What to do today
- Email the shop, demand delivery and set a deadline — seven days is reasonable.
- If you paid by card, call your bank and ask about a chargeback and its deadline.
- If you paid by transfer, call the bank immediately; a payment can sometimes still be recalled.
- Report it to your national consumer authority even though it will not get your money back.
- Save the order, the payment record, the correspondence and screenshots of the site.
How long should you wait before acting?
Until the end of the delivery window the shop gave you, plus a few days. A delay is not automatically fraud, and an honest shop gets in touch on its own.
If the shop stated no delivery time at all, most consumer regimes give the seller a default period — 30 days from the contract in the EU and the UK — after which you are entitled to cancel. Where no such default exists, a reasonable time is the standard, and a month is a defensible reading of it.
Do not wait longer than that. The deadlines your refund depends on run regardless of your patience, and the most important one starts on the day delivery was promised.
First, demand delivery — in writing
Email the shop. Quote the order number and the payment date, and set a reasonable deadline for delivery, say seven days. Add the sentence that you are cancelling and requesting a refund if the deadline passes.
The written form matters even when nobody replies. Your bank and any authority will ask whether you contacted the seller, and an attempted phone call cannot be evidenced.
When you can cancel
The moment your deadline passes without delivery. Send the cancellation separately from the demand, so that the date it took effect is unambiguous. The wording and the timing are covered in the piece on returns and refunds.
Cancelling ends the contract and obliges the seller to refund — within 14 days where the EU or UK rules apply. With a shop that has stopped answering, that obligation on its own achieves nothing. It is, however, the document your bank and the authorities will want to see.
Where to go, and what each place can actually do
Three destinations, three different outcomes, and it is worth not confusing them. Your money, for a card payment, comes back only from your bank. A consumer authority supervises the trader and may add it to a public warning list. The police deal with fraud as a crime. Only the first of the three is on a clock that expires.
A chargeback is the card schemes' procedure for exactly this situation: goods paid for and not delivered, or not as described. How to raise one, what your bank will ask for and what happens next is set out in the piece on how chargeback works.
For a bank transfer there is no chargeback. Call the bank immediately: if the payment has not yet been credited, it can sometimes be stopped.
Neither an authority nor the police will return your money, and both are still worth doing. What belongs where, and what a report should contain, is in the piece on reporting a scam website.
Step by step
- 1Day 1: the written demandBy email, with the order number, the payment date and a seven-day deadline. Keep the sent message.
- 2Day 1: call your bankFor a card, ask whether a chargeback applies and what the deadline is. For a transfer, ask them to stop the payment right now.
- 3Day 1: save the evidenceThe order, the payment record, and screenshots of the product page with its price. Fraudulent shops disappear and take the evidence with them.
- 4Day 8: cancelWhen the deadline passes without delivery, send the cancellation and the demand for a refund. In writing again.
- 5Day 8: report itYour national consumer authority, with all the attachments. It does not block the chargeback and takes five minutes.
- 6Well before the window closes: finish the chargebackYour bank will want the order, the payment and the correspondence. Have them ready rather than assembling them on the last day.
Common questions
- How long should I wait before I act?
- Until the end of the stated delivery window, plus a few days. If no window was stated, 30 days from the contract is the default under EU and UK rules and a reasonable benchmark elsewhere. Do not wait longer — the chargeback clock is running whatever you do.
- The tracking is stuck at the carrier. Is that the shop's problem or the carrier's?
- The shop's. Your contract is with the seller and the seller chose the carrier. Save the tracking page anyway; it is evidence.
- Something arrived, but it is not what I ordered. Same thing?
- For a card dispute, yes — “not as described” and “not delivered” are treated alike. Photograph what turned up and keep the advertised description.
- The shop says it has shipped. What now?
- Ask for the tracking number and proof of posting. The carrier can confirm what was delivered, where and when. A shop that will not produce a tracking number has given you material for the bank and the authority.
- I ordered from another country. Does that change anything?
- Not for the card dispute. It changes enforcement, and the further away the trader is, the more. Inside the EU the European Consumer Centre network handles cross-border cases; outside it, your card is realistically the only route.
Read next
Safe online shopping: how to pay and what to check firstA practical routine for buying online: how to pay, what to check before you order, and how to keep your route to a refund open.
Returns and refunds: what you can actually insist onA faulty item and a change of mind are two different claims with two different deadlines. What you can insist on, where those rights apply, and what to do when a shop stalls.