Platform · Order Management · Returns & Recovery

Getting the parcel back is easy. Getting the answer right is not.

A customer sends back one shirt from a 3-for-2 and asks a simple question: what will I get back? Your agent opens the order, the campaign tool and the payment log — and still isn’t sure. Hantera_ keeps the original deal, the claim and what actually arrived on the same order, so your team can give a fair answer the first time and stand behind it.

CASE #44715 In review

What the customer says

Seam split after two weeksrefund requested

What the warehouse found

1 × Rain jacketseam defect confirmed

What the order remembers

Spring campaign−20% · paid 480
Earlier claims on this ordernone

Decision

Replacement shipscustomer’s choice
Refund value, had they asked480, not 600
Sound familiar?

Everyone has a piece of the return. Nobody has the whole thing.

Service knows what the customer asked for. The warehouse knows what came out of the box. Finance knows what was paid, and the campaign tool knows what the offer was — if nobody has edited it since. And any one of them can be wrong. The customer is waiting while you work out which account to trust.

So the easy returns go through, and the hard ones end up in a spreadsheet, a Slack thread or a finance correction at month-end. These are the ones that eat the time:

/ 01

“How much do we refund?”

One item back from a 3-for-2, a bundle or a coupon order. Refund the shelf price and you pay out for a free item. Split the discount evenly and you may still be wrong. Somebody works it out by hand, and the next agent works it out differently.

/ 02

“Is this claim valid?”

The customer says it’s faulty. The warehouse says it’s worn. Was it already refunded once? Is it inside warranty? The decision needs the order, the history and the inspection side by side — and usually gets them one at a time.

/ 03

“What actually came back?”

The warehouse sent the wrong item. The customer returned the wrong item. Or the item was received and registered under the wrong line. By the time someone notices, the order, the parcel and the warehouse record can all tell a different story.

/ 04

“Which orders are affected?”

A supplier flags a faulty batch. Now it’s thousands of orders, several possible fixes, and weeks of follow-up that someone tracks in a spreadsheet that is out of date by Friday.

None of these are hard because the parcel is hard. They’re hard because the facts needed to decide live in different places — and sometimes they disagree. Hantera_ keeps the competing accounts connected to the order, so someone can make the best call with the evidence they have.

Hard part #1 · The refund

One shirt back from a 3-for-2. What do you refund?

Any system can refund a full-price item. The ones that hurt are the orders where the customer’s basket earned a deal — and what they keep no longer does.

Refund the shelf price and you’ve paid the customer for the free shirt. Split the discount evenly and you get a different number again. Send back the cheapest shirt instead and the fair answer may be nothing at all: that was the free one. Most teams settle this with a calculator, and two agents rarely get the same number.

In Hantera_, the promotion is part of the order — which offer applied, how it was calculated, and what it gave — not just a discount amount left behind on a receipt. When something comes back, Hantera_ checks the offer again against what the customer keeps and settles the difference. It still works after the campaign has ended or been edited, because the order remembers the deal it was sold on.

ORDER #44715 1 of 3 returned

What the customer bought

Linen shirt450
Oxford shirt300
T-shirt150
3 for 2 · cheapest free−150
Paid750

What came back

Linen shirt450

The usual guesses

Refund the shelf price450
Split the discount evenly400

What the order settles

Offer checked on what’s keptno longer applies
Two shirts kept at full price450
Refund300
Shown with one common policy: the offer ends when the basket no longer qualifies. Run a different return policy and Hantera_ settles that one instead, working from the same order.
Hard part #2 · The claim

“It broke.” Now somebody has to decide what’s fair.

A claim is a judgment call. Is it a fault or wear? Inside warranty? Already refunded once through another channel? Does the customer want their money back, or just a jacket that works before the weekend? The agent needs all of that at once. Usually they get it one system at a time — and the customer waits while they do.

With Hantera_, the claim is raised against the actual order lines, so nobody can claim more than was bought, and the same item can’t be refunded twice by two people on two different days. What the customer asked for and what the warehouse found are kept as separate facts, side by side, so the person deciding can see both.

/ 01

Start from the order

The claim begins with what was actually bought, at the price that was actually paid, including what has already been returned or credited.

/ 02

Inspect only when it matters

Outcomes that need the goods back go to the warehouse for inspection. The ones that don’t — a goodwill credit, a missing item — are settled now, not after a parcel arrives.

/ 03

Let people make the call

Routine cases can follow your policy on their own. The ones that need a judgment call reach someone who has the full story in front of them.

/ 04

Offer the fix that fits

Refund, replacement, exchange, compensation or an outcome of your own — each one with the details your team needs to record, set up by you.

Hard part #3 · Humans

The order says jacket. The box says windbreaker. Now what?

A return is never only the data in the system. The warehouse may have sent the wrong item. The customer may have put the wrong item in the parcel. Someone may have scanned or registered the return against the wrong order line.

Once that happens, everything downstream is a best judgment. Refund the order line and you may refund something the customer never bought. Reject the claim and you may leave them paying for your warehouse’s mistake. Ask three teams what happened and you can get three different answers.

Hantera_ does not pretend that one scan proves what physically happened. It keeps the order, the customer’s claim and the warehouse’s inspection as separate, connected accounts of the case. The person deciding can compare what was ordered, what the customer says they received or returned, and what the warehouse says it found — then record the decision and carry the right outcome back to the order.

CASE #44732 Review needed

What the order says

1 × Rain jacketdelivered

What the customer says

Received windbreakerwrong item sent

What the warehouse found

1 × Windbreakerreturned

What the business decides

Send the rain jacketno refund needed
The records do not have to agree before a person can make the next fair decision. They do have to stay connected.
/ 01

What the order says

The item, quantity, price, delivery and any earlier return or credit. It is the commercial record, not a claim that every handoff went perfectly.

/ 02

What the customer says

The item they say was missing, faulty, received or returned — captured as their claim, rather than quietly overwriting the order.

/ 03

What the warehouse found

The goods that arrived and the condition recorded at inspection. It stays distinct from the customer’s account, because those two accounts do not always match.

/ 04

What the business decides

The person handling the case can make the best call from the evidence available: refund, replacement, exchange, compensation or another approved outcome — with a record of why.

RECALL: ZIPPER PULL · BATCH 24-17 Week 3
Affected orders2,418
Customers who haven’t responded1,640
Goods on the way back412
Replaced or refunded366

Approved responses

Return for replacementdefault
Refund if out of stockfallback
Illustrative. How a recall is scoped and communicated, and what each customer is offered, stays with the merchant.
Hard part #4 · The recall

A faulty batch isn’t one return. It’s two thousand, over six weeks.

A recall starts with you, not the customer. First you need to find every order that contains the affected batch. Then you need to reach each customer, offer the fix you’ve approved, and track who has replied, who has shipped the item back and who has been made whole — often for weeks. Most teams run it from an export and a spreadsheet that are out of date by the second day.

And the same human uncertainty applies at scale: an affected item may have been shipped under the wrong line, returned under the wrong order or registered incorrectly on its way back.

In Hantera_, the recall is worked order by order. Returned goods can be received and inspected against the affected order even when the customer never raised a claim, and every replacement or refund lands on the order it belongs to. Progress becomes something you can see, not something you piece together from an export. Your legal and compliance teams still decide what the recall requires; Hantera_ helps the operation carry it out.

Where your team does the work

Claims, inspections and recalls, in one place.

The Returns app is where service and warehouse teams raise claims, record inspections, choose the outcome and follow a recall through to the end.

Bring us the return nobody wants to touch.

The multi-buy refund. The claim nobody can agree on. The wrong item nobody can reconcile. The recall still sitting in a spreadsheet. Show us the one your team dreads, and we’ll show you how Hantera_ helps you settle it.