How Do I Stop AI Quoting Old Refund, Cancellation or Shipping Policies?
To stop AI quoting old refund, cancellation or shipping policies, find every place the old policy still lives and retire it. Then make one current policy page per topic the clearest source. Old versions survive in help-centre articles, PDFs, duplicate FAQ answers, app store descriptions, deal sites and review articles. They also survive in past promotions that read as permanent terms. Remove or redirect the old versions, and state current terms in plain sentences, with thresholds and exceptions. Keep your product feeds and structured data consistent with the page. Mark temporary offers as temporary, so a holiday free-returns promotion is not repeated all year. Then retest the questions customers actually ask, because the wrong answer usually traces to one surviving page.
Where do old policies survive?
- Help-centre articles written for an old policy and never archived.
- Old policy URLs, such as /returns-2024, still live and linked from somewhere.
- PDFs: terms and conditions, printed inserts and supplier documents.
- Duplicate answers: the same question answered differently on the FAQ, the checkout help text and the product page.
- App store listings and marketplace storefronts with their own policy text.
- Third-party pages: coupon and deal sites, review articles and comparison tables that describe your terms.
- Promotions: banners, emails and press releases for limited offers, such as "free returns through January", that lack an end date in text.
Search your own site for key terms, such as "free shipping", "30 days", "cancel anytime" and "refund", and list every page that states a policy. Then search the web for your brand with those terms. The pages AI answers cite will usually be on one of these lists. How content updates can change what gets cited is covered in why ChatGPT citations disappear after a website redesign or content update.
What should the current policy pages say?
One page per topic, each at a stable URL, with the terms in plain sentences:
- Shipping: cost by order value and destination, any free-shipping threshold, delivery times, and who qualifies for member benefits.
- Returns: the window in days, who pays return shipping, how to return, refund method and timing, and exceptions such as final-sale or perishable items.
- Cancellation: for orders and for subscriptions separately, with deadlines, methods and any fees.
Put the headline term in the first sentence: "Standard delivery costs $7.99. Orders over $75 ship free within the US." Keep exceptions next to the rule they modify. Avoid dating the page as "Updated [date]" only in the footer while the text is out of date. Update the text itself.
How should meal kit companies audit AI answers about cancellation and subscription flexibility?
Subscription terms are where old policies do the most damage. Customers ask before signing up and again before cancelling, and wrong answers create complaints. Audit the questions customers ask:
| Question | Current fact to check against |
|---|---|
| "How do I cancel [brand]?" | Method (online, app, phone) and any deadline before the next box |
| "Does [brand] have a cancellation fee?" | Fees, if any, and whether discounted first boxes change the terms |
| "Can I skip a week or pause [brand]?" | Skip and pause options, limits and how far ahead |
| "When is the deadline to change my [brand] order?" | Cut-off day and time for changes each week |
| "Can I get a refund for a [brand] box?" | Refund rules for delivered perishable boxes, damaged items and late deliveries |
| "Is [brand] cheaper after the first box?" | What the price becomes after an introductory offer |
Run each question several times across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI features. Score each answer as current, outdated or wrong, and record the source. Outdated answers often come from review articles written at launch, when cancellation was phone-only or introductory offers differed.
Be precise about the law as well as the policy. In the US, the FTC's "click-to-cancel" amendments to its Negative Option Rule were vacated by the Eighth Circuit on 8 July 2025, and the FTC restarted the rulemaking in 2026. The federal Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act still requires clear disclosure, express consent and a simple way to stop recurring charges online. State automatic renewal laws also apply, such as California's, which AB 2863 amended with changes effective 1 July 2025. In the UK, the statutory right to cancel distance purchases does not cover goods that deteriorate rapidly. That is why a change-of-mind refund on a delivered meal kit box is a matter for your refund policy, not a cooling-off right. Boxes that arrive damaged, spoiled or late are different: UK customers keep their Consumer Rights Act 2015 rights to a repair, replacement or refund, so say that on the refund page too. Say plainly which rules your policy follows, so assistants do not fill the gap with a general rule.
Why does ChatGPT say we offer free shipping when our shipping terms require a paid delivery fee?
Because something it reads says "free shipping", and nothing nearby says when. Common sources:
- A threshold dropped in summary. "Free shipping on orders over $75" becomes "free shipping".
- A past promotion. A holiday "free shipping this weekend" banner, email or press release still online.
- Subscriber or member benefits. "Free shipping for members" read as applying to everyone.
- First-order offers. "Your first box ships free" read as the standing policy.
- Feeds and markup. A product feed or structured data with a shipping rate of zero, often a platform default nobody changed.
- Third-party pages: deal sites and review articles written during a promotion.
State the fee and the conditions together: "Delivery is $9.99 per box. Delivery is free on your first box only." Check your Merchant Center shipping settings and any shipping values in your product markup. Ask deal sites and reviewers to update pages that still describe the old offer. Where a promotion is temporary, give its end date in the text.
Which schema fields describe free returns versus customer-paid returns?
Google's return policy structured data uses MerchantReturnPolicy, set for your organisation or overridden for individual products. The returnFees property takes one of three supported values:
| Value | Meaning in Google's documentation | Extra field |
|---|---|---|
FreeReturn |
There's no charge to the consumer to return the product | Do not add a fee amount |
ReturnFeesCustomerResponsibility |
The consumer handles and pays for return shipping themselves | Do not add a fee amount |
ReturnShippingFees |
The merchant charges the consumer a return shipping fee | Add returnShippingFeesAmount with the non-zero amount |
Related fields include merchantReturnDays for the window, returnMethod for how items come back, restockingFee, and separate fields for customer-remorse and defective-item returns. The latter let you mark defective returns as free while charging for change-of-mind returns.
For shipping, Google's merchant shipping policy markup uses ShippingService with ShippingConditions. Each condition can set an orderValue range and a shippingRate. The documentation says to use 0 as the value for free shipping, so a threshold is a condition with a minimum order value and a rate of zero. Conditions can also carry a seasonalOverride for a limited period. Member-only shipping can be marked with validForMemberTier, and Google requires at least one regular, non-member shipping service alongside it.
Markup helps only when it matches the page. Assistants that read your text will still quote the text.
How do you retire an old policy properly?
- Remove or redirect old policy URLs to the current page.
- Archive help-centre articles that describe old terms, or rewrite them to the current terms.
- Replace PDFs, and redirect old PDF URLs.
- Update app store and marketplace text the same day as the website.
- Update feeds and markup at the same time as the page.
- Ask third parties that describe your terms to update them, starting with the ones AI answers cite.
- Retest after two weeks.
How to handle old prices in the same way is covered in why AI quotes your old prices, plans or pricing tiers.
What might an illustrative case look like?
Consider an illustrative apparel retailer that ended free returns and began charging $6.95 per return. Six weeks later, ChatGPT and Perplexity still said returns were free, citing its help-centre article and a review site. The help centre had two return articles, one never updated, and the product markup still used FreeReturn. A holiday "free returns" banner was also still live on a gift guide page. The retailer merged the help articles and redirected the old one. It changed the markup to ReturnShippingFees with the amount, removed the banner and asked the review site to update. Within a month, most answers gave the $6.95 fee.
What do people ask about AI and policy answers?
Should we delete old policy pages or keep them for reference?
Redirect them to the current page. If you need a record, keep it internally rather than on a public URL.
How quickly do answers change after a policy update?
Search-based answers can change within weeks once old sources are gone. Model-knowledge answers take longer.
Should the policy page show the change date?
It can, as long as the text itself is current. A clear date helps customers and assistants tell the current terms from older descriptions.
Published by The Kovmere Team · updated Sep 29, 2026 · More resources