is a purchase made at the trader’s own shop, showroom, or regular stall, where the consumer walked in and bought something in person. A customer buying a coat at a physical Copenhagen retail store has no statutory right of withdrawal at all; what that store offers beyond the sale (an exchange policy, a goodwill return window) is a commercial choice, not a legal obligation.
How the 14 days are actually counted
Section 19(1) sets the period at 14 days for a standard withdrawal (30 days specifically for individual pension arrangements, a narrow category most businesses will never encounter). Where those 14 days start counting depends on what was sold, under Section 19(2):
- For services: from the date the contract was concluded.
- For goods: from the date the consumer, or a third party designated by the consumer (not the carrier), physically takes possession of the goods.
- For digital content and utilities-type contracts: from the date the contract was concluded.
For a multi-item order delivered in separate shipments, the clock runs from receipt of the last item, not the first. For a subscription or a contract for regular delivery of goods over a defined period, it runs from receipt of the first delivery.
There’s a consumer-protective twist businesses need to plan around: Section 19(4). If the trader fails to give the consumer the required withdrawal information on a durable medium (the information duty sits in Section 8(1)(11), and needs to be given before the contract is concluded), the withdrawal period doesn’t just stay at 14 days. It extends to 12 months from the point the ordinary 14-day period would otherwise have expired, or ends 14 days after the trader eventually gets around to providing the information, whichever comes first. In practice: a missing or incomplete withdrawal notice on a Danish-facing checkout page turns a two-week exposure window into a year-long one. This is the single most common, and most expensive, mistake in how businesses actually lose this argument.
The exceptions: what’s carved out of the right of withdrawal
Section 18(2) lists fifteen situations where the right of withdrawal doesn’t apply, even though the underlying contract is a distance or off-premises contract. The ones that come up most often in practice:
Custom-made or personalised goods. Goods manufactured to the consumer’s specifications or clearly personalised, engraved jewellery, a made-to-order sofa in a custom fabric, a printed item with the customer’s own design. If the trader had to make a specific decision to accommodate that one customer’s specification, the withdrawal right doesn’t attach.
Perishable or quickly deteriorating goods. Fresh food, flowers, and similar goods that would spoil or lose value rapidly if returned and resold.
Custom food orders, specifically. This is where the two exceptions above overlap, and it’s worth spelling out because it’s the exact scenario businesses ask about most. A bespoke catering order, a made-to-order cake, a meal-kit box assembled around one customer’s dietary specification, typically falls outside the withdrawal right twice over: it’s personalised under the custom-goods exception, and it’s perishable under the deterioration exception. A standard, non-personalised grocery delivery is covered by the general perishable-goods exception on its own. Either way, a Danish food business selling online generally does not need to build withdrawal-right handling into its custom or perishable-goods checkout flow, but it still needs to say so clearly in its terms, because silence on the point (rather than an active, correct statement that the exception applies) is itself a compliance gap.
Sealed goods, unsealed after delivery, for health or hygiene reasons. Cosmetics, certain medical devices, intimate apparel: once the consumer breaks the seal, the withdrawal right is lost, but only if the seal was intact on delivery and the health/hygiene rationale for the exception is genuine.
Sealed audio, video, or software, once unsealed. Digital media or software sold on a physical, sealed medium loses withdrawal-right protection the moment the consumer breaks the seal.
Newspapers, periodicals, and magazines, except subscription agreements for periodical delivery, which remain covered.
Goods inseparably mixed with other items after delivery, by their nature.
Alcoholic beverages where the price was agreed at the time of the contract but delivery, and the actual market value, occurs later, a narrow exception tied to price volatility rather than the alcohol itself.
Urgent repair or maintenance work specifically requested by the consumer. If a consumer calls out a tradesperson for an emergency repair, that specific job is excluded, though any additional goods or services supplied beyond what was strictly necessary for the repair remain subject to the ordinary right.
Accommodation, transport, car rental, catering, or leisure services tied to a specific date or period of performance. A hotel booking for a fixed check-in date, a flight, a rental car for a specific week, an event ticket. These are excluded because the trader has reserved capacity for that specific date that can’t easily be resold once cancelled.
Non-physical digital content, once the consumer has expressly consented to immediate performance and acknowledged, before that performance starts, that they lose the right of withdrawal by doing so. This exception only holds if that consent and acknowledgment were properly captured; without them, digital content remains withdrawal-eligible even after download.
Contracts concluded at a public auction.
Goods, securities, or services whose price depends on fluctuations in the financial market, beyond the trader’s control, within the withdrawal period.
Certain mortgage-related financial services, a narrow, sector-specific carve-out most consumer-goods businesses won’t encounter.
Two exceptions from the original EU Directive framework, non-financial services already fully performed with the consumer’s express consent and acknowledgment of losing the right, apply in the same overlapping way digital content does: the exception only protects the trader if the consent and the loss-of-right acknowledgment were actually captured before performance began, not assumed.
Exercising the right: what the consumer has to do, and what the trader owes back
A consumer withdrawing under Section 20 needs to give the trader an unambiguous statement of the decision to withdraw. They can use the standard withdrawal form set out in Bilag 3 (Annex 3) to the Act, which every trader is required to make available under Section 9(1), but a clear statement in any other form (an email saying so plainly) works just as well. No reason has to be given.
Once a valid withdrawal notice is received, Section 22 puts the clock on the trader: refund the consumer without undue delay, and in any event within 14 days of receiving the withdrawal notice. The trader is allowed to withhold that refund until the goods are actually received back, or until the consumer has provided proof of having sent them, whichever is earlier, under Section 22(1)-(4).
On the consumer’s side, Section 24(1) sets a matching 14-day deadline to actually return the goods after giving notice of withdrawal. The consumer generally bears the direct cost of returning the goods (Section 24(2)-(3)), unless the trader failed to inform them that this cost would fall on them, or the trader has agreed to absorb it. And under Section 24(5), the consumer stays liable for any diminished value of the goods caused by handling them beyond what was necessary to establish their nature, characteristics, and how they function, essentially, more use than trying something on for size.
What this means for a business selling to Danish consumers
Get the withdrawal notice into your checkout flow, correctly, before the contract is concluded. This is the single highest-leverage fix available, because getting it wrong doesn’t just create a compliance gap, it extends your own refund exposure from 14 days to potentially 12 months under Section 19(4).
State your exceptions accurately, not broadly. A business selling both standard and custom or perishable goods needs its terms to distinguish between them, product by product or category by category, rather than applying a blanket “no returns” statement that overclaims the exception and denies a right that actually exists for the non-custom portion of the catalogue.
Build the 14-day refund and return clock into your actual operations, not just your terms. A trader that states a 14-day refund commitment in its terms but takes three weeks in practice is exposed regardless of what the document says, and Danish enforcement runs through the Konkurrence- og Forbrugerstyrelsen (the Danish Competition and Consumer Authority) and the Forbrugerombudsmanden (the Consumer Ombudsman), both of which act on this kind of documented gap between stated policy and actual practice.
Don’t assume your GDPR-driven or generic EU terms already cover this. Withdrawal-right drafting is a distinct requirement from data protection notices, and a set of terms built primarily around GDPR compliance frequently has thin or generic withdrawal-right language bolted on, exactly the kind of gap that triggers the 12-month extension. Our guide on what terms and conditions actually need to cover is a useful starting point for what a complete set of consumer-facing terms should include.
Because the underlying right comes from an EU directive, a business selling across several EU member states, not just Denmark, is dealing with the same substantive right in each one, with country-specific wording, numbering, and enforcement bodies layered on top. Getting Denmark’s version right in isolation, without checking it against the German, French, or Dutch implementation your business also relies on, tends to produce exactly the kind of inconsistency a regulator or a customer’s own lawyer will notice.
Frequently asked questions
Does the 14-day right of withdrawal apply to a purchase made in a physical shop in Denmark? No. The right of withdrawal under the Forbrugeraftaleloven applies only to distance contracts and off-premises contracts. A purchase made in person at a trader’s own shop, showroom, or regular stall isn’t either of those, so no statutory withdrawal right attaches. Any return or exchange policy for an in-store purchase is a commercial choice by the retailer, not a legal requirement.
Can a Danish business refuse to accept a return for a custom-made cake or catering order? Generally yes, because a custom food order typically falls under two separate exceptions in Section 18(2): it’s personalised to the customer’s specification, and it’s a perishable good likely to deteriorate quickly. The business should still state this clearly in its terms rather than relying on silence, since an inaccurate or overly broad no-returns statement can itself create a compliance problem for the parts of the order that aren’t actually exempt.
What happens if a Danish business never tells the consumer about the right of withdrawal? The 14-day period doesn’t start running properly. Under Section 19(4), it extends to a maximum of 12 months from when the ordinary 14-day period would have ended, or 14 days after the trader eventually provides the missing information, whichever comes first. This is the most common and most expensive mistake businesses make with Danish-facing checkout flows.
Who bears the cost of returning goods after a valid withdrawal in Denmark? The consumer generally bears the direct cost of return under Section 24(2)-(3), unless the trader failed to inform the consumer that this cost would fall on them, or the trader has separately agreed to cover it. The trader’s own refund obligation, separately, must be met within 14 days of receiving the withdrawal notice, though the trader may withhold the refund until the goods are actually returned or proof of return is shown.
Is Denmark’s right of withdrawal the same as in other EU countries? The underlying right is the same in substance across the EU, because it comes from the Consumer Rights Directive (2011/83/EU), which every member state implements into national law. Denmark’s Forbrugeraftaleloven, Germany’s implementing provisions, and France’s Code de la consommation all give consumers a 14-day withdrawal right with a similar exceptions list, but the specific wording, section numbering, refund mechanics, and enforcement bodies differ by country. A business operating across multiple EU markets needs each country’s implementation checked individually rather than assuming one member state’s compliant terms transfer directly to another.
Selling into Denmark, or across the EU more broadly?
The right of withdrawal is one piece of a larger picture: Denmark’s implementation sits alongside GDPR, the Digital Services Act, and Danish national contract law, and getting the Section 18/19 mechanics right in your terms doesn’t by itself mean the rest of your Denmark-facing or EU-facing contracts are compliant. Our contract lawyers in the EU draft and review consumer terms, checkout flows, and B2C agreements against the specific national law that actually governs them, Danish, German, French, Dutch, or any of the 27 member states, rather than a single generic EU template. If you’re expanding into Denmark or already selling there and want your withdrawal-right disclosures and exceptions checked against the current Forbrugeraftaleloven, that’s exactly the kind of review our EU contracts team handles.
This article is general information, not legal advice. It reflects the Forbrugeraftaleloven as consolidated in 2025 and the EU Consumer Rights Directive it implements; Danish consumer law is subject to amendment and specific interpretation by the Forbrugerombudsmanden and Danish courts. For advice on your own Denmark-facing or EU-facing terms, speak to a qualified contract lawyer. Authored and reviewed by Prakhar Rai, Advocate, founder of My Legal Pal, enrolled with the Bar Council of India, advising on cross-border and EU-facing consumer and commercial contracts.
