Eleven emails. That is a typical return, from the first 'I would like to send this back' to the refund landing. The customer asks, you ask for the order number, they send it, you check the date, you send the address, they ask about the label, you send one, they post it, they ask if it arrived, you check, you refund, they ask when it lands.
Every one of those emails is small. Together they are a part-time job.
The system reads the return request wherever it comes in, a contact form, a reply to the order email or a WhatsApp message. It finds the order in Shopify or WooCommerce by the email address or order number. Then it checks the request against your policy as you have written it. Within 28 days, unworn, tags on, no sale items, nothing personalised. Whatever your rules are, those are the rules it applies.
If the return is allowed, the customer gets one email with the Royal Mail or DPD label attached and a line about how long the refund takes. If it falls outside the policy, you get the case in your inbox with the reason flagged, and you decide. The system does not refuse anyone on its own.
When the parcel is scanned as received back, a refund is queued in Shopify or Stripe for the right amount. It waits for you. One click a day clears the queue, or you can let the clean ones go through on their own and only hold the ones with a note.
The customer gets a short email at each step, requested, label sent, received, refunded. That alone removes about half the eleven emails, because most of them were 'has it arrived yet'.
This is the kind of thing we build. It runs in your own accounts. How many of this week's emails were about a return that was always going to be approved?