Shopping agents now cite return-policy and shipping data in answers

AI shopping answers are getting more specific about post-purchase terms. Across ChatGPT and Perplexity outputs tracked by merchants this month, a rising share of cited snippets now include a quoted return window, a return-shipping cost, or a shipping SLA — a shift from earlier rounds when answers mostly stopped at price, rating, and availability.

The trigger appears to be structured data. Pages that expose return and shipping terms in MerchantReturnPolicy, Offer.shippingDetails, and FAQPage markup are increasingly the ones rendered as the quotable detail inside a comparison answer. Pages that state the policy only in prose or in an unattached policy page are being summarized loosely ("shipping varies") or skipped entirely in that section of the reply.

• Return and shipping terms are becoming tiebreaker signals when price and rating are close.
• Inconsistency between a schema promise and visible checkout text is more frequently flagged and filtered.
• Locale coverage matters: stores without localized return and shipping markup see weaker inclusion in non-English sessions.
• A clean, honest, structured policy reads as more credible than an aggressive policy that contradicts itself.

Merchants do not need to loosen their policies to win citations — they need to state existing terms precisely and structure them. One accurate return window, one honest shipping SLA per eligible region, mirrored in visible text, schema, and FAQ, is enough to become quotable.

This is consistent with what Visora's audits have been flagging: eligibility earns a mention, but the details that get you cited by name increasingly live in the post-purchase data layer. Return and shipping fields are cheap to fix and directly quotable, which makes them one of the highest-leverage schema upgrades a cross-border store can make this quarter. A free scan at geovisora.com/audit will show whether a hero SKU already has this layer — and if not, where the gap is.