Your country
Reasoning about money is the same everywhere, and that is why this course has no nationality. What changes from one country to the next are the schemes: the legal deadlines, the caps, the support, the authority you report to. They live here, never inside a lesson.
What is universal, and what is not
A percentage is worked out the same way everywhere. A running debt costs everywhere. A salesperson who pushes pushes everywhere. Those things make up the core of the course, and they hold for a reader anywhere.
On the other hand: how long you have to go back on a purchase, the cap on a savings account, whether a debt relief procedure exists, the name of the authority that licenses an investment firm. All of that depends on local law. We never mix it with the core, for a simple reason: a lesson that assumes a national scheme becomes false the moment it is read somewhere else.
The verified modules
A module only exists once it has been checked against a public, open source, read on the date shown. There are 2 today, and each one carries its reference.
European Union
A fourteen-day withdrawal period for distance purchases, set by Union law and transposed into the law of each Member State.
United Kingdom
The same fourteen-day period to cancel a distance purchase, carried by a different national text: the mechanism is the same, the reference changes.
The detail of what has been verified
Each line carries the date its source was read, and that date changes only on the day the source is read again. The modules in full are in /data/pays.json. That file is in French, the reference language of the course.
- European Union · Directive 2011/83/UE du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 25 octobre 2011 relative aux droits des consommateurs, texte consolidé au 28 mai 2022, article 9, Journal officiel de l’Union européenne, EUR-Lex · Checked on
- European Union · Directive 2011/83/UE du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 25 octobre 2011 relative aux droits des consommateurs, texte consolidé au 28 mai 2022, Journal officiel de l’Union européenne, EUR-Lex · Checked on
- United Kingdom · The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, regulation 30, version en vigueur, legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives · Checked on
European Union
The right of withdrawal on a distance purchase runs for fourteen days. For a service it starts from the conclusion of the contract; for goods, from the day the consumer takes physical possession of them. That period is the one set by Union law; each Member State transposes it into its own law, under a different name. Reference: Directive 2011/83/EU of 25 October 2011 on consumer rights, Article 9.
What the directive establishes is that common period, not the state of the law in any one country after transposition: that has to be read in the law of that country. Reporting, for its part, is national: a directive sets out rights and leaves each Member State the means of enforcing them, so the authority to turn to, and its name, change from one country to the next.
United Kingdom
The cancellation period for a distance purchase is also fourteen days, carried by a separate national text. For a service or digital content it is counted from the day the contract is concluded; for goods, from the day the consumer takes possession of them, and for a delivery in several batches, from the last batch received. Reference: The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, regulation 30.
Two different texts, one and the same period: that is exactly what this page is there to show. The mechanism recurs, the reference changes.
If your country has no module yet
You lose nothing of the course: the core is complete without a module. For the three questions where local law counts, here is where to look, in this order:
- For a cooling-off period: your country’s consumer law, or the official site of the department responsible for consumer affairs. The contract itself must state that period: its absence is information in its own right.
- To check that a firm is authorised: your country’s market authority or central bank publishes the list of licensed firms. Those lists are public and free.
- To report a scam: your country’s police authority, and your bank in writing. A written, dated report is worth more than a phone call.
How a module gets in here
The rule is written into our data, and there is no way round it: a public, open source, a date of reading, and a statement that says what changes, not what we think about it. Without an open source, a module is not published, even if we believe we know.
Do you know the official reference for your country and want it here? Send it, with its public address: write to us. That is the fastest way to make this page grow, and the only one that keeps the facts checkable.