Restocking fees: the returns you're not allowed to charge for

What a restocking fee is

A restocking fee is an amount a seller deducts from a customer's refund to cover inspecting, repackaging and returning a sold item to sellable stock, usually a percentage of the item's price and disclosed before the sale. It's the one line in a returns policy that's only defensible when the return was the customer's own decision, so the returns you can't charge it on are a list of the promises your operation broke. I see the same pattern in brand after brand: the warehouse ships the wrong variant, the customer returns it, the fee is netted off the refund automatically because the rule was written per category, not per return reason, and reversed only after the customer complains twice.

The fee comes off the refund rather than arriving as a separate invoice, and it's not the same charge as return shipping, which has its own section below. Returns ran to an estimated 19.3% of online sales in 2025, so the arithmetic matters.

What the fee is actually paying for

A restocking fee prices the labor of turning a returned parcel back into a unit you can sell. Four costs sit inside it.

• Inspection: someone opens the parcel, confirms the item and checks for wear, missing accessories and a broken seal.
• Repackaging: new polybag, new box, replaced inserts and tags, because original packaging rarely survives the round trip.
• Handling and put-away: receiving, relabeling and walking the unit back to its bin, which is ecommerce fulfillment run backwards at a worse rate.
• Lost resale value: the markdown on an opened item that now sells as open box, or doesn't sell again at all.

Every line in that stack is a cost of handling the item, and it barely moves with the item's price. A flat percentage is therefore a poor proxy for the work: 15% on a $30 item underprices it, and 15% on a $600 item prices the customer out of buying again.

When you are allowed to charge one

Every regime below requires the fee to be disclosed before the sale, and most limit it to returns the customer chose to make.

• United States: state disclosure law, not a federal cap. New York GBL 218-a requires a posted policy to state any fees, "including a restocking fee, and the dollar or percentage amount of each fee", and gives an unwarned buyer 30 days. California Civil Code 1723 requires conspicuous display of any policy short of a 7-day full refund.
• United Kingdom: the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 allow a deduction only for the amount by which handling beyond what a shop would permit has diminished the item's value, and none where cancellation information was never given.
• European Union: Directive 2011/83/EU, Article 14(2), applies the same diminished-value test.
• Australia: the ACCC treats change-of-mind policies as voluntary but binding once offered, and consumer guarantee rights survive the store policy.

The UK, EU and Australian regimes each rule the fee out where the item was faulty, wrong or not as described. The US statutes here govern disclosure rather than the reason for the return, but a late shipment is still not a chargeable return: the FTC's mail and internet order rule makes it a cancellation owing a prompt refund. The agency's .com Disclosures guidance names restocking charges as a restriction a refund claim must state clearly. Rules differ by market, so check the ones you sell into.

Restocking fee, return shipping fee, return fee

Three charges get folded together in most policies, and the ones customers dispute are the ones never named separately.

1. Restocking fee: deducted from the refund, and it prices putting the item back into sellable stock.
2. Return shipping fee: the cost of the label, charged up front or netted off, and it buys getting the item back rather than reselling it.
3. Return fee: the umbrella term covering either or both, which is why a policy that uses it is the one customers argue with.

None of the three is the RMA in shipping step, which authorizes a return and charges nothing. Charging a restocking fee and return shipping on the same return is the fastest way to make a refund look punitive.

How much, and who sets the ceiling

There's no category standard worth copying, and a fee set from one prices your returns off somebody else's cost base. The figures worth reading are the ceilings the large platforms impose on their own sellers, because those come with the conditions attached.

Newegg's seller policy, effective November 1, 2025, caps the fee at 15% on domestic orders and 30% on Newegg Global, and permits it only where the return reason is the buyer's personal reason on an opened new item in named categories. The condition is the interesting part, not the percentage: the marketplace enforces reason-based eligibility that most brands never build.

Shopify's return rules take the opposite approach and make the fee a merchant-set percentage, shown when the customer requests the return, rather than deducting it from the refund automatically. Someone applies it by hand, which is where a fee lands on a return it should never have touched. Set yours against the handling cost you can measure, and move it when that cost moves.

The returns you cannot charge for are the ones worth counting

The exemption list above isn't a compliance nuisance, it's a report. Every return you can't charge a restocking fee on is one your own operation caused, and the count already sits in your returns table under the reason field.

• Wrong item or wrong variant shipped: a pick error.
• Item arrived damaged: a packing or carrier handling failure.
• Not as described: a catalog or content failure.
• Arrived after the promised date and no longer wanted: a promise you broke.
• Faulty on arrival: a supplier or QA failure.

Run those five as a percentage of total returns for one month. That number is your post-purchase failure rate, collected automatically and denominated in refunds you have already paid out.

Each of those returns costs twice: the refund goes out in full, because the fee can't be charged, and a ticket comes in, because the customer has to ask for the fee to come off. A brand reading only its aggregate return rate sees one number where two populations sit, with different causes and different fixes. NRF and Happy Returns put free returns among the important considerations for 82% of consumers and fraud at 9% of returns, and Baymard finds an unsatisfactory return policy behind 13% of checkout abandonments, so the fee is a customer retention decision as much as a cost one.

The policy sits on top of an operation

Keeyu detects the break at order level, decides the right action and acts, usually before the customer knows anything went wrong. A wrong variant caught at pick confirmation isn't a return, and a shipment that stalls and is reshipped before the promised date isn't a return. Neither one ever reaches the fee question.

A helpdesk can explain the restocking fee, reverse it and apologize for it. What it can't do is stop the pick error that made the fee unchargeable, and that's not a tooling gap, it's what a reply-shaped system is for. The category that can is proactive e-commerce operations, run as post-purchase operations rather than support.

To be plain about what we're not: Keeyu isn't a returns portal, a helpdesk, a chatbot, a carrier or an OMS. We don't set restocking fees, collect them, issue refunds or process returns. If your job today is configuring a fee rule, your returns app already does it. Every order is a promise, Keeyu keeps the promise, and billing a customer for a promise you broke is the wrong end of the problem.

Stop paying for the breaks you caused

The returns you can't put a restocking fee on are the ones your own operation caused: the wrong variant, the damaged parcel, the order that arrived after the date you promised. Each one is a full refund plus a ticket. Keeyu detects the break in the order, decides the fix and acts before a return exists, so the fee question never comes up. If your refunds are paying for your pick errors, it's time to book a demo.

• National Retail Federation and Happy Returns. 2025 Retail Returns Landscape. NRF returns research
• National Retail Federation. Consumers Expected to Return Nearly $850 Billion in Merchandise in 2025. NRF press release
• New York General Business Law, section 218-a, refund policies. New York GBL 218-a
• New York Department of State. Refunds, Rebates and Rainchecks. NY Department of State
• California Civil Code, section 1723, display of refund policies. California Civil Code 1723
• California Attorney General. Refund Policies. California Attorney General
• The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, regulation 34. UK Consumer Contracts Regulations
• Directive 2011/83/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on consumer rights, Article 14(2). EUR-Lex, Directive 2011/83/EU
• Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Repair, replace, refund, cancel. ACCC consumer guarantees
• Federal Trade Commission. Business Guide to the FTC's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule. FTC mail and internet order rule
• Federal Trade Commission. .com Disclosures: How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising, March 2013. FTC .com Disclosures
• Newegg Seller Portal. Restocking Fee Policy, effective November 1, 2025. Newegg restocking fee policy
• Shopify Help Center. Setting up return and cancellation rules. Shopify return rules
• Baymard Institute. Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics. Baymard cart abandonment