Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, founder and CEO of Enjoy Pets, often points out a detail that most pet e-commerce operators overlook when they assume returns barely apply to their category: a customer rarely needs to return an opened bag of food or a used litter box, so it is tempting to treat the whole return policy conversation as irrelevant here. That assumption is only half right, and the half it gets wrong costs more trust than most sellers realize.
Why the assumption feels reasonable
Unlike clothing, where sizing issues make returns routine, or electronics, where a customer might simply change their mind, most pet consumables cannot go back once opened for basic hygiene and safety reasons. Food, litter and grooming products fall into a category where a genuine no-questions return of a used item is neither realistic nor something a responsible seller should even want to offer.
That real constraint, explains Hugo Galvao, is where many pet businesses stop thinking about returns altogether, treating the policy page as a formality rather than something that shapes whether a customer buys in the first place.
What the data on return policies actually shows
The mistake in that reasoning is treating a return policy as something that only matters when it gets used. Research on shopper behavior consistently shows that a return policy influences the decision to buy long before any return actually happens. A meaningful share of shoppers check a retailer’s return policy before completing a purchase, and roughly half of consumers say they have stopped shopping somewhere entirely because of an unfavorable one. Customers are also considerably more likely to buy again from a brand with a generous, clearly stated policy than one that leaves the question vague or buried in fine print.
None of that requires accepting returns on opened food. Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho comments that it requires the policy itself to be clear, visible and genuinely reassuring, rather than absent or confusing.
What a smart pet-specific policy actually looks like
The right approach for pet products is not copying a fashion retailer’s blanket returns model. It is being specific about the cases that genuinely matter to a pet owner: what happens if a bag arrives damaged in transit, if the wrong product ships, or if an item arrives close to its expiry date. Being explicit and generous on exactly these scenarios, with a fast replacement rather than a slow refund process, addresses the actual anxiety a pet owner has when buying online, without pretending an opened food bag can safely be swapped out for a refund.
Communicating clearly why unopened, unused hygiene and food items cannot be returned, rather than leaving that as an unexplained gap in the policy, also does real work. A shopper who understands the reasoning trusts the seller more than one left to assume the store is simply avoiding responsibility.
Turning a gap into a trust signal
Treated this way, a return and exchange policy becomes less about processing returns and more about answering the specific worry a pet owner has before clicking buy: what happens if something goes wrong with an order for an animal that cannot advocate for itself. A policy that answers that question clearly, even while being honest about what genuinely cannot be returned, does more to earn a first-time buyer’s trust than a generic returns page copied from an unrelated category.
Hugo Galvao concludes by stating that, for a business built on repeat purchases, that first moment of trust is worth far more attention than most pet e-commerce operations currently give it.
