The three-day right to cancel

Thursday evening, at her kitchen table, she signs the bathroom estimate and hands you a check. You want the tile ordered Friday and demo started Monday. Somewhere in that sequence a three-day cancellation window may have opened, and if it did, nothing you do on Monday closes it retroactively.

Most contractors have heard of the three-day right and filed it under "door-to-door salesmen." The federal rule does not care what you call yourself. It cares where the contract was signed.

The trigger is the address on the signature page

The federal version is the FTC's Cooling-Off Rule, 16 C.F.R. Part 429. Stripped down, it covers a sale of consumer goods or services where the seller personally solicits the sale and the buyer's agreement to buy is made somewhere other than the seller's place of business — usually the buyer's home, but the rule also names temporary spaces like hotel and motel rooms, convention centers, fairgrounds and restaurants, plus the buyer's workplace. Where it applies, the buyer gets three business days to cancel for no reason at all, and the seller must hand over written notice of that right at signing.

Read the definition closely on one point, because it is the point contractors get wrong: it reaches sales made "in response to or following an invitation by the buyer." She called you. That does not take the sale out of the rule.

The dollar floor is low and it is not one number. As the rule reads today, it is a purchase price of $25 or more for a sale made at the buyer's residence, and $130 or more for a sale made anywhere else — the FTC raised the second figure for inflation in 2015 and left the first alone. Check the current text of 16 C.F.R. §429.0 or the FTC's rule page rather than a number you saw quoted, including this one. Either way, almost every kitchen-table job clears the floor.

What the rule is not is a general three-day right on every residential contract. A sale negotiated and completed at your own shop sits outside it, as does one done entirely by mail or phone with no in-person contact. Real estate, insurance and securities are carved out too, and the full exemption list lives in the rule itself.

Financing can create a different federal rule

The Truth in Lending Act right of rescission is separate from the FTC rule. It can apply when consumer credit takes a security interest in the borrower's principal dwelling. Regulation Z gives the consumer three business days after the latest of consummation, notice, or material disclosures; missing disclosures can extend that period. The FTC definition expressly excludes a transaction that is accorded this Consumer Credit Protection Act rescission right, so do not treat the two federal rights as stacked. Ask the lender which rule and disclosures apply to its product.

The notice is a separate document with its own rules

Compliance often fails on form: a sentence buried in terms is not enough. The federal rule prescribes the notice, placement, and detachable cancellation forms. Use the current rule text and state form; do not paraphrase a competitor's version.

The deadlines to put on your schedule

The buyer generally has until midnight of the third business day to cancel. The seller then has prompt refund and pickup duties. Saturday can count as a business day under the FTC rule. State law can add different forms and longer windows, so schedule from the strictest applicable date.

Put the date on the job calendar

For a covered contract signed on Thursday evening, count Friday, Saturday, and Monday (unless Monday is a federal holiday). The buyer's federal deadline is midnight Monday. Do not schedule demolition or a special order for Friday just because your crew does not work Saturday; set the first irreversible step for Tuesday unless a valid exception or stricter state rule says otherwise.

The emergency exception is narrow, and it has to be in writing

The rule has a genuine-emergency exception. It is not a general "the customer wanted us to start immediately" escape. The buyer must initiate contact, need the work for an immediate personal emergency, and give a separate dated and signed statement in the buyer's own handwriting describing the emergency and waiving the right to cancel.

A related carve-out covers a visit the buyer initiated and specifically requested for repairing or performing maintenance on the buyer's personal property. Read those two words before you lean on it — the rule says personal property, not the house, and where an installed system stops being personal property is exactly the kind of line you want a construction attorney to draw rather than deciding it on a driveway. And the carve-out has a stated limit: if on that visit you sell anything beyond the replacement parts the repair actually needed, the exclusion does not reach the add-on.

So a checkbox on your own form is not a waiver, and an emergency call-out that turns into a signed remodel is two sales, not one.

Your state's version is the one more likely to bite

Many states have their own home solicitation sales act, and a home improvement statute on top of that. These are frequently broader than the federal rule: some run longer windows, some extend the period for older customers, some add a right after a declared disaster, some apply to residential contracts regardless of where they were signed, and some prescribe notice wording that differs from the federal form. Because they can also carry a private right of action, license discipline, or a bar on enforcing the contract, the state layer usually has the teeth.

No national summary is worth relying on here. Ask your state attorney general's consumer protection division and licensing board which form controls. If you work across state lines, check each state separately.

Building the window into the schedule instead of fighting it

Sign, deliver both copies of the notice, and let the clock run before you place special orders or spend the deposit. Quote the start date from the end of the window and keep a dated delivery record. A contract clause cannot shorten a right you do not control. Read deposits for contractors alongside this: a state deposit cap and a cancellation window constrain the same first week.

Where DoneQuote helps is narrow. Keeping your cancellation-notice language and start-date wording as saved blocks means the compliant version is the one that goes out by default — on the estimate, the contract, or whatever you actually hand the customer — instead of depending on you remembering it at a kitchen table at eight in the evening. It will not tell you whether the rule applies to a given sale. That comes from the rule text and your state.