The Three Day Cancellation
ORC 1345.22 — midnight of the third business day, and what it covers
It is not a general right to change your mind. This is the misunderstanding worth clearing first, because people rely on it at a shop counter and at a dealership where it does not exist. The three days attach to a home solicitation sale, which is a defined thing. A purchase made at the seller's own place of business is not one of them.
Who handles this in Ohio: legal aid programs, lawyer referral and the state offices, listed in the Ohio directory.
A home solicitation sale is a sale of consumer goods or services where the seller, or somebody acting for the seller, personally solicits the sale at a residence of the buyer, including a solicitation made in response to the buyer's own invitation, and the buyer's agreement or offer to purchase is given there. It also covers a sale where the buyer's agreement or offer to purchase is made at a place other than the seller's place of business.
The buyer has the right to cancel until midnight of the third business day after the day the buyer signs an agreement or offer to purchase. Business day is doing work in that sentence, and so is the word after. The day of signing is not counted as one of the three.
The clock does not start until the seller has done their part. The three day period begins to run from the time the seller complies with the requirements in section 1345.23, which is where the notice of the buyer's right to cancel is required. A seller who never gave the notice has not started the clock, which is a different position from one where the three days have simply run out.
Cancelling has no magic words. Notice of cancellation need not take a particular form and is sufficient where it indicates, by any form of written expression, the buyer's intention not to be bound by the sale. What is prescribed is where it goes and how it travels.
- Written notice, in any form of written expression showing the intention not to be bound.
- Sent to the seller at the address, electronic mail address or facsimile number stated in the agreement or offer to purchase.
- Delivered by certified mail with return receipt requested, by manual or personal delivery, by facsimile, or by electronic mail.
- Notice by certified mail is effective on the date of postmarking.
- Manual or other personal delivery is effective when delivered to the seller or to the seller's address, whichever comes first.
The section carries exclusions, and two of them catch ordinary situations. Where the buyer initiated the contact and specifically asked the seller to visit the home to repair or maintain the buyer's personal property, that sale is excluded, although additional goods or services sold beyond the replacement parts necessarily used in the repair are not covered by that exclusion. A sale where the buyer already has a right of rescission under the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act is also excluded.
The full list of exclusions in 1345.21, the exact form and placement of the notice a seller has to supply under 1345.23, what happens to money already paid and to goods already delivered once a sale is cancelled, and the separate federal cooling off rule are not reproduced on this page. Whether a particular sale was a home solicitation sale is the question that decides everything else, and it is a question about where the solicitation and the agreement happened. The Ohio Attorney General's consumer protection section takes complaints, and whether a cancellation was effective is a question for a licensed Ohio attorney.
Sources for this section (3)
- ORC 1345.21 — What counts as a home solicitation sale, and what does not
- ORC 1345.22 — The buyer's right to cancel, and how the notice is given
- ORC 1345.23 — What the seller has to give the buyer, and when the clock starts
Legal information, not legal advice. Verified as of September 2026. Applying it to a particular situation is the work of a licensed Ohio attorney.