Starting June 19, 2026, returns in e-commerce have to be as simple as the purchase. What does that mean for your store?

This article is for you if you run an online store or work at an agency serving e-commerce clients. Why? Because Directive (EU) 2023/2673 is coming into force, amending consumer rights rules and introducing new obligations for sellers* operating in the European Union – Poland included.

One of the key changes is the requirement to give customers an easy, automated way to withdraw from a contract (a return). What does that mean in practice? If your store doesn’t offer a simple, intuitive way to return items online, you risk not only customer frustration but, above all, legal and financial consequences.

In this article I’ll walk you through the new directive’s most important requirements and show you how to implement them in practice. At the end you’ll get a checklist so you can easily check whether your store meets all the key requirements. Happy reading.

*The new rules have a broad scope and cover online stores as well as digital services, subscription models and financial services concluded remotely. In this article I focus mainly on e-commerce stores.

What does every store have to do by June 19, 2026?

From an e-commerce perspective, the most important change concerns how a customer can withdraw from a contract. The legislature’s logic is fairly clear: if the purchase happens online, canceling it should be possible online too, without unnecessary formalities.

In practice that means the customer has to have access to a simple, fast, fully digital return process. A hidden email address or a downloadable PDF is no longer enough. The new rules still rest on the familiar mechanism of 14 days to withdraw from a contract with no reason given, but how that right is exercised is changing – it has to be far simpler and more user-friendly.

For online store owners, that’s a clear signal not to leave these changes to the last minute. It’s best to start with the basics:

• analyze your current returns process and check where the barriers for users are
• make sure the customer can easily start a return fully online
• update your terms and returns policy to reflect the new requirements
• get your store technically ready to automate the whole process, from request to confirmation

The directive sets the rules – not ready-made solutions

Directive (EU) 2023/2673 clearly sets outwhat conditions the withdrawal process has to meet,but it doesn’t dictate specific UX or UI solutions. Put differently, the law sayswhathas to be possible, but it’s up to the store (and its designers) to decidehowthat gets built.

So it’s worth understanding the requirements themselves first, and only then translating them into specific flows and interface elements.

The list of requirements your e-commerce store has to meet

From an e-commerce owner’s perspective, what matters isn’t only shipping a return feature but also how it’s communicated and how accessible it is. Here are the key rules:

• Information before purchase is essential – the user has to be clearly informed about the possibility (or lack of possibility) of withdrawing from the contract before they buy – on the product page (PDP) or in the cart, say. That information can’t be “hidden” only in the terms and conditions.
  ❗If the seller doesn’t inform the customer of their right of withdrawal, or does so in an illegible or hidden way, the return window extends from 14 days to as long as 12 months plus 14 days.
• The return option has to be available for the entire statutory period – the ability to withdraw from the contract should be available throughout the whole time the customer can use it.
• The process has to be simple and intuitive, and the feature has to be visible in the interface – the user shouldn’t have to go through extra steps that weren’t required at purchase. In other words: if they bought in 3 clicks, they shouldn’t have to go through 10 steps to return it. The withdrawal option should be easy to find.
• Partial returns have to be possible – the customer should be able to select specific items from an order to return, not just cancel the whole order.
• The form has to collect the key data – the withdrawal process should let the customer provide (or confirm) the information needed to identify the request, such as: name, information identifying the order, and contact details (an email for confirmation, say).
• An extra confirmation step is required – the process has to include an additional confirmation step (“Confirm return”, say) to prevent accidental returns. Only completing that step triggers the legal effect.
• Clear information about return costs – the customer has to know who bears the cost of the return, and that also has to be communicated clearly.
• A confirmation of the request is mandatory – once the customer submits the request, they have to receive a confirmation (an email, say) that includes the content of the request, states the date and time it was submitted, and lets them come back to it later.

How do you translate these requirements into an interface and a user experience?

The easiest way to understand this is through a concrete example. Imagine a user shopping at a medical supply store.

Already while browsing a product, they see a short, clear note about the return option – they don’t have to hunt for it in the terms and conditions or wonder whether it’s even possible. Importantly, for certain products (medical or hygiene items, say), a clear note immediately appears that they’re not eligible for return, so the customer knows the rules before they even buy, leaving no room for misunderstanding. The same communication logic should carry through to the cart.

A few days later, the customer decides to return part of the order. They don’t have to write an email or hunt for a form. They go into their orders (or click a link in the post-purchase email) and immediately see a “Return items” button. This is the first place you can clearly see how the Directive’s requirements translate into UX: the feature is easy to find and needs no workarounds.

The process itself is simple and predictable. The customer picks the specific items they want to return from a list; they don’t have to cancel the whole order. Items not eligible for return are marked accordingly or disabled in the selection, which further eliminates errors and frustration. If they’re logged in, most of the data is already filled in, so they proceed with practically no effort. At the end they see a summary: what they’re returning, the terms, who covers the shipping cost. Only then do they click “Confirm return” – deliberately, with no risk of an accidental action.

Once the process finishes, they get a confirmation on screen and by email, with a clear note of what was submitted, when, and what happens next. They can go back to that request at any time and check its details.

And that’s exactly the point: a well-designed process doesn’t feel like “fulfilling a legal obligation”. For the user it’s simply a natural part of the shopping experience – fast, understandable and free of frustration.

An example of the approach we used on a client project

Before you start looking for ready-made solutions, stop and check how your returns process actually works today. In the context of Directive (EU) 2023/2673, that’s a critical step – without it, it’s easy to ship something that technically meets the requirements but doesn’t fit your business or solve the real operational problems.

So at the start it’s worth answering one question:how big is the problem, really, and what’s this project actually worth?

The best starting point is an as-is analysis. In practice that means mapping out a simple process: how the customer initiates a return, what happens on the systems side, and where manual work and bottlenecks appear.

On one project for the Medeocare store, that approach let us not only meet the new requirements but also clean up a lot of operational chaos. Instead of “bolting on” a return feature, we treated it as a chance to improve the whole process. During the analysis, some very specific problems surfaced:

• customers didn’t understand the rules for returning bundled products
• they shipped packages to the wrong address (the registered address instead of the returns address)
• missing order numbers made identifying returns harder
• packages were poorly packed and couldn’t be accepted

That let us design not just compliance with the regulations but genuine operational improvements too, including a personalized checklist covering both the legal and the operational requirements.

Importantly, not every business needs the same level of sophistication. For Medeocare, returns made up less than 2% of all orders, so instead of an elaborate system we recommended a fast, “good enough” solution.

Only once you have the full picture (front end, operations and backend) is it worth deciding how to implement. At that point it’s easier to determine:

• whether a ready-made SaaS tool or plugin is enough
• whether additional integrations are needed
• or whether a custom build is actually justified

Finally, the most important thing: make decisions based on data, not assumptions. Take into account your return volume, operational complexity, team resources and growth plans. The right solution isn’t the most advanced one, it’s the one best matched to your situation.

Let’s stay positive – the new rules can help your business

Returns rarely spark enthusiasm. After hours of work on UX, CRO, testing and redesigns, you finally deliver results… and then the returns show up. In some industries they can reach as much as 40% of sales. But looked at more broadly, the changes coming from the directive can actually work in your favor, provided you use them well and think about them strategically:

• more trust = higher conversion A simple return process reduces customer worry and makes the purchase decision easier.
• a competitive edge A better returns UX can set your store apart from those that do only “the legal minimum”.
• valuable data on why customers return items Insights that help you improve your offer, product descriptions and reduce future returns.
• automation and lower operating costs Less manual handling, fewer errors, faster processing of requests.
• a better post-purchase experience Even a return can end on a positive note and raise the chance the customer comes back.
• greater willingness to make that first purchase For new customers especially, an easy return lowers the barrier to entry.
• a chance to recover some of the revenue Through a product exchange instead of a refund, say, or offering store credit.

In short: returns aren’t going away, but you can make them start working for your business instead of only generating costs.

The penalties are real – but you don’t have to face this alone

Failing to implement the new requirements will be treated as a violation of consumer rights. In Poland this area is overseen by UOKiK, which imposed over 612 million PLN (~$153M) in fines in 2023 alone. In practice this means among other things.:

• fines of up to 40,000 PLN (~$10K) for repeated violations
• and in more serious cases, up to 10% of the company’s annual turnover

This isn’t a “deal with it later” issue anymore, it’s a real business risk.

If you’re already in the process of implementing a new solution, I’d invite you to download the free checklistto make sure your new solution complies with the directive.

If you don’t have the resources to design and implement this process in-house, this is a good moment to bring in support. At Digispot we help e-commerce stores through this process end to end: from interpreting the regulations and analyzing the company’s operational processes, through UX design, to shipping the finished solution. That way you not only meet the legal requirements but also build a returns process that genuinely improves the customer experience, instead of it just being an unpleasant obligation.

If you need help implementing Directive (EU) 2023/2673 in your store, get in touch.