Offering free returns costs you one return label every time somebody takes you up on it, and the bill lands whether or not you resell the item. On our own live quotes from 2026-07-28, that label ran from $8.48 to $17.01 depending on the box and the distance, which is enough to reshape the margin on a low-priced product.
One label, priced on the day, is a better planning input than any industry average.
Five live quotes through the SMKlog calculator on 2026-07-28, all arriving at a Newark, NJ 07102 address, all showing the full checkout amount for the cheapest service on that quote.
| Parcel | From | Cheapest service | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 x 9 x 1 in poly mailer at 0.7 lb | Atlanta, GA 30303 | USPS Ground Advantage | $8.86 |
| 13 x 8 x 5 in shoe box at 3 lb | Atlanta, GA 30303 | USPS Ground Advantage | $8.48 |
| 13 x 8 x 5 in shoe box at 3 lb | Chicago, IL 60601 | USPS Ground Advantage | $8.48 |
| 13 x 8 x 5 in shoe box at 3 lb | Los Angeles, CA 90011 | USPS Ground Advantage | $11.04 |
| 12 x 12 x 12 in carton at 15 lb | Atlanta, GA 30303 | USPS Ground Advantage | $17.01 |
Notice which lever moved the price. Sending the shoe box coast to coast instead of down the eastern seaboard added $2.56. Sending a carton instead of a shoe box from the same city added $8.53. Box size beat distance by more than three to one on quote day, which is the same lesson that governs outbound shipping and gets forgotten on the way back.
The arithmetic below uses only the quoted figures above. Substitute your own return rate and margin, because those two are yours and nobody else's.
This is arithmetic on cited figures, not a benchmark. We have not published a typical return rate for your category, because we do not have one that was measured rather than repeated.
The $8.53 gap between the shoe box and the carton on the same lane is entirely box size, since both quotes were priced on their real dimensions. A product that ships in a right-sized box also comes back in one, so the packaging decision you make on day one is charged to you twice.
Letting the customer choose the carrier means paying whatever they picked. On the Atlanta quote the cheapest row was $8.48 and the most expensive was $21.05 for the same box on the same day. Controlling that choice is worth more than most of the tactics sellers try first.
A published deduction is not a hostile move; Macy's and Temu both run one, read 2026-07-28. Covering the postage on faulty goods and deducting it on change-of-mind returns is a middle position that most buyers accept without complaint.
We have no data on how much free returns lift conversion, so this page does not argue that they do or do not. The figures above cover one side of the ledger, the cost side, and they are ours and dated. If free returns pay for themselves in your category, they will do it through a lift you can measure in your own orders, and that measurement has to come from you. More seller-side pricing work sits on how much to charge for shipping and cheapest shipping for small business.
One return label. On live SMKlog quotes from 2026-07-28 into Newark, NJ, the cheapest service came to $8.86 for a 0.7 lb poly mailer from Atlanta, $8.48 for a 3 lb shoe box from Atlanta or Chicago, $11.04 for that shoe box from Los Angeles, and $17.01 for a 15 lb carton from Atlanta.
Box size, by a wide margin on our quotes. Moving the same 3 lb shoe box from Atlanta to Los Angeles added $2.56 to the return. Swapping that shoe box for a 12 x 12 x 12 in carton on the identical Atlanta lane added $8.53. Both figures come from quotes taken on 2026-07-28.
At the $8.48 shoe-box rate, a one-in-ten return rate costs $84.80 across a hundred orders. Against $12 of gross margin per order, that is a little over seven percent of the margin on those orders going to return postage. The same return rate on the $17.01 carton costs $170.10 per hundred.
We cannot answer that from our data, and we will not pretend otherwise. What this page gives you is the cost side, priced on a real date, so the decision is made against a number rather than a habit. The lift side has to be measured in your own orders.