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Comment by doikor | Hacker News Reader

About the charge backs if one is mainly shopping from local companies there is really strong consumer protection laws instead.

Basically you can demand a refund and if they don't give it to you it is a really simple process of just sending a bill to that company for your money and initiate bankruptcy process if they fail to pay.

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Yes, but in this context, everything depends on the interaction with the merchant. While most merchants are not pricks, they are businesspeople and won't unconditionally accommodate any claim even if it is reasonable. Based on my experience, the worst are not necessarily the small merchants unless they are just fraudsters but the semi-large online stores like Otto/Saturn/MediaMarkt which will do everything to make a return and refund as impossible as possible.

In Finland consumers have the right to return the product for 7, 14 or 21 days (depending on product category and if online/offline store). The merchant has very little control over this with the main exceptions being stuff like underwear etc that can not be returned due to hygiene reasons.

The product when returned still has to be in a state that it can be sold.

This also means that lot of people pointing out Amazons very liberal return policy being a good reason to shop there makes no sense here. We got roughly the same return policy for all online shopping. And as others pointed out EU regulations give 14day return policy for all online shopping.

In the EU, the law is that merchants have to allow a return and refund for any online purchase unconditionally, provided that it was initiated within two weeks of purchase. I have never had any problems with this.

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