What Google is actually checking
The rejection message names your return policy, which sends most people to rewrite the policy page. That is rarely where the problem is.
Merchant Center holds return settings as structured data inside your account, separate from whatever your website says. Review checks that the structured settings exist, that a corresponding policy is reachable on your site, and that the two agree. A beautifully written policy page with nothing configured in account settings fails every time.
The three settings that cause most rejections
Across the feeds we have rebuilt for our own stores and for clients, rejections cluster in the same places.
- Return window left unset in Merchant Center, or set to a period your site page contradicts
- No policy page reachable from the site footer, or one hidden behind a checkout step
- Who pays return shipping stated on the site but not configured in account settings
- A restocking fee mentioned on the page and absent from the structured settings
The fix, in order
Do these in sequence, because the later steps depend on the earlier ones being correct.
- Open Merchant Center, go to account settings, then Shipping and returns, and create a return policy with an explicit window
- State who pays return shipping and any conditions, matching exactly what your site page says
- Publish or update the policy page on your site and link it from the footer so it is reachable without a login
- Request review, then wait. Reviews are not instant and resubmitting repeatedly does not accelerate them
Why repeated resubmission makes it worse
Resubmitting without changing anything simply requeues the same account for the same check, and the same result. Each cycle costs days. The productive move is to fix all three layers at once and submit a single time.
If the rejection persists after a correct fix, check that the policy page returns a 200 and is not blocked in robots.txt. A policy page that reviewers cannot reach reads to the system as a policy that does not exist.
Key takeaways
- The rejection is about configuration, not wording
- Account settings, site page and the two agreeing are all required
- Fix everything before resubmitting, because each review cycle costs days
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