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“It was opened by an unauthorised shop, so the warranty is void and we can't repair it.” Makers have leaned on that line for years, usually with a discount code for a new model. Since 31 July 2026 it has been the wrong answer. The EU right to repair, Directive (EU) 2024/1799, makes that refusal and most of its cousins unlawful for covered phones and large home appliances. It does not set the price, and that is where the fight has moved.

Which refusals does the EU right to repair now ban?

The Directive strips makers of their two favourite refusals for covered goods, the expired warranty and the earlier third-party repair, and leaves them one lawful excuse: that repair is impossible, in which case they may offer a refurbished unit.

Start with “out of warranty”. Law firm Fieldfisher reads the text bluntly: past the legal guarantee, the maker must still repair goods in the Directive's annex, counted from the last unit of that model sold, not from your receipt. That excuse now describes their sales policy, not the law.

Does the EU rule cover products bought before July 2026?

Yes, the manufacturer's duty to repair applies to covered products bought before 31 July 2026, so a phone or washing machine from 2022 qualifies; only the guarantee extension for choosing repair is limited to newer purchases.

Can a maker refuse because a third-party shop opened it?

No, a manufacturer can no longer refuse to repair a covered product because an independent shop or the owner repaired it before, and it may not use contract terms or software locks to block that repair.

Compatible second-hand and 3D-printed parts that meet safety rules cannot be shut out either, so the old advice to stay with authorised centres is outdated. The same devices face other EU duties too, from the Cyber Resilience Act's 24-hour incident reporting duty to the EU packaging regulation that went live in August.

Four numbers decide how hard you can push: Fieldfisher on the duty, Acer's battery prices and a laundry audit reported by Cybernews on 8 September 2026, and Right to Repair Europe's tally of the Commission's notices.

Look hard at the battery range. One brand, one part, and the dearest tier costs about nine times the cheapest: on our arithmetic, a €114 gap that the word “reasonable” does nothing to close. Ask which tier yours falls into, in writing, before you hand it over.

What the rules give you, line by line

Read the table as a checklist: each row pairs a refusal or charge you might hear with what the Directive now says, so you can see at once whether the law backs a repair or leaves you exposed.

The crosses fall on coverage and on finding a repairer, never on what a maker may refuse. Price and paperwork are where you push.

That paperwork gap is measurable. Right to Repair Europe and iFixit, reviewing smartphone records in EPREL, the EU's product database, reported in September 2026 that about 80% lack the repair information makers must publish. The official database will not hand you a parts price.

Where will makers still push back?

Makers will push back on price, because the Directive demands reasonable prices for parts and tools without defining them, and on enforcement, because most member states missed the deadline to write the rules into national law.

Right to Repair Europe has flagged the gap: the text says “reasonable” and stops. Our view, which is opinion, not settled law: a repair quote above the maker's own trade-in deal on a new unit is hard to call reasonable, and that comparison belongs in your written complaint.

On 25 September 2026 the Commission sent late-transposition notices to France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the rest of that group, each with two months to reply: on our count, a first deadline of 25 November 2026. Buyers in Germany, Austria, Ireland and Denmark, absent from that list, stand on firmer ground. Readers in Great Britain get none of this; their rules run separately, like the new UK subscription cancellation rules.

• A refurbished swap offered as “repair impossible” with no reason given.
• A parts quote given by phone only, never by email or on paper.
• Vague “parts unavailable” answers for a model that is still on sale.

So here is the decision. If your device is covered and the only refusal on offer is the warranty or a past independent repair, refuse the replacement. This week, email the manufacturer and ask for three answers in writing: whether it claims repair is impossible and why, which price tier your part falls into, and, for anything bought since 31 July 2026, how long your guarantee runs afterwards. A maker that answers has given you a quote to compare. One that won't has given you evidence.

Somewhere on your bank statement sits a line the provider hopes you never read twice: an annual renewal, taken in full, for a service you stopped opening months ago. Under the new UK subscription rules, that line stops being final. You get a warning before it lands and 14 days to walk away after it does. If you joined online, the exit has to be online too.

The catch is timing. None of this protects a renewal that goes through before the rules start, and the start date has already moved once.

When do the new UK subscription rules start?

The government now points to January 2027, earlier than the spring 2027 start set out in its April response, but the detailed regulations have not been laid, so treat January as a target rather than a promise.

Two dates are in circulation. The consultation response of 2 April 2026, summarised by Bristows, said spring 2027. By 10 August, Advanced Television was reporting January, and on 4 September the law firm Brodies confirmed the shorter timeline. So a provider claiming in February that the rules are not in force yet may simply be out of date.

The money is not small change. A government estimate, quoted by White & Case in its client note (retrieved October 2026), puts UK spending on unwanted subscriptions at about £1.6bn a year. Your forgotten plan is a share of that pool you can take back. The pattern is familiar from how AI token prices collapsed while enterprise bills rose: the unit looks cheap, and the bill climbs because nobody audits it.

Four numbers decide whether an hour with your banking app is worth it. Advanced Television's August report supplies the cost and the unwanted count, White & Case the fine ceiling; the time left is our own count to January.

The fine ceiling is the one to keep in your pocket. It applies to worldwide group turnover, and Brodies counts roughly £6.2m in CMA penalties since the regulator's direct fining powers began. An email that names the CMA is not a threat, just a reminder of who else might read it. Like the Plastic Packaging Tax mass balance rules due in April 2027, this rule's fine print arrives late, so plan around the direction.

Can I get a refund after a subscription auto-renews?

Yes, once the regime starts: an annual plan that auto-renews, or a free trial that rolls into paid, opens a fresh 14-day cooling-off window, and the provider must refund you to your original payment method within 14 days.

Here is how the bill line changes, comparing today's position with the rules as the government has described them.

Every new right hangs on a notice the provider has to send. Silence used to work in its favour; now silence is the breach, so keep every reminder email. Our own sum is blunter: at the average cost, one forgotten plan is roughly £168 a year, so a single cancelled renewal pays for the hour you spend checking.

Where the provider still gets the last word

Providers keep two real levers, the start date and the refund maths for any service you have used during the window, and the final regulations could still trim the detail before they take effect next year.

White & Case reads the plan as a proportionate refund for digital services used during the renewal window, and a full refund, standard delivery included, for goods sent back. You pay for the days you used, not the year.

What counts as use is the grey area I would watch. An app syncing in the background, a profile nobody has opened: in my view neither should count, but expect providers to argue otherwise until the final text is laid. Regulators often enforce the headline first and settle edges later, as with the EU AI Act transparency duties that went live in August and California EPR packaging fees invoiced while the 2027 rules stay draft.

Do companies have to let me cancel a subscription online?

If you signed up online, yes: Brodies and Bristows both read the rules as requiring an online way out, and terms that make cancelling disproportionately hard will not stand. Or rather, that is the rule on paper; you may still need to quote it once.

• A renewal that lands before the start date is judged under today's law, not the new one.
• The renewal window covers free trials ending and annual or longer contracts renewing, not rolling monthly plans.
• Refunds go back to the original payment method, so a cancelled card can slow yours down.

This week, open the last twelve months of your bank statement, find every line marked annual or renewal, and cancel any that renew before January; for the rest, put the renewal date in your calendar and save the notice when it arrives.

Related: what the EU right to repair now bans manufacturers from refusing

The bill has one line you will read and one rule you will not be shown. The line is a rate per tonne. The rule is the awkward one: you can be made to register for plastic packaging tax even when your packs are clean enough to owe nothing. Few suppliers lead with that. And on 1 April 2027 the definition of "recycled" shifts under your feet.

Why does the plastic packaging tax still bite a compliant pack?

Because registration and payment are separate duties: you register once you handle enough plastic packaging components, and you pay only on components below 30% recycled plastic, so a compliant pack still carries filing duty.

GOV.UK's business guidance sets the registration trigger at 10 tonnes of finished plastic packaging components manufactured or imported. For a small importer, that means registering before you owe a penny. Rödl's briefing of 6 March 2026 makes the sharper point: registration is required even when no tax is due because every component clears the line. A compliant pack still comes with a return, a deadline and penalty exposure. Read our take on the EU packaging EPR rules that went live in August and you will see the same pattern: the paperwork arrives first, the cost second.

Now the number. GOV.UK puts the rate from 1 April 2026 at £228.82 a tonne, up from £223.69 a year earlier. The line is a cliff, not a slope. At 29% recycled content you pay the full rate on the whole component; at 30% you pay nothing. Set against the £200 of 2022, my own arithmetic from GOV.UK's rate history gives a rise of about 14% in four years, so budget the next April step before it lands. The same cliff logic runs through California's packaging fees invoiced ahead of final rules: regulators publish the bill first and the detail later.

Four numbers decide whether this is a paperwork problem or a cost problem: where the line sits, what a tonne costs, when registration starts and how long you keep proof.

The record-keeping duty is the one that outlasts everyone's memory. Staff move on, suppliers merge, and a certificate you cannot find is a claim you cannot make. Attach each delivery's declaration to the purchase order, not to someone's inbox.

So the useful question is not whether your pack is green. It is which side of the line each pack lands on, and what you can show HMRC to prove it. The table below separates the two.

Which packs owe tax, and which only owe paperwork?

A pack below the recycled line owes tax and paperwork, while a pack above it owes paperwork alone, provided you pass the registration threshold and can prove every recycled claim to HMRC when asked.

Read down the middle column and one pattern shows: the tax is binary, so the only lever you control is margin. Read the right column and a second one shows: the paperwork is where most of the exposure sits.

What changes for recycled claims on 1 April 2027?

From 1 April 2027, pre-consumer plastic waste no longer counts as recycled, and chemically recycled plastic must be proven by mass balance with third-party certification meeting HMRC's minimum standards.

HMRC released preparation guidance and minimum certification requirements on 28 August 2026, but detailed guidance is not expected until early 2027, according to Packaging Gateway. The rules finalise months before the deadline, and your supplier contracts will not wait for them. My opinion, and only that: a rule landing this late is one HMRC expects importers to absorb at their own cost, so do not hold your breath for a grace period. Our note on sustainable packaging technology and supply chains covers why suppliers rarely volunteer this detail.

Mass balance is an accounting method: a recycler tracks how much recycled feedstock enters a plant, then attributes that amount to output. Packaging Gateway's summary lists an attribution declaration per delivery or batch, six-year record retention, quarterly balancing and site-specific conversion factors. Fuel-use material is excluded from the calculation, so a supplier claim that counts fuel outputs cannot count toward your percentage.

• Ask what share of each supplier's recycled content is pre-consumer waste.
• No third-party certificate, no recycled claim.
• Get written confirmation that fuel outputs are excluded.
• File declarations by delivery, not by quarter.

This week, pull your last twelve months of plastic packaging tonnage, ask each supplier for its offcut share and the certifier's name, then decide by month-end: reformulate with a safe margin above the line, or pay the rate and document everything else.