Italy's Legal Guarantee (Garanzia Legale) on Consumer Goods: Coverage, Time Limits and Remedies

The garanzia legale di conformità, Italy's legal guarantee on consumer goods, is the free two year protection every seller owes you by law, separate from and often confused with the optional commercial warranty a manufacturer tries to sell you at checkout. This page explains what it actually covers, how long it lasts, and what you can demand when something you bought breaks.

Information verified on 21 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice for an individual situation.

Garanzia legale versus garanzia convenzionale: two different things

The Codice del consumo (D.Lgs. 206/2005) creates a mandatory garanzia legale di conformità that runs automatically on every qualifying sale, at no extra charge, from the seller who sold you the item (art. 128, Codice del consumo). It is not something you buy, and it is not something a store clerk can talk you out of.

A garanzia convenzionale, also called garanzia commerciale, is different. It is a voluntary extra commitment a manufacturer or seller offers on top of the legal guarantee, typically marketed as an extended warranty, and it usually costs money. Under art. 135-quinquies, Codice del consumo, a garanzia convenzionale can offer the buyer better terms than the legal guarantee, but its terms can never take away or shorten what the legal guarantee already provides. If a store tells you that buying their extended warranty is the only way to get coverage past a few months, that framing is wrong: the 2 year legal guarantee applies regardless, on top of anything else you buy.

Who and what it covers

The legal guarantee applies to a contratto di vendita where the seller, the venditore, is acting nell'esercizio della propria attività imprenditoriale o professionale, in other words a business rather than a private individual, and equally to contracts of exchange, supply and work aimed at delivering goods to be manufactured (art. 128, Codice del consumo). It covers physical movable goods, water, gas and electricity when sold in a defined volume or quantity, goods with digital elements such as a smart appliance, and live animals.

It does not cover a private sale between two individuals with no business seller involved. That kind of sale falls instead under the ordinary rules of the Codice civile on defects in a thing sold, which work on a different timetable and are outside the scope of this page.

How long the legal guarantee lasts

For any contract concluded from 1 January 2022 onward, the seller is responsible for any defect that existed at the moment of delivery and that shows up within 2 years of that delivery date (art. 133, comma 1, Codice del consumo). For used goods, the seller and buyer can agree in the contract to shorten that period, but never below 1 year (art. 133, comma 4).

Separately, the action to actually enforce a claim in court prescribes 26 months from delivery, a slightly longer clock than the 2 year responsibility window itself, and it exists specifically to give a buyer who discovers a defect near the end of year 2 enough time to act (art. 133, comma 3, Codice del consumo).

Who has to prove what: the one year presumption

This is the part that decides most real disputes. Under art. 135, Codice del consumo, if a defect appears within 1 year of delivery, the law presumes it already existed when the goods were handed over, unless that presumption is incompatible with the nature of the good or the nature of the defect itself, for example ordinary wear on a component designed to wear out. In practice this means the seller has to disprove the defect's origin, not the buyer.

Once that first year has passed, the presumption disappears and the burden flips onto the buyer, who then has to show the defect was already present at delivery, typically with an independent technical report, in order to claim under the remaining months of the 2 year window.

Before the reform, this presumption period was only 6 months, under the previous version of art. 132, Codice del consumo. That earlier article's text remained the current text of the code until 9 December 2021, when D.Lgs. 170/2021 substituted the new provisions in. But the reform applies to a contract based on when it was concluded, not on that substitution date: it covers only contracts concluded from 1 January 2022 onward, so a contract concluded any time before that date, including one concluded between 9 December 2021 and 1 January 2022, still runs on the old 6 month presumption. For contracts the reform does cover, it doubled the presumption window to a full year, one of the most consumer favorable changes it made.

What you can actually ask for

The remedies are not a menu you pick from freely; they run in a fixed order under artt. 135-bis, 135-ter and 135-quater, Codice del consumo.

Repair and replacement have to happen senza spese, at no cost to the buyer, including shipping, transport, labor and materials, and without significant inconvenience given the nature of the good (art. 135-ter, Codice del consumo). If the seller ends up replacing the item, the seller also bears the cost of removing the defective one and installing the replacement where the original required installation.

A worked example

Say a consumer buys a laptop for 899 euro in March 2026 from an electronics retailer in Milan. The screen develops a fault in month 8, well inside the first year, so the 1 year presumption applies automatically: the retailer has to prove the fault was caused by misuse if it wants to refuse the claim, rather than the buyer having to prove the opposite.

The buyer asks for a repair. If the retailer cannot fix it within a reasonable time, or a repair attempt fails and the fault reappears, the buyer can then ask for either a replacement laptop or, if the model has been discontinued, move straight to a price reduction or ending the sale for a refund of the 899 euro, still within the 2 year window that runs from the original March 2026 delivery date.

Now compare a defect that appears in month 18, after the first year has passed. The presumption no longer applies automatically, so the buyer would need something more than a bare assertion, commonly an independent technician's report, showing the defect was a manufacturing fault present at delivery rather than something that developed later through normal use. The 2 year responsibility window and the separate 26 month prescription period still apply either way.

Goods bought before 1 January 2022: the older rules can still apply

The reform enacted by D.Lgs. 170/2021, implementing Direttiva (UE) 2019/771, took effect on 1 January 2022 and applies to contracts concluded from that date onward, not retroactively to earlier purchases. For a good bought under a contract concluded before 1 January 2022, the previous version of art. 132, Codice del consumo, generally still governs the claim: a shorter 6 month presumption window rather than 1 year, and a separate requirement that the buyer formally notify the seller of the defect, the denuncia del difetto, within 2 months of discovering it or lose the right to claim. The 2 year responsibility period and the 26 month prescription were largely unchanged by the reform.

For anyone still holding onto a receipt from a purchase made in 2021 or earlier, it is worth checking which regime applies before assuming the current, more consumer favorable rules cover it.

For the related question of what happens when a debt collector, rather than a faulty product, is the problem, see our page on debt collection procedures in Italy. For the wider landscape of Italian law this site covers, see our Italy hub.