AfterShip Returns & Exchanges

I had an extremely frustrating experience with AfterShip Returns and honestly regret wasting so much time setting it up.

As a Shopify business owner, I spent HOURS configuring their return portal, workflows, customer messaging, replacement flows, uploads, and policies — only to discover that one of the most basic and essential return workflow features was locked behind a more expensive plan.

Our business simply wanted to approve replacements without forcing customers to return low-value items. This is a completely normal workflow for modern ecommerce businesses. Instead, the system keeps showing customers return shipping instructions and “items you need to return,” which creates confusion and a terrible customer experience.

What makes this worse is:

• Slow customer support responses
• Being passed between multiple agents
• Generic copy-paste replies
• Wasting time explaining the same issue repeatedly
• Basic functionality hidden behind higher pricing tiers

The most disappointing part is that this wasn’t some advanced enterprise feature. It was a simple operational requirement that many Shopify stores would reasonably expect to have access to.

After spending hours onboarding and customizing everything, they eventually told me the feature required upgrading to a more expensive Pro plan just to allow “keep the item” returns/replacements.

So basically:

1. Spend hours setting everything up
2. Discover critical workflow limitations later
3. Pay more money to unlock practical functionality

This feels incredibly misleading from a merchant perspective.

The support team kept apologizing, but apologies don’t give businesses back their wasted time. The overall experience felt designed to push users into higher-tier plans after they are already invested in the setup process.

If you’re considering AfterShip Returns for a serious ecommerce operation, I strongly recommend testing EVERY workflow limitation first before committing time to setup.

For us, this was a huge waste of time, energy, and effort.

To your reply -> thanks for offering printer less returns with Green returns for extra 40 USD a month - completely worth it . Next time do let people know how to use the printerless returns with the green return option

Arun was very patient and explained the process clearly. They were also very understanding of a mishap regarding the service request at the beginning on my end. Overall great experience.

Abhishek is the GOAT of customer service. We needed to retrieve some information from a record that has been archived, and he provided quick and efficient support. Kudos.