When requesting a return through Ask the Cat, here are some rules that you should, in almost all cases, follow:

1. Do not remove/change items from an order that is in printed/shipped. Doing this can cause issues with inventory, so it should generally be avoided. There are some exceptions to this, such as the case in which a customer did not apply a gift card to his/her first order, and we add one after the fact.

2. You do not always need to generate a credit on the account. This is one of those long-standing rules we have had that was originally designed to make Agent Support's job easier, but what it has done instead is necessitated phone agents creating workarounds that result in credits, which is not our ideal solution. With a few exceptions (such as the recent closeout sale) there are only five ways that credits are organically created:

a. Removing items from an order in Accepted that is already paid
b. Changing the shipping amount for an order to refund shipping
c. Adding a gift card to an order after it has been paid
d. Cancelling an order entirely
e. Moving payment from a retail order to membership order in the 3-step process

Anything outside of these five scenarios should be relayed to Agent Support without creating a credit first, at which point they will do the necessary follow-ups in order to make sure that the refund is correctly processed.

3. If you submit a refund request the day the order was placed, it will not be processed until the following business day. It takes 24 hours for us to capture the payment and refund the order. When giving the customer an ETA for the refund, keep in mind this potential delay.

4. Below is an example of how refund requests should be formatted. All fields should be filled out, and the Order Number should be in the subject line, to facilitate searching for the request