Almost half of the people who wanted one did not get a clean return. 49 percent of social shoppers have wanted to return a social purchase. Of those, 25 percent found it easy. The rest found it difficult, gave up, or were never able to return the item at all.
Nobody publishes social-specific returns data, so this question is usually answered with general ecommerce numbers. Those numbers describe a mature returns infrastructure that social commerce does not have. Half the market has never needed a return. For the half that did, the process failed as often as it worked.
The full split across all 1,000 shoppers:
- 51 percent have not wanted to return anything
- 25 percent returned it, and the process was easy
- 14 percent returned it, but the process was difficult or frustrating
- 6 percent started the return and gave up
- 4 percent wanted to return something and were never able to
Read the bottom three rows together. 24 percent of all shoppers, which is almost half of everyone who wanted a return, either fought for it, quit, or were shut out. The 10 percent who gave up or were never able to return the item are the number to sit with. They did not get their money back and they did not get the product they wanted. That is the worst outcome this channel can produce, and it lands on 1 in 10 social shoppers.
It matters more than its size suggests because of what shoppers say they need before they buy. A clear return and refund policy is the second strongest trust signal in our data, at 83 percent, ahead of a verified seller and ahead of customer reviews. Shoppers are telling you the return policy is load bearing. Half of them have not tested whether it holds. Among the half who have, it held about half the time.
The exposure grows with the channel. Returns friction is a problem that stays quiet while volume is low and becomes the story once it is not.
The full data, including the cross-tabs behind these findings, is in the Social Commerce Intelligence Report 2026. The free executive summary covers the headline findings. The full report (PDF) is available at three license tiers.
ScrollSignal is an independent B2B research firm publishing original consumer research on social commerce. No platform funding. No sponsored findings. n = 1,000 active US social media shoppers, ages 18 to 64, fielded April 2026, stratified to US Census on age, gender, and region.