All things Shopify and commerce
I know this topic has been brought up many, many times now. Many people need the functionality to ask customers for consent with their terms and conditions (or similar things) right in the checkout.
To me it's a complete mystery why Shopify declines for many years now to implement this extremely basic functionality to the native checkout.
I understand this will be possible as part of the new checkout extensions that developers can use soon, but it seems this kind of checkout customization will only ever be available for Plus plan merchants. Feels like a slap in the face, with the Plus plan starting at $2,000 USD/month.
Many of us small shop owners are out here in risk of getting sued because we can't comply with the most basic local regulations because of this. Workarounds with a checkbox in the cart are not sufficient and often require custom coding to be implemented. I've read all the explanations people come up with, as to not tamper with the checkout process, but it's really such a basic and hardly disruptive thing, very much like the checkbox to agree with email marketing. The demand is clearly there, given the plethora of paid 3rd party apps providing wonky workarounds.
Just hoping for an official reply from Shopify staff with some explanation why they are not implementing this. Or if and when this is hopefully planned to be implemented. Thank you!
Hi @monadic
Firstly, I appreciate your feedback on this topic. It is something I have heard requested more than once and I can definitely understand the value of having the ability to enable a checkbox like this in the checkout flow itself instead of on the cart page/drawer. The more feedback we receive from merchants about possible new features, the better chance we have of implementing it.
As for a timeline of when/if this feature will be added, I can't say. Our devs do work around the clock to constantly roll out new features or additions to the platform and generally speaking we do not offer release dates except for the biggest and highest impacting announced features, like the one you linked to. You can stay updated on all the platform changes here: Shopify Changelog.
I would like to understand more about what you meant when you said: Many of us small shop owners are out here in risk of getting sued because we can't comply with the most basic local regulations because of this.
When reviewing feedback collected for this feature previously I didn't see anything related to concerns like this. So if you are able to share some more information on the topic I will ensure that is added and considered by our developers!
Shay | Social Care @ Shopify
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Thanks for the reply, much appreciated!
I can't speak for other countries - I've read people voice these kinds of concerns for multiple European countries.
But I will give you an example that affects me as a shop owner in Germany:
We are obliged by law in the EU to give a full refund to anyone who decides to revoke their order within 14 days. This is problematic of course if you sell digital products - customers could buy, download the files, then ask for a refund. And there would be nothing you could do to stop them.
To mitigate this, you can ask explicit consent from people, that they agree to waive their right to a refund by allowing you to fulfil the order immediately. If you cannot or did not explicitly ask for this and deny people their refunds for digital products, you can be sued by them. Just listing this in the terms is not enough.
Generally speaking, in Germany explicit consent to terms of service is not legally required but customers are used to it because most shops do it and they might argue with you about "never been shown terms". So it's advisable to collect this consent so customers can't pretend they never saw the terms. This might differ for other countries, from what I've read, but please don't quote me on that.
Hi everyone,
I'm also facing this issue about not having a checkbox in the last step of the checkout process. Because my business model is based on subscriptions I always use a subscription app for payments and in my case the checkbox was there in the new checkout page up to a few days ago:
All of a sudden the smart Shopify legal team decided to tell developers to remove the checkbox:
I know there's some apps to add the checkbox in the shopping cart page but as far as I know the regulations in Europe require an explicit consent via a checkbox not in the shopping cart page but in the last step of the checkout, is this correct?
The most stupid thing is that the checkbox was there in my case and now it's gone, I have complained to Shopify but they seem to think that the whole world is the US and they don't care about regulations in other countries.
I'll appreciate any advice.
Thank you,
Miguel
Hi @Mike5241
Thank you so much for sharing your feedback about this, I understand that you find having the checkbox available on your checkout to be a valuable feature to have. This is feedback I am happy to share with our developers for further consideration.
In regards to regulations in the EU, I did find this information available on the European Commission website: Legal regulations for e-commerce. While I can't speak to the legality of not having a checkbox for T&C on the final stage of the checkout, I was not able to find any information regarding that being a requirement. If you have any resources you can share with me I am happy to pass that over to the appropriate team for a review.
Shay | Social Care @ Shopify
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Hi Shay,
Thank you for your quick reply.
For the moment I can provide you with this reference:
https://1819.brussels/en/blog/General-terms-Conditions-Sale
Please look at the paragraph that begins with the text "The other party must unequivocally accept the general terms and conditions..."
I will contact that website to see if they can provide me with other references.
The thing that annoys me the most is that, as I showed above, the checkbox was there up to about 3 weeks ago in the new checkout page and now it's gone.
Thank you,
Mike.
Thank you for the link Mike! In this case I recommend confirming with your own ecommerce legal counsel to confirm if you need to have a terms and condition checkbox on the checkout page itself, or if offering that information to your customer at an earlier steps is acceptable. The page you shared does not specifically clarify that information for ecommerce businesses.
Shay | Social Care @ Shopify
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Hi Shay,
After further investigation it seems that having the "I accept the terms and conditions" checkbox on the checkout pages is not absolutely mandatory but "good to have" and having it on the Shopping cart page is the second best choice as long as the customer cannot continue to the checkout if he has not selected the checkbox therefore I have no strong cases to persuade the legal team to show the checkbox on the checkout pages.
Thank you for caring about my request.
Regards,
Miguel.
Hi Shay,
Coming back to this topic as I (finally) finish setting up my store, I think I need to make a clarification for a case where it would be best to have a checkbox right in the checkout.
I will offer downloadable digital products (music files, ebooks). Doing so, I am still obliged by EU law to grant EU customers the right of withdrawal for 14 days. Meaning someone can buy my file, then simply ask for their money back within 14 days and still keep the files, since I have no way of making them delete it.
There is a legal (and very common) way to avoid this. You may ask customers for their explicit consent to waive their right of withdrawal by allowing you to immediately fulfil the order before the end of the 14 days period. Then all you have to do is include this waiver in the purchase confirmation and voíla - they cannot legally withdraw from the purchase and it is up to the sellers discretion entirely.
It is of course possible to do this via a third party plugin and force customers to check a box in the cart before they can proceed to the checkout, but these things are not very reliable and inject extra code into my theme that might or might not work as intended. A built in native solution right in the checkout would be preferable. It could also easily be predefined by a couple of templates so you can ensure it won't harm conversions because people use the checkbox for random other things.
I hope you can consider this as it is a valid and common use case - next to the T&C checkbox, that as others have stated above, is strictly speaking not mandatory to have (even though it is commonly done in the EU just to be safe).
Thanks!
Daniel
Hey @monadic, skip the apps! Learn how to add a 'Agree to Terms and Conditions' checkbox in your Shopify cart with this quick and easy-to-follow video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smyIqWWuZvs
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