Which policies and legal pages your shop needs

The legal minimum for a plant webshop: T&C, privacy, cookies, returns, complaints — including the EU 14-day right of withdrawal and the plant exception.

Written By Bas den Hoed

Policies and legal pages are the part of webshop work that everyone postpones, then panics about a week before launch. The result: a generic copy-paste template that doesn't match how the shop actually operates, particularly around the EU 14-day right of withdrawal — where the law treats live plants differently from a pair of shoes. This article covers the minimum legal set for NL/BE/DE plant resellers, how to apply the plant exception correctly, and what belongs in your footer versus your checkout.

💡 The short version: the #1 mistake is copying a standard policy template without adapting it. The EU 14-day right of withdrawal is mandatory for consumer e-commerce — but for live plants there's a legitimate exception (Art. 6:230p BW) that you must invoke explicitly and back up correctly. Used as a blanket excuse to refuse all returns, it's both legally fragile and a customer-trust killer.

The minimum set

Five policies are non-negotiable for a NL/BE/DE consumer plant shop. Anything missing here is either a legal exposure or a conversion problem.

  • Algemene voorwaarden / Terms & Conditions. The contract between you and the buyer. Covers ordering, payment, delivery, liability, and dispute resolution. Must be accepted at checkout via tickbox before order completion.

  • Privacybeleid (GDPR/AVG-compliant). What personal data you collect, why, where it's stored, who you share it with, and how a customer can exercise their rights (access, deletion, portability). Required by law for any EU consumer-facing shop.

  • Cookie policy + cookie banner. The policy explains which cookies you set; the banner gets active consent before non-essential cookies fire. Default-on tracking with a "we use cookies" notice without a reject option is non-compliant under the ePrivacy directive — and German regulators in particular enforce this.

  • Return policy. Clarifies how returns work in your shop, including the plant exception (covered below) and which non-living items follow the standard 14-day rule. Use the return policy generator tutorial to draft the page — it's specifically built for plant shops and handles the perishable-goods carve-out.

  • Complaint policy (klachtenregeling). Required in NL under consumer-law obligations and a Thuiswinkel Waarborg requirement. States how complaints are submitted, what response time you commit to, and where the customer escalates if dissatisfied. Use the complaint policy generator tutorial.

Both the return and complaint generators are GPT-driven, language-aware (NL/EN/DE/FR), and produce policies tuned for plant retail. Don't write these from scratch — the generators get you 90% of the way for both languages and edge cases.

The 14-day right of withdrawal — and the plant exception

Under EU consumer-rights legislation (in NL: Wet Koop op Afstand, Art. 6:230o BW), a consumer buying online has 14 days from receipt to withdraw from the contract for any reason, with goods returned and refunded. This is non-waivable and applies by default to every product in your shop.

However, Art. 6:230p BW (and equivalent provisions in BE/DE) lists exceptions. The relevant one for plant retail is "goods which are liable to deteriorate or expire rapidly" — perishable goods. Live plants generally fall under this exception, with caveats.

Where the exception applies

  • Cut flowers and bouquets — uncontroversial, deteriorate within days.

  • Live potted plants where transport itself stresses the plant and a return shipment causes further damage. Most houseplants and outdoor plants fit here.

  • Christmas trees — perishable in obvious ways, including loss of needles.

  • Bulbs in active growth stage (e.g. forced Hyacinths) — perishable as supplied.

Where the exception does NOT apply

  • Pots, planters, accessories. Non-living. Standard 14-day right applies. A customer can return an unused planter just because they changed their mind.

  • Tools, soil bags (sealed and unopened), plant care products. Standard 14-day right.

  • Dormant bulbs and seeds in original sealed packaging. Arguable — sealed seed packets can usually be returned; opened cannot.

  • "The plant arrived dead" or "the plant arrived damaged". The withdrawal-right exception doesn't override the buyer's separate right to a working product. A plant that arrives damaged is a defect claim, not a withdrawal claim, and you owe a replacement or refund regardless of perishability rules.

⚠️ The exception is a carve-out, not a shield. Using "perishable goods" as a blanket reason to refuse all returns — including damaged-on-arrival, wrong-item-shipped, accessories sold alongside plants — is both legally weak and a fast track to negative reviews. State the exception clearly, name what it covers, name what it doesn't, and process the legitimate cases without friction.

Six links, minimum, in the footer of every page:

  1. Returns / Retourbeleid — link to the return policy page.

  2. Privacy — link to the privacy policy.

  3. Terms / Algemene voorwaarden

  4. Cookies — link to the cookie policy + a "manage preferences" entry that re-opens the banner.

  5. Contact — link to a real contact page (form + email, ideally also a phone number).

  6. Bedrijfsinformatie / Business identifiers — KvK number (NL), VAT number, company legal name, registered address. Either as a footer line or on a dedicated "About / Contact" page that's linked from the footer.

For menu structure context, see the menu structure article.

Checkout-page legals

Two legal items must appear at checkout, both above the "Place order" button:

  • T&C tickbox. "I agree to the Terms & Conditions" with a clickable link. Pre-ticked is non-compliant under EU consumer law — the customer must actively check the box.

  • Privacy line. A short sentence: "By placing this order, you agree to our [Privacy policy]." No tickbox needed for the privacy line itself; the legal basis for processing the order is contract performance, not consent.

If you're using Klarna or PayPal at checkout, those parties have their own legal disclosures — those are handled by their checkout widgets, not by you. Don't duplicate.

NL / BE / DE differences in brief

  • NL. KvK number must be displayed. Klachtenregeling is expected, especially for Thuiswinkel members. Cookie consent must be explicit (informed opt-in).

  • BE. Ondernemingsnummer (BCE/KBO) takes the place of KvK. Otherwise broadly similar to NL.

  • DE. The famous Impressum requirement — a dedicated legal-info page, linked clearly (usually footer), with company name, address, contact, registration number, VAT ID, responsible party for content. Missing or hard-to-find Impressum is the most common reason German shops get cease-and-desist letters from competitor watchdogs (Abmahnungen). If you ship to DE, treat Impressum as non-optional.

Next action

Today: run the return policy generator and the complaint policy generator. Both take 5 minutes each, output is plant-specific, and covers NL/EN/DE/FR. Publish the resulting pages to your shop and link them from the footer. Verify the cookie banner offers a real "Reject" option, not just "Accept all". If you ship to DE, check whether your Impressum page exists and is linked in the footer — if not, that's the most urgent legal gap on the list.