Cancellation rights for trade jobs booked by email or online

Many trade websites today have two entrances: a form through which customers describe what they need, and, at some businesses, a booking page on which a service is ordered directly at a fixed price. Legally these are two different things. The form enquiry is usually just a request for a quote. Someone who asks for an appointment to take measurements has not ordered anything yet, and you have not agreed to anything either. How to keep that form lean is covered in the article on the fields of a trade enquiry form. The contract comes later: when you send a quote and the customer accepts it, or when they place a binding order on the booking page.

For the right of withdrawal it is this later moment that counts, and above all how it comes about. For consumer contracts the law names two situations in which a right of withdrawal exists: the distance contract and the contract concluded off business premises (§ 312g(1) BGB). A distance contract exists when both sides use means of distance communication exclusively for negotiating and concluding it. The law lists, among others, letters, telephone calls and emails as such means. The definition reads, in our translation:

The final clause matters for trade businesses. A distance contract requires a sales or service system organised for distance selling. Anyone who regularly sends quotes by email and accepts confirmations by email should, as a rule, assume that this condition may be met. A booking page on which services are ordered at a fixed price is such a system by its very purpose. Things are different if you have been at the customer’s home: if a face-to-face conversation took place, for instance when taking measurements, the negotiation was no longer conducted exclusively at a distance. Then the second situation comes into play. A contract concluded off business premises is one concluded in the simultaneous presence of both sides at a place that is not your business premises, typically the customer’s kitchen or boiler room (§ 312b BGB). The same provision also covers a contract that is concluded by email or in your workshop but where the customer was personally and individually addressed outside your business premises immediately beforehand.

The table shows why the same service has to be treated differently depending on how it was agreed. A heating service that a customer orders by email after a phone call is something other than the same service signed for in the boiler room after the site visit, and something else again when the customer orders it at the counter of your showroom. For the website this leads to a simple rule: every path through which an order can come about needs a clear end point at which it is settled which type of contract applies and which documents the customer received beforehand.

How expensive a missing notice can become is shown by a case that the Regional Court of Essen referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union. A homeowner had orally concluded a contract with a company for the renewal of the electrical installation of his house without being informed of his right of withdrawal. After the work had been carried out, he withdrew from the contract. On 17 May 2023, in case C-97/22, the Court ruled that the Consumer Rights Directive must be interpreted as meaning that

For the business this means: materials, working time and travel have been spent, and as a rule no payment can be claimed for them after the withdrawal. The judgment concerns an off-premises contract, but § 357a BGB ties compensation for services to proper information for both types of contract. The question is therefore less whether a customer withdraws in a particular case than whether your process reliably attaches the notice to every consumer order that comes about by email, via the booking page or at the kitchen table.

The notice has two jobs: it has to reach the customer before they say yes, and the business must later be able to show that it did. A „cancellation notice“ page in the footer of the website does neither job on its own. It is useful for reference, but it does not replace the notice at the point of acceptance. Where the legal notice and privacy policy belong and how they are maintained is covered in the article on the legal notice and privacy policy on trade sites. For the cancellation notice there are four possible places:

Under the EGBGB, the model withdrawal form is part of the information on the right of withdrawal. The customer does not have to use it; as a rule an unambiguous statement, for example by email, is enough. You can also offer them the option of filling in and sending the form or another unambiguous withdrawal statement directly on your website. You must then confirm receipt of the withdrawal to them without delay on a durable medium (§ 356(1) BGB). For online bookings, a duty has been added to this voluntary option since June 2026: the withdrawal function.

The least uncertainty arises when the website has two separate paths that can also be told apart visually. The enquiry path collects requests and ends with the note that a quote will follow. The booking path sells a clearly described service at a fixed price and ends with a contract. If the two are mixed, for instance because an enquiry form states a fixed price and has „binding“ on its button, neither the customer nor the business knows exactly when the contract came into being. Five steps bring order to this:

One exception concerns emergency call-outs. If the customer has expressly asked the business to visit them to carry out urgent repair or maintenance work, there is no right of withdrawal for that work (§ 312g(2) no. 11 BGB). This does not apply to further services provided during the visit that the customer did not expressly request, nor to goods that are not strictly needed as spare parts. Anyone who stops a burst water pipe at night and has the customer sign a contract for a new bathroom on site the next day usually concludes an off-premises contract for it. How the emergency service can be separated from plannable services on the website is described in the article on presenting the emergency service online.

Larger projects follow their own rules. If a business undertakes towards a consumer to construct a new building or carry out substantial conversion work on an existing building, the contract is a consumer construction contract (§ 650i BGB). It must be in text form, and the consumer has a right of withdrawal of its own unless the contract was notarised; the business must inform the consumer of this right in accordance with Article 249 EGBGB (§ 650l BGB). Whether a renovation is substantial depends on its scope. For the website this is mainly a question of templates: a quote for an extension needs a different notice from a booked service.

The cancellation notice, the booking page and the withdrawal function are not a one-off setup. If a new service becomes bookable online, a price changes or the booking tool is replaced, texts and processes have to follow. The wording of the notice comes from you or your legal adviser; we build it into the right places and keep the versions identical on every page. The page on maintenance and support sets out which changes are included in ongoing support. How it works when you want to change times or start something new is answered by the question of who changes opening hours or adds a new project. General guidance is in the article on maintaining the site after handover.

Legal questions on the website rarely come alone. New rules also apply to environmental claims, which the article on eco claims on tradesperson websites goes through page by page. And anyone who currently has fewer orders often looks first at the enquiry routes; what the website then has to deliver is covered in the article on slower order books and website enquiries.