Eight Days, Unless You Said Otherwise
Japan gives a mail-order buyer eight days from delivery to change their mind and send the goods back. Then it takes the right away again if you published your own return terms in the advertisement. So the window is not a property of the sale, or of the goods, or of the customer. It is a property of a document you put out — and if you did not put one out, the default applies and you find out about it when the parcel arrives.
The short version, first
Article 15-3 of the Act on Specified Commercial Transactions is a default that you can displace. Absent your own published terms, a mail-order purchaser may withdraw or cancel until eight days have passed since delivery, and the purchaser bears the cost of sending the goods back. Publish special provisions on withdrawal in the advertisement — and, for an electronic consumer contract, also by a further method the ministry prescribes — and your terms govern instead. Which makes the published policy a legal artefact with a version and a date, and makes its truthfulness a separate duty under Article 12. Our return record carries a reason string, a refund tender, a restock flag and a link to an exchange. It does not record which right the customer exercised, or who paid the postage.
A right created by silence
Most consumer rights are triggered by something going wrong. This one is not. Nothing has to be faulty, nothing has to be misdescribed, and the buyer does not have to give a reason. The purchaser simply withdraws the offer or cancels the contract, and the eight days run from the date the goods were delivered.
The proviso is where it becomes a business decision. The default does not apply if the seller had indicated special provisions on withdrawal or cancellation in its advertisement. And where the contract is an electronic consumer contract — or in other cases the competent ministry specifies — the seller must have indicated those special provisions in the advertisement <em>and also</em> by a further method that the ministry prescribes. So for an online sale it is two indications rather than one, and what the second one must be is set by an order we have not read and you should.
Two things about this source, before you rely on it
The Ministry of Justice's translation database records this Act's translated version as Act No. 60 of 2016, and the Act has been amended since — the database also says in terms that its translations are not official texts. Article 15-3 predates that version and is quoted here from the Japanese and English columns side by side. Everything the Act delegates to an order of the competent ministry, including the prescribed non-advertisement method for electronic consumer contracts, we did not read. Treat this as the shape of the obligation rather than as its current letter, and get the letter from the current Japanese text.
And the cost goes the other way
Article 15-3(2) is one sentence and it matters commercially: where the goods have already been delivered, the purchaser bears the costs required for taking them back or returning them. That is the opposite of the allocation in most fault-based remedies, where the seller pays. So the same physical event — a parcel coming back — carries a different cost allocation depending on which right the customer is exercising, and the only way to know which is to know why they returned it.
A withdrawal under Article 15-3
- Available for eight days from delivery, with no reason required.
- Exists only because you did not publish special provisions in the advertisement.
- The purchaser bears the cost of returning the goods.
- Nothing needs to be wrong with the goods at all.
- Displaced entirely by your own published terms, whatever they say.
A return under your own policy
- Whatever window and conditions you published.
- Governs because you published it, in the advertisement and — online — by a further prescribed method.
- Whatever cost allocation you published.
- Whatever grounds you chose to accept.
- Subject to Article 12: the published terms must not differ significantly from the truth.
That last point closes the loop. Article 11 requires a mail-order advertisement to state the withdrawal and cancellation information, including the details of any special provisions. Article 12 then forbids a representation about that information which differs significantly from the truth or could mislead people into thinking conditions are significantly better than they are. And Article 12-2 lets the competent minister set a period for you to produce materials showing reasonable grounds for a representation — failing which the representation is deemed to be one Article 12 prohibits. So the policy that displaces the statutory default is itself a regulated statement, and the standard it is held to is truthfulness.
The return window is decided by a document, the cost allocation is decided by which route the customer took, and our return row records neither.
What a return record holds
A return in this product is a good record of an event. It names the sale it reverses and, line by line, the original sale lines. It carries a return number of its own, a reason, the tender the refund went out on, a decision about whether to restock, the amounts with tax broken out, who processed it and when. Where the customer took a replacement instead, it carries a link to the sale that replaced it. We have written about those mechanics at length in <a href="/blog/pos-returns-exchanges-kenya">the four decisions inside every return</a>, and they are among the more complete parts of the product.
What it does not carry is the legal shape of what just happened. The reason is a string — a person's description of the situation, in whatever words the counter uses. There is no field distinguishing a goodwill return from a withdrawal under a statutory right from a rejection of faulty goods, and those three have different consequences for who pays the postage, what you may deduct, and how long the window was. There is also no shipping or handling figure anywhere on the return, and no record of who bore it.
What Article 15-3 turns on, against the return schema
| The fact | Held today | Structured | Reportable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Which sale is being reversed, line by line | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| The amounts, with tax separated | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Whether the goods went back into stock | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Whether this was an exchange, and for what | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Why the customer returned it | Partly — configurable by you | No | Partly — configurable by you |
| Which right or policy the return was made under | No | No | No |
| The cost of getting the goods back, and who bore it | No | No | No |
| Whether the sale was a mail-order sale at all | No | No | No |
Built and maintained Configurable by you, not maintained by us Not built
The last row is quietly important. A till sale in this product carries a counter, a warehouse, a location, a currency and a country — but no channel. A sale taken at a counter and a sale despatched to an address are the same shape of row, which means the population this Act applies to cannot be selected. The eight days also run from delivery, and a delivery date to the customer is a field we established was absent from a different direction in <a href="/blog/the-six-months-where-you-have-to-prove-it">The Six Months Where You Have to Prove It</a>.
The published policy as a record
The deeper gap is upstream of the return entirely. If your terms displace a statutory default, then the terms are an operative document: they have text, a date they went up, a date they changed, and a set of sales they governed. Nothing in this product holds a policy in that sense. A customer invoice carries a free-text terms column; a till sale carries nothing of the kind; and there is no policy, terms-version or published-document record anywhere in the schema.
The nearest thing that exists is the document vault, and it is nearer than it sounds. A vault file carries a title, a classification, a SHA-256 checksum, a polymorphic relation to any record in the product, and an access log on every read. So the policy PDF you published can be stored, dated by its upload, and proved unaltered. What is absent is the relation running the other way: from a sale, to the version of the terms that was live when it was taken. That is the same shape of problem as knowing which price or claim was displayed on a given day, which we looked at in <a href="/blog/three-per-cent-while-the-claim-was-up">Three Per Cent While the Claim Was Up</a> — except that there the display drives a penalty, and here it decides whether a customer has a right at all.
A route, a cost, a channel and a version
Three small fields and one small table, and they are useful in that order.
A route on the return
A short controlled list saying which right or policy the return was made under, beside the free-text reason rather than instead of it. It is what decides the cost allocation and what makes a return reportable by kind.
A return cost and who bore it
One amount and one flag. Under this Act the purchaser bears it; under a fault remedy you do; and today neither is recorded, so the difference is invisible in the accounts.
A channel on the sale
So a mail-order sale is selectable as a population. Without it, an obligation that applies only to distance selling cannot be scoped, reported on, or tested.
A terms version, related to the sales it governed
A dated record of what your published policy said, with the vault file behind it, so the terms in force when a sale was taken are a lookup rather than an archaeology exercise.
The first three are fields and each pays for itself outside this Act — a route makes return analysis meaningful, a cost makes returns visible in margin, and a channel is the axis half your reports actually want. The fourth is the one worth scoping properly, and it is the same shape as a dated price: a version with a period and a relation to the transactions inside it.
Tell us what your operation needsWhat AWRA OpsHub does today
- A return against the original sale, line by line, with its own reference number and the person and moment who processed it.
- Amounts with tax separated on both the return and its lines, alongside any discount that was originally given.
- A restock decision on every return, so goods coming back and stock going up are two choices rather than one.
- An exchange linked to the sale that replaced it, so a replacement is recorded as a replacement.
- A refund tender on the return, recording how the money went back.
- A document vault with a checksum, a classification and an access log, where a published policy can be stored and proved unaltered.
- Custom fields on till sales, so a channel or a terms reference can be recorded, reported and exported today.
More we can add to your workspace
- A route on a return, naming which right or policy it was made under, as a controlled value beside the free-text reason.
- The cost of returning the goods, and who bore it, as an amount and a flag on the return.
- A channel on a sale, so the distance-selling population is selectable rather than assumed.
- A delivery date to the customer, which is what the eight days count from.
- A dated version of your published terms, related to the sales it governed, with the published document behind it.
- A window derived from the applicable policy, so a return arriving on day nine is visibly outside the terms that were live when the sale was taken.
- Two different cost allocations expressed as rules, one per route, rather than as a decision somebody makes at the counter.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We will not tell you whether your advertisement indicated special provisions well enough to displace the default. That turns on Article 11, on Article 12's truthfulness standard, and — for an online sale — on a further method of indication that an order of the competent ministry prescribes and that we did not read. It is a Japanese consumer-law question, and getting it wrong means a right you thought you had removed is still there.
- We will not compute a return window and present it as the customer's deadline. The window is either the statutory eight days from delivery or whatever your published terms say, and which of those applies depends on a document and on how it was published. We will hold both, show which one we think applied and why, and leave the conclusion attributable to a person.
- We hold a position on the reason field, and it is that a free-text reason and a structured route should both exist rather than one standing in for the other. The words a person types are worth keeping — they are often the only account of what actually happened. What they cannot do is drive a cost allocation or produce a count, and a return analysis built on parsing them is a report that quietly changes meaning as the vocabulary at the counter drifts.
The first three items are fields and we would do them together in an afternoon; each earns its place well beyond this Act, and the channel is the one that unlocks scoping any distance-selling obligation at all. The fourth is the delivery date we have wanted for two other reasons already, so it is the best-value column on the list. The fifth is the substantial piece and it is the same dated-version shape a price history needs — worth building once and using for both. The sixth and seventh follow from the fifth and are arithmetic rather than schema.
Four questions for a system taking distance sales
Which of these sales were distance sales?
What you will probably hear
The ones from the web channel.
How to read it
Ask where the channel is stored. In many systems, ours included, a sale carries a till, a location and a currency and no channel at all — which means an obligation that applies only to distance selling cannot be scoped, and the population is assembled by inference.
Why was this item returned?
What you will probably hear
There is a reason field.
How to read it
Ask whether it is free text. A sentence is the best record of what happened and the worst basis for a rule: it cannot decide who pays the postage and it cannot be counted. The useful shape is a short controlled route alongside the sentence.
What did this return cost us?
What you will probably hear
The refund amount.
How to read it
That is the price, not the cost. Ask about carriage, handling and the value lost on goods that came back unsellable, and whether any of it is recorded against the return. Where the customer bears the carriage by law, being able to show you did not pay it matters too.
What did our return policy say in March?
What you will probably hear
It is on the website.
How to read it
Which is the current version. Ask whether the text as published on a date is retrievable and whether a sale can be linked to the version that was live when it was taken — because where a published term displaces a statutory right, the version is the whole of your position.
Tell us which of your rights come from a document
Some obligations attach to a transaction, and a system can find those. This one attaches to whether you published something, in the right place, truthfully — which makes the document part of the record rather than part of the marketing. If you want the bookkeeping side of returns, <a href="/blog/what-a-refund-has-to-undo">what a refund has to undo</a> covers the four reversals; this is the layer above it.
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