How can you sell age-restricted building products online?
Article topics
- Selling age-restricted products online: The law
- How to ask for proof of age online
- Additional tips for helping you sell safely online
Checking someone’s age when they want to buy a product in your builders’ merchant store is easy. Ask for proof of ID like a passport or driving license, then approve or decline the sale. Job done.
However, it’s a lot trickier to enforce age checks when you sell online.
In this article we’ll break down your legal obligations, how to sell safely online, and how to stay compliant while continuing to provide a great customer experience.
Selling age-restricted products online: The law
The same law applies to selling age-restricted products online as it does in brick-and-mortar retailers. If you sell age-restricted products to a person under the legal age, you are committing an offence.
Here’s a reminder of what building-related products in the UK are age-restricted and how old you have to be to buy them:
You must take ‘all reasonable precautions’ and exercise ‘all due diligence’ to avoid breaking the law.
If you’re found to have broken the law, the maximum penalty is an unlimited fine and/or six months imprisonment. Your business may also receive negative press and publicity.
Croydon Trading Standards prosecuted 17 retailers for selling knives to children online, issuing nearly £180,000 worth of fines.
The sale of age-restricted products is enforced by your local authority’s trading standards team. They investigate claims of underage sales and carry out spot-checks to make sure businesses are aware of their legal obligations.
In regard to selling knives online, stricter checks will be coming in the future as part of an upcoming Crime and Policing Bill. Under the bill, there will be a two-step system where online customers will need to submit photo ID at the point of sale and again on delivery.
How to ask for proof of age online
There’s a balancing act between fulfilling your legal obligations and ensuring your customers come back and buy from you again. 82% of people say they have abandoned a sale because they had a negative experience on a website.
Some builders’ merchants try to placate their customers by providing age validation methods that don’t satisfy ‘due diligence’. These include:
- Asking the purchaser to provide a date of birth
- Asking them to tick a box to confirm they are over the legal age
- Asking them to accept a statement that they are over the legal age
- Using a disclaimer like ‘anyone ordering from our website will be deemed to be at least 18’
- Only accepting payment by credit card (while credit cards aren’t available to people under 18, payment systems typically can’t differentiate between the different types of cards)
It’s crucial to be thorough and carry out additional checks. While this may add extra steps to the process, your customers will understand that you’re protecting yourself, as well as them.
Here are some ways you can sell age-restricted building products online.
Ask for age verification at point of sale
By verifying the age of the person buying online, you can ensure you meet your legal requirements.
There are two ways you can do this:
- By asking the customer to upload proof of age, like a driver’s licence, passport, or PASS card. If a customer is creating a wholesale account, you may need to ask for this information anyway to establish a line of credit. You need to ensure this documentation is protected under GDPR
- By using a third-party verification service, which uses various sources of information like the customer’s bank details and electoral register, to verify their age
Some verification services offer AI facial analysis, meaning they estimate the age of the person from a selfie they take on their phone. However, we wouldn’t recommend using these technologies as the sole method of determining a person’s age as they aren’t 100% accurate.
If you can’t verify someone’s age at the point of sale, you should carry out additional checks before you dispatch the item.
Ask for age verification on delivery
It’s important to note here that asking for age verification on delivery doesn’t absolve you from asking for verification at point of sale.
However, working with a courier company that asks for age verification when an age-restricted product is delivered provides an extra layer of due diligence.
It’s also vital to ensure the product:
- Is delivered directly to the person who ordered it and isn’t left with a household member or neighbour
- Isn’t delivered to a locker – where anyone can pick up the item as long as they have the code
Offer click and collect
Some builder’s merchants and DIY stores don’t make restricted items available for home delivery and only offer them through click and collect. That way, they can check the ID of the person collecting the items.
While this is a safe approach, it only works if you have a brick-and-mortar store, and it may frustrate customers who were counting on having the items delivered.
Additional tips for helping you sell safely online
Here are some additional things to consider to ensure you strike a balance between fulfilling your legal obligations and keeping customers well-informed.
Clearly display the rules on your website
To protect yourself and keep customers informed, add a section to your website (either in your terms and conditions or on a standalone page) detailing your approach to age-restricted products.
It’s also a sensible approach to include this information on age-restricted product pages too.
Keep an updated refusals register
A refusals register is a record of all sales of age-restricted products that have been declined. You can use this to show that you have a system in place if your local trading standards team have any questions.
You can also use your refusals register to identify an illegal sale online. You can then either cancel the transaction or request additional proof of ID.
Remember that you have the right to cancel a transaction as long as you have a legitimate reason and it’s not on the grounds of a protected characteristic. While age is a protected characteristic, there are exemptions in place for age-restricted products.
Train your staff
You’d offer age verification awareness training to the staff in your brick-and-mortar store – it’s vital to offer it to the staff working on your eCommerce website too.
This helps them understand the law and shows that you take age verification seriously, both offline and online.
Xigen: Builders’ Merchants eCommerce experts
It may feel like a lot of effort behind the scenes to sell products like knives, solvents, and spray paint online. However, putting in the work provides peace of mind and shows customers that you’re a dedicated and reliable business.
With several years of experience working with builders’ merchants, we’ll work with you to ensure your site is easy to use, provides a great customer experience, and, most importantly, keeps you compliant.
Get in touch to see how we can help you with your website and digital marketing.
Note: This guidance applies to England and Wales and is accurate as of June 2025. This article does not constitute legal advice.
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