A legal rule set forth by the Federal Trade Commission which prohibits a seller of merchandise from soliciting sales orders by mail or telephone unless it reasonably expects that it can ship the ordered merchandise by either the date included on the solicitation, or if there was no such date, then within 30 days. This rule also requires a seller to notify a buyer of a shipment delay beyond the stipulated period and obtain consent from the buyer for that delay, and if no consent is given, the seller must issue a prompt refund to the buyer. Additionally, the FTC modified this rule in 2014 in order to broaden its scope to include internet orders and transactions, and can be found here with analysis explaining the recent amendment.
[Last updated in July of 2020 by the Wex Definitions Team]