It’s one thing to accept a return if the customer is immediately unhappy with a product or the product is defective. It’s quite different to accept a return if a product has been used, broken or devalued in any way by the buyer.

When structuring your company's return policy, define the condition a product must be in before a return can be processed. If you fail to include this information, customers will attempt to return merchandise in condition too poor to be resold. In this case, you’ll be forced to take a loss.