How to Let Shoppers Replace With the Same Item

Overview

Customers want products, not refunds. Even if they are not fully satisfied with the product they received, they would still prefer a simple exchange with a better alternative instead of returning it altogether. This simple barter is convenient for them and beneficial for your brand and cash flow.

AfterShip Returns’ replace with the same item exchange option offers to enable customers to opt for

• Variant-for-variant exchange: Exchanging a shirt in size Medium for a size Large or a shirt in Red for a shirt in Blue color.

• Different-priced variant exchanges: Exchanging a variant for a variant set at a different price point. Exchanging a shoe in size 12 originally bought for $18 for a shoe in size 13 priced at $17.

• Instant exchange: Getting an instant exchange by adding your card information to hold funds in the event of product return failure, which creates an exchange order for the replacement product immediately when the shopper submits a return request.

This way merchants can customize if they want customers to freely exchange when a product has different priced variants or restrict to certain priced variants.

What you’ll learn

In this article, we will show you:

• Set up resolution method

a. Variant options
b. Instant exchange
c. Replacement order creation
d. Cost of return checkout

• Customer experience
• RMA management

Configure replace with the same item exchange settings

1. Go to ** Refunds and exchanges ** in the AfterShip Returns admin
2. Move to the Exchange resolutions section and enable the Replace with the same item option
3. Edit the customer-facing content, including the title and description

4. Click Edit to configure the Advanced settings for the replace with the same item exchange resolution

There are three major setting under the advanced section

A. Variant options

• Under the Variant options settings, decide whether you want to offer customers an exchange for All variants or for ones at the same price or below

• For the Specific variants with a price, choose whether the variant should be no more than, less than, or equal to the original price

• Select the checkbox to Hide variants when out of stock or not meeting your selection above.

B. Instant exchange

Instant exchange allows you to enable customers to get their exchange items sent immediately when submitting a return request. This section requires to you set up hold amount and period within which customers are required to sent their items back to avoid the full charge. ** Read this article to know more **.

C. Replacement order creation

1. Replacement order value: You can choose to create the order on your eCommerce platform with:

• Total value as $0.00 (Available for Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce and SFCC)

• Full item value (Available for Shopify)

Based on the option selected the exchange order will be created of that value in your eCommerce store.

2. Automatically create a replacement order in store: Create exchange orders automatically when a shopper chooses to exchange the purchased item with the same item will help you manage returns better and streamline the return process further.

Configure when do you want the order to be created automatically by choosing one of the trigger statuses.

** Read this article to know more. **

D. Cost of return checkout

Connect your Stripe account and charge your customers cost of return for their replace with the same item requests during checkout.

1. Shift the toggle to the right to activate charging cost of return on the checkout page
2. Read through the terms of agreement for enabling the Stripe checkout and click Agree
3. Select the organization for which you are enabling the Stripe checkout and connect your Stripe account

To set up cost of return for replace with the same item requests, refer to this article.

D.a Cost of return checkout: Customer experience

After setting up your cost of return and your Stripe checkout account, your customers will see the total amount they need to pay including the cost of return. Upon clicking Pay and submit, customers would first have to pay the cost of return via Stripe before they can submit the RMA request.

b. If your Stripe account is not connected to charge the cost of return, though the cost of return will reflect in your price breakdown, our system won't be able to collect the cost of return from the customers and you need to collect it after the return request is created.

Customer experience

RMA management

Once the customer submits a return request, it will be automatically synced to AfterShip Returns Returns dashboard. From there on, you need to approve the request and create a new Shopify order to deliver the replacement item.

Here’s how

A new order to facilitate the exchange will be successfully created in your Shopify/BigCommerce/Salesforce Commerce Cloud/ WooCommerce account.

For any further questions or help, please contact our chat support team or reach out to us at support+returns@aftership.com.

Updated on: 15/04/2025