Your consumer rights when a purchase goes wrong

Most shopping problems end with an email that never gets answered. This section is about what to do after that. We explain how refunds and chargebacks usually work, what an implied warranty is, how to cancel subscriptions that were designed to be hard to cancel, and which agency to contact when a company won't respond.

We write primarily for US shoppers and flag where rules differ in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. In South Carolina and the Grand Strand, some problems are local, like a contractor, a car repair shop or a vacation rental, and we'll point you to local and state options where they exist.

Nothing here is legal advice. When a situation needs a professional, we explain how to compare and choose one, the same way we'd compare any other purchase.

The FTC's consumer alerts below are a good early warning system for new scams and enforcement actions.