Enforcing policy without losing good customers

The fear behind every lax returns policy is churn. Tighten anything and the thinking goes, and honest customers walk. So brands absorb abuse as a cost of keeping the peace.

The fear is based on a false premise: that enforcement must be uniform. In practice, enforcement lands on a small group, and honest customers never touch it. Their returns approve as fast as ever, often faster, because the queue is no longer clogged with abuse.

The customers you do enforce on split two ways. Most, warned that their pattern is visible, simply adjust and stay. A small group leaves, and those are the customers whose orders were margin-negative anyway.

The churn math, done honestly, runs in your favor. You keep the honest majority with a better experience, reform the borderline, and lose only the customers who were costing you money to keep.