Onward never declines a return on its own because of fraud. A suspicious return, whether from return abuse, a disputed order, or a risky original purchase, is either stopped before the customer can start it, or held so your team can review it before approving.
Step 1: The customer looks up their order
Before a customer can start a return in the Return Portal, Onward checks the order. Two situations stop the return here:
Situation | What the customer sees |
You've marked the customer as fraudulent (see Blocking a customer below) | "We are unable to process returns for this order." |
The order has a chargeback dispute that is open or was decided against you | "We're sorry, but a return cannot be requested for this order due to an active dispute." |
In both cases no return request is created, so nothing appears on your Returns page.
What a Fraudulent Customer sees when they try to create a new return
Step 2: The customer submits the return
When a return is submitted, Onward collects the fraud signals available for it:
Shopify's fraud analysis of the order. This includes Shopify's own risk level and the results of any fraud-prevention apps on your store that report to Shopify. Onward refreshes it at submission, so it reflects anything that changed after the order was placed.
OnwardVision photo review. When it's enabled for your store, Onward reviews the photos customers upload with their return items.
The return takes the highest risk level reported by any signal:
Fraud risk | What it means | Automatic approval |
Low | No signal flagged the return, or no signal was available. | Runs as configured. |
Medium | At least one signal recommends review, such as a Medium risk level from Shopify. | Skipped. The return waits for manual approval. |
High | At least one signal failed the return, such as a High risk level from Shopify. | Skipped. The return waits for manual approval. |
A Medium or High return is held even when Automatically approve returns is on, and even when an Exception would otherwise approve it. Its history records "Return must be manually approved due to potential fraud risk." Fraud risk affects approval only; the return's processing and restocking settings are unchanged.
Step 3: Your team reviews the held return
Held returns wait for approval on the Returns page, marked with a warning icon. Hover over the icon to see the risk summary.
On the return itself, the risk shows in three places:
Header badge — Medium Fraud Risk or High Fraud Risk next to the return's status. Low-risk returns show no badge.
Fraud Risk card in the sidebar — the risk level, a one-line summary, and two lists: Risk Factors (what raised the risk) and Trust Factors (what lowered it). Each factor names its source in parentheses, for example the fraud-prevention app that reported it.
Analyzed by OnwardVision™ — on each item with reviewed photos, the photo review's findings.
Return Request with High Fraud Risk
OnwardVision with failing fraud checks
After reviewing, approve or decline the return as usual. See Viewing & Managing an Individual Return.
Blocking a customer
To stop a specific customer from starting new returns, mark them as fraudulent:
Go to Customers and open the customer. You can also click the customer's name in the Customer card on one of their returns.
Click Mark as Fraudulent, then confirm.
The customer's page shows a red Fraudulent badge. From then on, the customer can't start a return in the Return Portal or file a package protection claim. Returns already submitted aren't affected; review them individually.
To reverse it, open the customer and click Unblock Customer. Marking a customer is also available to AI assistants through the set_customer_fraudulent tool in the Onward MCP.
How to flag a customer as fraudulent to block them from Returns and Claims.
Considerations
Onward doesn't block a customer from returns automatically. Blocking happens only when someone on your team marks the customer.
To send returns from repeat or high-risk returners to manual review without blocking them, add an Exception to Automatically approve returns using the Customer Score condition. See Using Exceptions in Returns Settings.
Caveats
The block is tied to the customer's record in Onward. An order placed under a different customer record, for example with another email address, isn't blocked.
Shopify's fraud analysis is only as complete as what Shopify and your fraud-prevention apps report. If none of them assess an order, the return shows Low risk.
Related features
Automatically approve returns — the setting fraud risk overrides
Using Exceptions in Returns Settings — route returns to review by Customer Score or tags
The Returns Page — where held returns wait for approval
Viewing & Managing an Individual Return — approving or declining a held return