The short version
AI agents answer policy questions from text. A support agent reads your policy pages. A shopping assistant reads what your store publishes. If the text is vague, the agent will be vague, or it will guess.
On Shopify, your written policies live in Settings > Policies1. Your return rules, the settings that actually decide which returns are accepted, live in a separate place, and Shopify says the generated policy "doesn't automatically include the return rules that you set up"2. Most policy mistakes an agent makes start in the gap between those two.
Write each policy so a stranger could answer five questions from it without asking you: how many days, from when, which items, who pays, and what happens next.
What can go wrong
The policy and the settings disagree. Return rules let you pick a window of 14, 30 or 90 days, unlimited, or a custom number of days. The window can start at delivery of each item or of the last item2. If your policy page says "30 days from purchase" and your rules say "30 days from delivery," an agent will quote the page. Your system will apply the rules. The shopper hears both.
Fees that are not written down. Return rules can charge a flat return shipping fee or a restocking fee as a percentage. Shopify notes that "return fees aren't automatically deducted from refunds"2. If your page does not name the fee and the amount, an agent cannot tell the shopper, and the refund will surprise them.
Final sale with no list. You can mark products or collections as final sale, and customers then cannot request returns or cancellations for them2. "Sale items are final" on a policy page does not tell an agent which items those are.
Words instead of numbers. "Fast shipping," "most orders," "a reasonable time" and "contact us for details" give an agent nothing to quote. It will either repeat the phrase or fill the gap itself.
Policy text in images or PDFs. An agent that reads page text may skip a shipping table posted as an image.
What to set up
1. Use the Shopify policy pages. In the admin, go to Settings > Policies and fill in the written policies. Shopify supports return, privacy, terms of service, shipping, legal notice and subscription policies. Each one gets a fixed address on your domain, such as /policies/refund-policy and /policies/shipping-policy. Shopify links them in the checkout footer, shows the return policy on the order review page, and links the shipping policy from product pages and the cart1. Developers and apps can read the same text through the Storefront API, where the Shop object has refundPolicy and shippingPolicy fields3. Keeping your policies here, not on a custom page, means every reader finds them in the same place.
2. Use templates as a start only. Shopify can insert a template, in English and a few other languages1. Shopify also says "you're responsible for following your published policies"1. Rewrite the template with your own numbers.
3. Set the return rules first, then write the page. Set the window, the start point, fees and final sale items in the return rules2. Then copy each value into the policy page word for word. When you change one, change the other the same day.
4. Write in short, numbered facts. For a hypothetical store selling bags, the return section could read:
Returns: 30 days from the day the order is delivered. Condition: unused, with tags on. Final sale: items in the Outlet collection. These cannot be returned or exchanged. Return shipping: $6 per return, taken from your refund. Free if the item arrived damaged. Restocking fee: none. Refunds: to the original payment method, within 5 business days after we receive the item. Exchanges: for a different size or color of the same product, if in stock.
The shipping section should list each region you ship to, the price or the free-shipping threshold, and the delivery time in business days. Name the regions you do not ship to. An agent asked about an unserved country (X-06) should find a plain "We do not ship to …" line, not silence.
5. Cover cancellations. State until when an order can be cancelled, for example "until it is marked as fulfilled," and how. Agents get asked this often (S-08).
6. Add the answers you give most often. Shopify's Knowledge Base app lets you customize or create answers about your store for AI platforms. These FAQs are not shown on your storefront4. Shopify says the app can make AI answers more accurate, but it "doesn't affect how often your store appears" in AI results4. Use it for questions your policies do not answer directly, and keep it consistent with the policy pages.
How to check it
Run the five-question test. For each policy, ask a colleague, or a general AI assistant given only the page text, to answer: how many days, from when, which items, who pays, what happens next. Every answer should be a number or a named list.
Ask the agents that serve your store. Ask your support agent, and any shopping assistant that lists your products, these questions:
- "Can I return this 35 days after it arrived?" (S-05)
- "Can I return this 10 days after it arrived?" (S-04)
- "Can I swap this for a medium?" (S-03)
- "Can I return an Outlet item?"
- "Do you ship to [a country you do not serve]?" (X-06)
- "What is your return policy?" before buying (X-07)
Compare each answer with your return rules, not your memory.
Check the Knowledge Base metrics. The app shows how many questions come from AI agents, which questions shoppers ask, and whether AI can answer them4. Questions it cannot answer tell you which sentence to add next.
Re-check after every change. A new return window, a new carrier or a new final-sale collection means three edits: the return rules, the policy page and any custom FAQ.