The signals that separate honest returns from abuse

Honest returns and abusive ones often look identical in isolation. The difference is in the pattern, and patterns are made of signals your store already records.

The strongest signals are behavioral: lifetime keep rate, time from delivery to return request, share of orders returned, and category concentration. A customer who returns everything, fast, in eventwear, is telling you something.

The next layer is order shape: habitual multi-size brackets, repeated high-ticket purchases with low keep rates, and returns that cluster at the end of the window. Warehouse condition reports add the physical evidence.

No single signal convicts anyone, and a good scoring system treats them that way: weighted, combined, and thresholded, so warnings and denials rest on the whole pattern rather than any one suspicious return.