Sponsorship Policy

Most of our income comes from display ads served by Mediavine, and some from Amazon Associates commissions. Sponsorships add a little on top. Together they keep every guide free to read without a paywall or a sign-up.

We turn down more offers than we accept. A sponsorship has to be useful to our readers, and it has to fit within the rules below without bending any of them.

We offer two packages, and nothing outside them.

• Sponsored Post

  An article about your product or service, written by our team to our normal standards and published on Retail Returns Policy. It is labeled “Sponsored by [Brand]” at the top, and you can check facts about your own product before it goes live. You don't get approval over our opinions.

• Sidebar Display Slot

  Your banner in the sidebar next to our guides, labeled “Advertisement”. Runs for an agreed period.

Pricing: Quote per brief. We price each campaign after reading your brief and send you a quote within 48 hours.

A Sponsored Post is never a return-policy guide for a store, and never a ranking or a “best and worst” list.

Sponsors are brands and services that help with returns, such as shipping and drop-off services, refund and receipt-tracking apps, payment providers or consumer tools. Before we accept one, we check:

• It isn't a store we cover. No retailer whose return policy we write about can sponsor us, in any format. Their guides have to be beyond question.
• It's relevant. The product has to be useful to someone in the middle of a return or a purchase decision.
• It's reputable. We decline companies facing regulatory action, with open safety recalls on the product being promoted, or with a record of misleading customers.

These apply to every format and every fee. They aren't negotiable.

• A verdict or a ranking. No one can pay to be recommended, to rank higher, or to be described more kindly.
• A competitor's removal. No one can pay to have another company left out, moved down or criticized.
• Our wording. Sponsors don't approve or edit what we publish. The one exception is below.
• Two payments for one placement. A Sponsored Post never carries affiliate links to the sponsor, so we don't earn twice from the same piece.
• A quieter label. No sponsor can ask for a disclosure to be smaller, moved further down, or removed.

Before a Sponsored Post goes live, the sponsor may check the facts about their own product: prices, features, availability and how it works. If they show us something is wrong, we fix it.

That's the limit. They don't see or comment on anything else in the article, including our opinions, comparisons with other products, or anything about a store's return policy.

You should know something is sponsored before you start reading, not after. Every paid placement is labeled like this:

Sponsored Posts

• A “Sponsored by [Brand]” label at the top, naming the sponsor.

Sidebar Display Slots

• Labeled “Advertisement” and shown in the sidebar, visibly separate from the guide.

If you think something on the site is paid for but isn't labeled, tell us through our contact page. We check every report, and if a label is missing we add it and note the change on the page.

Brands interested in sponsoring can find the packages and a short brief form on our advertise page.