What can be cancelled and until when, what is refunded for medicines, appointments, tests and cosmetic procedures, and how many days the money takes to come back. Colombian consumer law.
Document version: 2026-01-v1
The short version
As long as we have not started preparing what you ordered, cancelling costs nothing and everything is refunded. After that it depends on what you bought, and above all on whether it is a medicine: one that has already left the pharmacy cannot go back into the supply chain, and that is not decided by a commercial policy but by health regulations.
What is always addressed, whatever the deadline: if you received something else, if it arrived opened or damaged, if it is expired, if the quantity is short, or if it never arrived. That is not a return, it is an order badly fulfilled, and it is settled with a replacement or your money back, whichever you prefer.
Your right of withdrawal: five business days
Buying online is a distance sale, and article 47 of Colombian Law 1480 of 2011 therefore gives you a right you do not have to justify: you may withdraw within five (5) business days of delivery, giving no reason at all. You return the product in the condition you received it and you are refunded within a maximum of thirty (30) calendar days.
The same article carries its exceptions, and on a health platform they cover almost everything sold, so they are worth stating before the right itself: withdrawal does not apply to goods that by their nature cannot be returned or that deteriorate quickly — medicines, personal-use supplies and laboratory samples — nor to services that have already begun to be performed with your agreement.
What falls outside withdrawal does not fall outside everything: that is what the sections below are for, setting out what can be cancelled and what is refunded in each case, plus the payment reversal at the end.
Medicines and supplies
Before the pharmacy dispatches
Free cancellation and a 100 % refund. This holds while the pharmacy has not started picking your order, and also once it has picked it but the courier has not left: nothing has left the pharmacy’s control, so there is nothing to restock.
On its way or already delivered
No refund, and the reason is a health one rather than a commercial one: a medicine that has left the pharmacy’s control cannot go back into the supply chain, because nobody can certify the conditions it travelled in or whether the cold chain was broken. Colombian Resolution 1403 of 2007 requires pharmacies to hold written procedures for storage, cold chain and returns precisely for this, and putting back on the shelf something whose traceability was lost breaches them.
What is always addressed
Wrong product, opened or damaged packaging, an expired product or one that expires before you finish the course, short quantity, or an order that never arrived. Claim within five (5) business days of delivery — or of the date it was promised, if it never came — and it is settled with a replacement or a refund, as you choose. You are not asked to hand back a medicine in poor condition in order to claim.
Statutory warranty
For a medicine it runs until the expiry date printed on its packaging. Within that period, a product that does not do what it says it does is replaced or refunded.
Health packages and programs
A program is not a single product: it is a set of entitlements — consultations, tests, follow-up and sometimes a medicine — that get used up one by one. That is why it is not all-or-nothing.
If you have not used a single entitlement, you get 100 % back.
If you have already started, what you have not consumed is refunded, valued at the published individual price of each component. No program on this platform is "non-refundable": what was not delivered is refunded.
The pharmacological component, where there is one, only unlocks its entitlement once the prescription backing it exists. If it never unlocked, it is refunded in full: you are not charged for a medicine that never became available to you.
Medical appointments, laboratory and diagnostic imaging
What is booked here is somebody’s time, and that is why the notice period matters: a slot released in advance can be taken by someone else, while one released half an hour beforehand is lost to everybody.
You cancel more than 24 hours ahead
A 100 % refund.
You cancel less than 24 hours ahead, or do not turn up
50 % is refunded. The slot stayed blocked and nobody else could use it, and whoever was going to see you had set that time aside.
The provider cancels, or does not see you
A 100 % refund, with no deadline and no conditions. You do not have to claim within any window: the failure was not yours.
Home sample collection
If you are not at the address at the agreed time, the call-out is charged — the amount you were shown when booking, not a different one — and the rest is refunded. The trip happened; the test did not.
Cosmetic procedures: hair transplant and botulinum toxin
This section has rules of its own because the commitment is different: there is a theatre or clinic date held for you, and in the case of a hair transplant there are also hotel nights and transfers booked with third parties in your name. Cancelling late does not merely free a slot: it leaves paid for something that can no longer be recovered.
First of all: the photo assessment for a hair transplant is free and carries no commitment, and it generates no charge whatsoever — whatever you look at and whatever you decide afterwards. For botulinum toxin, the first step is an in-person medical assessment with the partner doctor, which is included in the package price.
Before a date is confirmed
A 100 % refund. Nothing has been booked in your name yet.
With a confirmed date, more than 15 calendar days ahead
A 100 % refund, less whatever has already been paid to third parties and cannot be recovered — hotel, transfers. That deduction is set out for you in writing, itemized, BEFORE it is charged: it does not turn up as a subtraction on the receipt.
Between 15 and 3 days ahead
A 50 % refund.
Less than 3 days ahead, or you do not turn up
There is no refund of the procedure. Hotel and transfers are governed by their own cancellation terms, which are the establishment’s and not Medline’s.
The doctor or Medline cancels, or you are not a candidate
A 100 % refund, hotel and transfers included. And the second counts just like the first: if after the in-person assessment the doctor concludes that the procedure is not indicated for you, you pay nothing for having tried. Charging someone to be told they are not a candidate would be an incentive not to tell them.
Rescheduling instead of cancelling
Once, at no cost, giving more than 7 days’ notice. From the second time onwards, or with less notice than that, the table above applies.
Flights are not sold by Medline and are therefore never refunded here, not even when the cancellation is ours: they are bought from the airline in your name and are claimed from the airline. This is said plainly because it is the first thing anyone asks when a trip falls through.
And one that never becomes a refund: cosmetic procedures are not sold to people under 18, because Colombian Law 1799 of 2016 forbids it and parental authorization is not a valid exception. The platform checks this before charging, so there is no payment to undo.
Payment reversal: a different right
Article 51 of Colombian Law 1480 of 2011 gives you something that is not withdrawal and should not be confused with it: reversal of the payment. It applies where there was fraud, where the order was not received, where the product does not match what was requested, or where it is defective, and it is requested within five (5) business days of your becoming aware of the fact.
The practical difference: withdrawal needs no reason but excludes medicines; reversal does need one of those grounds, but does not exclude them. It is requested through the same channel below, and Medline and the payment gateway each handle their own part of it.
How to ask, and how long it takes
Ask in writing at Contactenos@medlinecare.co, or by WhatsApp on 301 820 1118, quoting your order number. That number is what makes it possible to look up what was dispatched and when, so a request without it takes longer — and not out of red tape.
An enquiry
Answered within a maximum of ten (10) business days. This is asking whether something can be returned, or how a request is progressing.
A complaint
Resolved within a maximum of fifteen (15) business days. This is asking for a refund or a replacement of something specific.
The money
Comes back by the same means you paid with, within a maximum of thirty (30) calendar days. If you paid by card, how long your bank takes to show it on your statement is no longer up to us or to the gateway: this is said so that the time is not counted twice and so you know who to ask.
If you disagree with the answer, you may go to the Colombian Superintendence of Industry and Commerce, which is the consumer protection authority. The law asks you to exhaust this procedure with us first, which is why you are always answered in writing and with a date: that record is what serves you afterwards.