{
  "id": "C12",
  "url": "https://cartforagents.com/guides/shipping-return-policy-structured-data",
  "title": "Shipping and return policy structured data: attach each promise to the right offer",
  "description": "Map destination, handling, transit, return windows and SKU exceptions to offers, with source dates and unsupported destinations explicit.",
  "answer": "Make a row for each offer and destination: the variant, the country, whether you ship there, the rate, handling days, transit days, the return window and who pays, and any exception such as final sale. Then publish the exceptions on the offer itself. In 1,620 Shopify catalog results, 1,589 linked a store-wide refund policy, but no variant object carried a shipping-cost, delivery-time or return-window field, and only a minority of descriptions stated times in prose.",
  "take": "Shipping and return promises are buying facts, not footer links. In our snapshot, not one variant carried a delivery time or return window as a field, so brands that state them per offer give agents something to quote.",
  "summary": "Almost every catalog record we saved linked to a store-wide refund policy, yet no variant object had a field for shipping time or return window. One open-box item was final sale behind a store-wide policy link. Here is a template that ties each promise to the offer and destination it belongs to.",
  "claims": [
    {
      "text": "Of 1,620 result occurrences in 162 saved Shopify agent-catalog searches, 1,589 first variants linked a refund policy and 1,535 a shipping policy, as store-level seller links. The variant objects had no field for shipping cost, delivery time or return window.",
      "source_title": "Cart for Agents: Shopify agent-catalog snapshot, Oct 26, 2026 (How we checked, this page)",
      "source_url": "https://cartforagents.com/guides/shipping-return-policy-structured-data#how-we-checked",
      "source_date": "2026-10-26",
      "method": "observed",
      "limitation": "One unpersonalized context, first variant only, result occurrences rather than distinct products. We did not open the linked policies."
    },
    {
      "text": "By regex search plus hand review, 31 of the 1,620 descriptions stated a shipping, handling or delivery time, and 5 stated that the item was final sale or not returnable.",
      "source_title": "Cart for Agents: Shopify agent-catalog snapshot, Oct 26, 2026 (How we checked, this page)",
      "source_url": "https://cartforagents.com/guides/shipping-return-policy-structured-data#how-we-checked",
      "source_date": "2026-10-26",
      "method": "observed",
      "limitation": "Pattern matching can miss unusual wording; the policy pages and product pages may say more."
    },
    {
      "text": "An open-box pair of heated insoles (position 6 for \"heated insoles rechargeable for ice fishing\") said in its description that it is final sale, not eligible for refunds or exchanges and not covered by the warranty; its record linked the store-wide refund policy, and Shopify's generated condition was \"secondhand\".",
      "source_title": "Cart for Agents: Shopify agent-catalog snapshot, Oct 26, 2026 (How we checked, this page)",
      "source_url": "https://cartforagents.com/guides/shipping-return-policy-structured-data#how-we-checked",
      "source_date": "2026-10-26",
      "method": "observed",
      "limitation": "We did not read the linked refund policy, so we cannot say whether it mentions open-box items."
    },
    {
      "text": "Google says a standard shipping or return policy can be specified under Organization markup, and that to override it for a specific product you nest shipping details or a return policy under the Offer, which supports a more limited set of properties. Its order of precedence, strongest first, is the Content API for Shopping, settings in Merchant Center or Search Console, product-level merchant listing markup, then organization-level markup.",
      "source_title": "Google Search Central: Merchant shipping policy and Merchant return policy structured data",
      "source_url": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/shipping-policy",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "documented",
      "limitation": "Pages last updated 2026-09-08 per Google; Google Search features only."
    },
    {
      "text": "For offer-level shipping, Google's merchant listing documentation lists deliveryTime (with handlingTime and transitTime as minimum and maximum whole days), shippingDestination (two-letter country code) and shippingRate (currency must match the offer) as required for the shipping details enhancement. For offer-level returns it requires applicableCountry and returnPolicyCategory (finite window, not permitted or unlimited), with merchantReturnDays required for a finite window.",
      "source_title": "Google Search Central: Merchant listing (Product, Offer) structured data",
      "source_url": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/merchant-listing",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "documented",
      "limitation": "Google Search markup; Merchant Center settings can override it."
    },
    {
      "text": "Google's Store Quality help says that if you provide offer-level shipping data, you should include both shipping cost and transit time for each offer, and that offer-level data overrides account-level data.",
      "source_title": "Google Merchant Center Help: About the Store Quality program",
      "source_url": "https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/14261098?hl=en",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "documented",
      "limitation": "Describes Store Quality scoring, not ranking in AI features."
    },
    {
      "text": "Google's UCP Merchant Center guide says return policies must be defined in Merchant Center and are referenced on the checkout screen; a return_policy_label attribute can restrict a policy to a subset of products, a returns attribute can set a policy at product level, and you must include return cost, return window and a link to the full policy. Final-sale items and items needing special shipping are listed as ineligible for checkout.",
      "source_title": "Google for Developers: UCP Merchant Center guide",
      "source_url": "https://developers.google.com/merchant/ucp/guides/merchant-center",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "documented",
      "limitation": "Google's UCP help page names products with eligibility in the United States, Canada and Australia for participating merchants, while its onboarding pages say the Merchant Center integration is rolling out in the U.S. first, with Australia and Canada to follow. Checkout is available to select merchants."
    },
    {
      "text": "OpenAI's product feed reference says an omitted or empty shipping_price means unknown, not free shipping; handling-day and transit-day suffixes are not part of its shipping tuple; accepts_returns is separate from the return_policy URL; and for a final-sale item you send accepts_returns=false and omit the return window.",
      "source_title": "OpenAI Commerce: Products feed reference, Shipping and Returns",
      "source_url": "https://developers.openai.com/commerce/specs/file-upload/products",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "documented",
      "limitation": "Field support depends on the integration; OpenAI tells merchants to confirm display support."
    },
    {
      "text": "Shopify says every store serves /agents.md, /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt with context including store policies, and its Agentic listing insights include a shop-policy completeness signal for shipping, returns, refund and other policies.",
      "source_title": "Shopify Help Center: Agentic storefronts, products; Agentic home",
      "source_url": "https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/agentic-storefronts/products",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "documented",
      "limitation": "Store-level policy signals; Shopify does not document an offer-level shipping or return field in the pages we read."
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "Google Search Central: Merchant shipping policy (ShippingService) structured data",
      "url": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/shipping-policy",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Google Search Central: Merchant return policy structured data",
      "url": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/return-policy",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Google Search Central: Merchant listing structured data",
      "url": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/merchant-listing",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Google Merchant Center Help: About the Store Quality program",
      "url": "https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/14261098?hl=en",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Google for Developers: UCP Merchant Center guide",
      "url": "https://developers.google.com/merchant/ucp/guides/merchant-center",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Google Merchant Center Help: About UCP and UCP-powered checkout on Google",
      "url": "https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/16837055?hl=en",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "OpenAI Commerce: Products feed reference",
      "url": "https://developers.openai.com/commerce/specs/file-upload/products",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Schema.org: MerchantReturnPolicy",
      "url": "https://schema.org/MerchantReturnPolicy",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Schema.org: OfferShippingDetails",
      "url": "https://schema.org/OfferShippingDetails",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Schema.org: ProductGroup",
      "url": "https://schema.org/ProductGroup",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Shopify Help Center: Agentic storefronts, products",
      "url": "https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/agentic-storefronts/products",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Shopify Help Center: Agentic home",
      "url": "https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/agentic-storefronts/agentic-home",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    }
  ],
  "limitations": [
    "The mapping template is our proposal. We have not measured whether offer-level policy data changes picks, rank, returns or sales in any assistant.",
    "Catalog figures come from 162 unpersonalized Shopify agent-catalog searches on October 26, 2026: first variant only, 1,620 result occurrences, not distinct products.",
    "We did not open any store's linked shipping or refund policy, so a fact we call missing from the record may be in the policy.",
    "The filled-in example store is a labelled hypothetical; its rates and windows are invented.",
    "Platform fields, precedence rules and checkout eligibility were checked on 2026-10-27 and change; re-check before acting. UCP checkout is limited to select merchants, and Google's pages disagree on markets: one help page names the United States, Canada and Australia, while the onboarding pages say the U.S. first, with Australia and Canada to follow.",
    "Store names and contact details are withheld."
  ],
  "related": [
    "https://cartforagents.com/guides/agent-ready-product-data",
    "https://cartforagents.com/guides/product-feed-price-mismatch",
    "https://cartforagents.com/guides/product-constraint-coverage",
    "https://cartforagents.com/guides/product-schema-markup",
    "https://cartforagents.com/guides/google-ucp-checkout",
    "https://cartforagents.com/guides/chatgpt-product-feed"
  ],
  "published": "2026-10-27",
  "updated": "2026-10-27",
  "checked": "2026-10-27",
  "kind": "guide"
}