Cost of Ecommerce Returns: 30% of Each Item's Value (2025)

A return costs US retailers 30% of the item’s value to process

Appriss Retail puts the average cost of processing a return at 30% of the item’s value in its 2026 Total Retail Loss Benchmark Report, which covers 2025. Across the $706 billion of merchandise shoppers sent back that year, the processing bill came to $211 billion. On a $60 item, the average works out to $18.00.

That cost comes on top of the refund. Most returned goods go back on sale, so the $706 billion measures what traveled backward through the supply chain, while the $211 billion measures what it took to move, check and restock it. Appriss also notes that returns-related loss hits profit 1 to 1: every dollar lost on a return comes straight off the bottom line.

How Appriss and NRF measure what returns cost

The 2 big US returns studies answer different questions. The National Retail Federation and Happy Returns, a UPS company, measure how much comes back. In their 2025 Retail Returns Landscape, retailers estimated returns at 15.8% of annual sales, or $849.9 billion, down from 16.9% and $890 billion in 2024, and put the online figure at 19.3% of sales. NRF publishes no cost per return; what it reports instead is why retailers are changing their policies, and their answers point at cost.

Appriss measures volume and cost from the transaction side. It works from returns tied to 250 million unique customer identifiers across its retail clients, adds industry data from 2022 to 2025, and surveyed 1,020 US shoppers who had made at least 1 return, in December 2025. Its volume figure is lower than NRF’s, and its 30% is the only cost ratio of the 2.

	NRF and Happy Returns	Appriss Retail
Published	October 2025	2026 report on 2025 data
Built from	2 summer 2025 surveys: 358 ecommerce staff at US merchants with over $500 million in revenue, and 2,006 online returners	Client transaction analytics, industry data and a survey of 1,020 shoppers
Returned in 2025	$849.9 billion, 15.8% of sales	$706 billion
Cost to process	Not published	30% of item value, $211 billion
Fraud and abuse	9% of returns fraudulent	2% fraud and 12% abuse, $100 billion

Cost of one ecommerce return, line by line

Only 2 lines of a return carry a published price: the label that brings it back and the warehouse’s fee to receive it. We priced both for a $60 item in a 1 lb parcel returned from zone 5, the middle of the USPS zone chart, to a 3PL.

Line	Cost	Basis
Return label, USPS Ground Advantage commercial, 1 lb, zone 5	$9.29	USPS Notice 123, effective 4 October 2026
3PL fee per return	$3.56	2026 average, The Fulfillment Advisor survey
Printed label posted to a shopper with no printer	$1.65	USPS Label Delivery Service
Customer service contact and payment fees on the refund	Varies	Your own staffing and processor rates
Markdown, refurbishing or write-off for items that cannot sell as new	Varies	Condition of the item
Label plus 3PL fee	$12.85	21.4% of a $60 item
Appriss Retail’s all-in average	$18.00	30% of a $60 item

The label is the biggest line a brand can see: at $9.29 it is 2.6 times the 3PL’s fee. Together the 2 come to $12.85, or 21.4% of the item’s price, before anyone answers an email or reprices a scuffed box. Set against Appriss’s $18.00 average, that leaves $5.15 for customer service, payment fees and markdowns, and a 10% markdown on the $60 item is $6.00 by itself.

Doing the work yourself is not free either. Average hourly earnings in warehousing and storage were $26.83 in August 2026, the BLS preliminary figure, up from $25.67 a year earlier. At that rate, 10 minutes spent opening, checking and re-shelving a return costs $4.47 in wages before benefits, space and supervision, more than the average 3PL fee.

Return postage by parcel weight and shipping zone

The label moves more than any other line. USPS prices Ground Advantage by weight and zone, and its commercial prices in Notice 123, effective 4 October 2026, run from $7.86 for a parcel under 1 lb from zone 4 to $26.39 for a 10 lb parcel from zone 8.

Return label price, USPS Ground Advantage commercial

• Under 1 lb, zone 4$7.86
• 1 lb, zone 5$9.29
• 1 lb, zone 8$11.22
• 2 lb, zone 5$10.5
• 5 lb, zone 5$14.53
• 5 lb, zone 8$20.24
• 10 lb, zone 8$26.39

Source: USPS Notice 123 price list, effective 4 October 2026

Distance costs more as the parcel gets heavier. A 1 lb return from zone 8 costs $2.67 more than the same parcel from zone 4 ($11.22 against $8.55); at 5 lb the gap grows to $8.57 ($20.24 against $11.67). Bulk adds its own charges. A parcel over 1 cubic foot is billed on its dimensional weight when that beats its actual weight, one longer than 22 inches adds $4.50, longer than 30 inches adds $10.00, and one over 2 cubic feet adds $21.00.

Who buys the label matters too. A shopper paying at a post office counter pays the retail price, $11.70 for a 1 lb parcel from zone 5, which is $2.41 more than the $9.29 commercial label a brand buys. A prepaid label in the box or the order email is cheaper than refunding a shopper’s counter postage.

Why cheap items lose the most on a return

The label and the warehouse fee cost the same whether the parcel holds a $20 phone case or a $250 jacket, so the cheaper the item, the bigger the share of its price a return eats. At $12.85 for a 1 lb return from zone 5, those 2 lines take 64.3% of a $20 item’s price and 5.1% of a $250 item’s.

Label plus 3PL fee as a share of the item price

• $20 item64.3%
• $40 item32.1%
• $60 item21.4%
• $100 item12.9%
• $250 item5.1%

Source: USPS Notice 123 (October 2026) and The Fulfillment Advisor 2026 survey; our arithmetic for a 1 lb return from zone 5

A single average like Appriss’s 30% therefore fits some catalogs badly. A brand selling $20 accessories passes 30% on every return once the label is counted, while a brand selling $250 outerwear pays little in handling but more in markdown when a returned coat misses its season. Weight pushes the same way: a 5 lb return from zone 8 plus the 3PL fee is $23.80, 39.7% of a $60 item.

When the label and the fee cost more than a returned item would recover on resale, a refund with no return is the cheaper outcome. Brands that set a price floor for keep-it refunds stop paying $12.85 to bring back a $15 item.

3PL return fees by year, 2018 to 2026

The Fulfillment Advisor has surveyed the warehouses in its network on pricing each year since 2017. In its 2026 results, 87% of warehouses charged a returns fee and the average was $3.56 per return, $0.50 below 2025. Across every survey since 2018, the average has stayed between $3.53 and $5.28, while the share of warehouses charging it has ranged from 79.33% to 95%.

Survey year	Average fee per return	Warehouses charging one
2026	$3.56	87%
2025	$4.06	92%
2024	$3.95	79.33%
2023	$3.60	88%
2022	$3.62	89%
2021	$5.28	95%
2020	$4.05	91%
2018 to 2019	$3.53	84.62%

The survey does not define what the fee buys, and warehouses package it differently. One quote covers a visual check and a re-shelve; another includes repackaging, a condition grade and photos. Ask which steps sit inside the per-return price and which are billed by the hour or the unit, because a low headline fee with hourly add-ons can cost more than a higher all-in one.

Return fraud and abuse: $100 billion in 2025

Appriss counts $100 billion of 2025’s returns, 14.2% of the total, as preventable loss. It separates 2 kinds. Fraud, meaning fake receipts, stolen merchandise and other returns made with intent to deceive, was 2% of returns, or $14 billion. Abuse, meaning returns that are excessive but legitimate, was 12%, or $86 billion. Returns without a receipt made up 9.6% of return dollars ($68 billion), and online purchases returned in stores carried $4 billion of fraud.

NRF’s retailer survey gives a single number, with fraud at 9% of all returns. Retailers tracking it saw rising cases of overstated return quantities (71%) and the empty box, or “box of rocks” (65%).

For an online brand, both schemes are caught or missed at the receiving bench. An empty box or a swapped item only shows up if someone opens the parcel, checks it against the order and records what was inside before the refund goes out. Refund on the carrier’s first scan and the warehouse finds the problem after the money has left.

Charging for returns: what retailers cite and shoppers accept

When retailers in NRF’s 2025 survey explained why they charge for returns, 40% pointed to the rising cost of processing them, 40% to higher carrier shipping costs and 33% to economic uncertainty and tariff risk. 64% of merchants called an update to their returns process within 6 months a priority.

Shoppers push back. 82% call free returns a major consideration when buying, up from 76% a year earlier, and 76% lean toward a return option with an instant refund or exchange. About 71% say a poor returns experience makes them less likely to shop with that retailer again. In Appriss’s survey, 55% read the return policy before buying, and 47% have held back from a purchase over return policy concerns.

How shoppers weigh return policies

• Free returns a major factor when buying82%
• Prefer an instant refund or exchange76%
• Less likely to buy again after a poor return71%
• Read the return policy before buying55%
• Held back from a purchase over the policy47%

Source: NRF and Happy Returns, 2025 (first 3 rows); Appriss Retail, December 2025 survey (last 2 rows)

The trade-off runs through the refund. A flat fee deducted from refunds, with exchanges and store credit kept free, recovers part of the label on the costliest outcome while the shopper who swaps a size pays nothing. Policies do steer behavior. Appriss found 56% of frequent returners have skipped a purchase because of a return policy, against 47% of shoppers overall, so a fee aimed at serial returners reaches the right people, while one charged on every refund also turns away shoppers who rarely send anything back.

What the cost of returns means for a brand buying fulfillment

Start with the size of the line. At the average ecommerce return rate of 19.3% of online sales, NRF’s 2025 figure, a brand selling $200,000 a month online sees $38,600 come back. At Appriss’s 30% average that costs $11,580 a month to process. If each return is a $60 item, that is about 643 parcels, and the label and 3PL fee alone come to about $8,263.

Most of that never shows up as a warehouse charge. The $3.56 per return is a small line beside pick and pack, storage and receiving on a 3PL’s monthly invoice, and the label is 2.6 times bigger. Return labels are priced by the zone between the shopper and the building, so where the warehouse sits sets return postage as well as outbound postage. A brand with all its stock on 1 coast pays zone 8 prices on returns from the other, $2.67 more per 1 lb parcel than from zone 4 and $8.57 more at 5 lb.

Then the clock. A returned unit is stock you own and cannot sell until the warehouse checks it in. NRF found retailers expected 17% of their 2025 holiday sales to come back, and 49% planned more focus on 3PL partners to handle the volume, so January is when shared warehouses are busiest with returns. Agree on a turnaround from dock to sellable stock, and on what happens to items that fail inspection: restock, refurbish, liquidate or destroy.

Brands selling through Amazon meet a different structure. FBA’s fee page says its fulfillment fee covers handling customer service and returns, a separate returns processing fee applies when Amazon gives the customer free return shipping, and returning, disposing of or liquidating unsellable stock is billed per item. Unsellable units that come back through Amazon stay in its network until you pay to have them sent back, so they reach your 3PL’s returns bench only through a removal order.