Search "how long is a product warranty" and you'll get a different answer depending on who's writing and where they live — because there genuinely isn't one global rule. What you're entitled to is set by the law of the country where you bought the product, not by the brand, and the gap between regions is bigger than most people assume.
The European Union: 2 years is the floor, not the ceiling
Across most EU countries, the law gives you a minimum 2-year legal guarantee on new consumer goods, counted from delivery. It's not something you have to ask for or pay extra for — it exists automatically because you bought the item from a professional seller.
A handful of member states go further on their own: Sweden extends the legal guarantee to 3 years for most goods, for example, and Ireland doesn't set a fixed guarantee length at all but gives you up to 6 years to bring a legal claim if a product turns out to be faulty. The lesson isn't "memorize every country's number" — it's that the 2-year figure people quote as "the EU rule" is really a floor that some countries build on top of.
Within that minimum period, most EU rules also shift who has to prove what over time: for roughly the first year (it varies by country), a defect is presumed to have existed at the time of purchase, so the burden is on the seller to prove otherwise. After that, it's increasingly on you to show the fault wasn't caused by normal wear or misuse.
The United Kingdom: a 30-day right, then a 6-month one
The UK sits outside EU law now, but its own Consumer Rights Act works on a similar idea with different numbers. You get a short-term right to reject a faulty item for a full refund within the first 30 days. After that and up to 6 months, you can still ask for a repair or replacement, and the burden of proof stays on the retailer — they have to show the fault wasn't there at delivery, not you.
Beyond 6 months, you can still have a claim, but it becomes your job to show the product was faulty when you bought it, which is harder the more time has passed. In practice, this is exactly why keeping the original proof of purchase matters more than people expect — it's often the only evidence of when the clock actually started.
The United States and Canada: no fixed minimum, different mechanism entirely
This is where the EU/UK model and the North American model diverge the most. In the US, federal law (the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act) doesn't require any minimum warranty length — it only requires that if a company offers a written warranty, the terms have to be clearly disclosed and labeled as "full" or "limited." Many everyday products simply carry a 1-year manufacturer warranty because that's a common industry default, not a legal floor.
What does exist underneath that, in most US states, is an implied warranty of merchantability — an unwritten assumption that a product will work as a reasonable person would expect — but its duration and whether it can be waived varies by state.
Canada works similarly: there's no single national minimum warranty period, but provincial consumer protection law generally requires goods to last a "reasonable" amount of time for that type of product, which courts interpret case by case rather than as a fixed number of years.
The distinction that matters more than the country you're in
Wherever you are, the same split applies: a legal warranty is the baseline protection the law gives you automatically, and a manufacturer (or "commercial") warranty is an extra promise the brand chooses to offer, on its own terms, on top of that. A brand advertising "5-year warranty" is making a commercial promise — read what it actually covers, because it's allowed to exclude things the legal guarantee wouldn't.
The practical risk isn't usually not knowing your rights exist. It's not being able to say, with certainty, when you bought the item and whether you're still inside the window — which is a memory problem, not a legal one.
Know what's still covered, without tracking the dates yourself
Fondly Home reads the receipt or invoice you upload, works out which warranty window applies, and reminds you before it closes — so you're not relying on memory or digging through a drawer the day something breaks.