Commerce Protocols · Recommended · Medium impact

Return and shipping terms machine-readable

An agent must verify return terms before making a purchase decision.

Recommended
Medium impact
Adopted standard

Return and shipping terms machine-readable — Property, Value
Property	Value
Check id	`returns`
Dimension	Commerce Protocols (15%)
Tier	Recommended — pool 20 pts
Weight inside tier	1
Impact	Medium
Maturity	Adopted — A ratified standard with real deployment.
Conditional	Yes — scored only on commercial sites
Publishing skill	`return-policy-schema`
Standards	schema.org/MerchantReturnPolicy

What is measured

Conditional: reported n/a unless the scanner has already detected a commercial signal (Product/Offer JSON-LD, add-to-cart or buy-now copy, a cart/checkout link). It greps the JSON-LD it holds for the homepage and for the /returns, /shipping and /refund-policy paths for "@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy" or "@type": "OfferShippingDetails"; markup found on any of them passes, a returns or shipping page without that schema is a partial (0.65), and neither a page nor the schema fails.

Reproduce it yourself

You do not have to take our word for any of this. Run the same measurement against your own domain:

              DOMAIN=shop.example.com
for p in / /returns /shipping; do printf '%s: ' "$p"; curl -sL "https://$DOMAIN$p" | grep -Eo '"@type"[[:space:]]*:[[:space:]]*"(MerchantReturnPolicy|OfferShippingDetails)"' | sort -u | tr '\n' ' '; echo; done

The fix

This is the artifact to ship. It is the complete change, not a description of one.

              {
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Aurora Desk Lamp",
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "price": "1299.00",
    "priceCurrency": "USD",
    "hasMerchantReturnPolicy": {
      "@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy",
      "applicableCountry": "US",
      "returnPolicyCategory": "https://schema.org/MerchantReturnFiniteReturnWindow",
      "merchantReturnDays": 14,
      "returnMethod": "https://schema.org/ReturnByMail",
      "returnFees": "https://schema.org/FreeReturn"
    },
    "shippingDetails": {
      "@type": "OfferShippingDetails",
      "shippingRate": { "@type": "MonetaryAmount", "value": "0", "currency": "USD" },
      "shippingDestination": { "@type": "DefinedRegion", "addressCountry": "US" }
    }
  }
}

Standards referenced

schema.org/MerchantReturnPolicy

Related checks

Related checks — Check, Tier, Impact, Same skill
Check	Tier	Impact	Same skill
`product-schema` — Product/catalog schema	Essential	Critical	—
`payment-protocols` — Agent payment standard support (AP2/ACP/x402/UCP)	Recommended	High	—
`agent-purchase` — Agent purchase policy	Recommended	High	—
`ucp-manifest` — UCP manifest (/.well-known/ucp)	Emerging	Medium	—
`agent-analytics` — Agent traffic measurement	Emerging	Low	—
`inventory-freshness` — Inventory and price freshness	Recommended	High	—
`seller-identity` — Seller identity declared	Recommended	Medium	—
`shipping-costs` — Shipping cost and delivery declared	Recommended	High	—