The Two-Year Guarantee: What Cyprus Online Shops Must Offer

A customer buys a blender from your online shop. Fourteen months later the motor dies. She emails you, and your reply decides two things: whether she ever buys again, and whether you are on the right side of the law. Most Cyprus shops have a returns page. Far fewer have thought about faulty goods, which is a different right with different rules.

Two rights, not one

Change of mind is the 14-day cancellation right that applies to distance sales. We covered it in our returns and refunds guide. The legal guarantee is separate. It covers goods that turn out to be faulty, and it lasts two years from the day the customer receives the item. It applies to every sale, in the shop or online, and you cannot shorten it in your terms. The EU set these rules and Cyprus has written them into its own law.

What the guarantee promises

Goods must match the description, do what that kind of product normally does, and last as long as a reasonable buyer would expect. A sofa that sags in six months, a phone whose battery swells, a jacket whose zip breaks on the third wear: all of these are the seller's problem. Normal wear, misuse and accidental damage are not. A cracked screen from a drop is not a fault, but a screen that stops responding on its own is.

One detail catches many shops out. If a fault appears in the first year, the law assumes it was there at delivery and it is up to you to prove otherwise. After the first year the customer has to show the fault was not caused by them. In practice, argue only when you are certain.

Repair, replace, refund: the order matters

The customer does not get to demand a refund on day one, and you do not get to offer a voucher. The steps are fixed:

• Repair or replacement first. The customer chooses between the two, unless one is impossible or far more expensive than the other.
• Free and quick. You pay for collection, postage, parts and labour, and the fix must happen within a reasonable time and without real inconvenience.
• Then a price cut or a refund. If repair fails, takes too long, or is not possible, the customer can keep the item at a lower price or return it for their money back.
• Minor faults. A trivial defect justifies a repair or a small reduction, not a full refund.

"Contact the manufacturer" is not an answer

A brand warranty card in the box is a bonus the maker offers. It sits on top of the legal guarantee and never replaces it. The customer's contract is with you, so you handle the claim, even if you then send the item to the brand's service centre and recover your costs from your supplier. Telling a customer to ring a call centre in another country is the fastest way to a one-star review and a complaint to the Consumer Protection Service.

Second-hand goods can carry a shorter guarantee, but only if you agreed it with the buyer before the sale, and never less than one year.

Write the page in plain words

Put a short "Faulty items" section on your delivery and returns page and link it from every product page. Five lines are enough: every item is covered for two years; how to report a fault, with a photo or short video; that collection is at your cost; what happens next and how long each step takes; and that a refund goes back to the original payment method. Write it in Greek and English, and keep the tone calm. A page that reads like a threat makes buyers hesitate before paying. One that reads like a promise does the opposite.

If you sell to buyers in other EU countries, the same two-year rule follows the parcel. Our guide on selling abroad covers the rest.

Handle the claim so it earns a review

Reply the same working day and ask for the photo or video. Decide within two working days: repair, replace, or refund. Book the courier yourself rather than asking the customer to post it. Tell them the date the repaired or new item will ship, and keep that date. If you refund, do it within a few days, not at the end of the month.

Keep a simple log of every claim with the product, the fault and the outcome. Three claims on the same item in a season tells you to change supplier or drop the product. Your own claim against that supplier is your business, never the customer's. Handled this way, a faulty blender becomes the moment a customer finds out your shop keeps its word, and that is worth more than the margin on one sale.

Not sure your online shop says the right things about guarantees? Talk to us and we will review the pages with you.