Tracking says delivered, the customer says it never came. What to check before you refund

This is the most common refund claim most stores get, and the hardest one to judge. The carrier marked the order delivered. The customer says there's nothing on the porch. Both can be true.

Most of these claims are honest. Packages get left at the wrong door, scanned as delivered a few hours early, signed for by a building's front desk, or taken off a porch by someone who isn't the customer. But some aren't. When Riskified looked at more than a million refund claims at three large retailers, nearly a quarter of the refund dollars on "never arrived" and missing-item claims were abusive.

Gut feel won't sort them out. The checks below run roughly from quickest to most work.

Start with the carrier's record

Pull up every scan in the order's tracking history. You're looking for:

• The time of the delivery scan. A scan at 2 a.m. or hours before the truck was in the area is worth a question to the carrier.
• Where the scan happened. Many carriers record the location of the delivery scan. If it's a few houses or a block away from the shipping address, that points to a misdelivery, and the carrier is the one who should be making it right.
• A delivery photo. Many carriers now take one at the door. A photo of your box on the right porch with the right house number settles most claims. A photo of a box on a door you can't place settles nothing.
• A signature, if you asked for one.

If the record shows the package went to the wrong place, the customer is telling the truth, and the carrier owes you for the loss.

Check the order itself

Compare the shipping address on the order with the billing address and with any address the customer has used before. A first-time order shipped somewhere other than the billing address isn't proof of anything, since plenty of people send gifts or ship to work. It does change how much weight a "never arrived" claim from that order should carry.

Look at the order value too. A $40 claim and a $900 claim deserve different amounts of your time.

Look at the customer's history

This is where repeat abuse shows up. Search your past claims for the same email, the same shipping address, and the same phone number. One missing package in three years is bad luck. Three in six months, all high-value, all "delivered but not received," is a pattern.

Check across accounts as well. Someone running this repeatedly will often use a new email each time but ship to the same address, or to the same building with a different unit number.

Give it a day and ask the obvious questions

A short, polite reply clears up a surprising number of these. Ask the customer to check with neighbors, the building's mailroom or front desk, anyone else at the address, and around the property. Mention that carriers sometimes mark a package delivered a little before it actually arrives.

Keep it neutral. An honest customer will usually come back with something useful: the package showed up, a neighbor had it, or they genuinely can't find it. Someone gaming you tends to skip all of that and ask when the refund is coming.

When to ask the customer for more

If the carrier's evidence is unclear and the order is worth it, ask the customer for a short written account (when they checked, where they looked, whether anyone else lives there) and a police report. Some stores also ask for ID on high-value claims. Ask for what you'll actually use, and nothing you'd have no reason to keep.

The police report does the most work. Someone whose package was stolen can often report it online in a few minutes. Someone making the claim up has to decide whether a refund is worth lying to the police, and many won't. Check that the report is real before you rely on it: Ask for a police report on stolen-package claims, and check that it's real covers how.

If you refund anyway

Sometimes refunding is the right call even when you're not sure, especially for a long-time customer and a modest order. Write down why you did it. If the same address or email comes back with another claim, you'll want that note.

And if the carrier's records show a misdelivery, file a claim with the carrier. That's money you shouldn't be carrying.