The United States remains one of the world's largest and most mature cross-border e-commerce markets. Entering 2025, online consumption in the US maintained steady growth, with online penetration rates for categories such as apparel, home furnishings, and consumer electronics continuing to rise. As "free returns" and "no-questions-asked returns" gradually become standard features of US e-commerce, returns are no longer isolated incidents but rather a fixed cost that cross-border sellers must face in their daily operations.
As order volumes continue to expand, the issue of returns is shifting from an "after-sales problem" to a core element directly impacting profits and cash flow. This makes "how to handle returns in the US" a question that more and more cross-border sellers must plan ahead for.
Behind the growth of US cross-border e-commerce, returns have become an unavoidable factor.
From a consumer behavior perspective, US consumers exhibit a strong tendency to try on and test items when shopping online. Ordering multiple sizes and colors and then returning some items is a very common shopping practice. Multiple industry studies indicate that the average return rate for online orders in the US is significantly higher than that of offline retail, particularly for categories such as apparel and footwear.
For cross-border sellers, order growth often means a corresponding increase in returns. Insufficient return processing capacity quickly exposes a host of problems: slow refunds, disorganized inventory, and uncontrolled costs, ultimately impacting store ratings and repurchase rates.
The Most Common Real-World Problems Cross-Border Sellers Encounter with US Returns
Many sellers find that US returns are far more complex than they imagined.
First, there's the cost pressure. Returning goods directly back to China incurs international shipping, customs clearance, and related taxes; for some items, the return cost can even approach or exceed the value of the goods themselves.
Second, there's the time cost. Cross-border returns often take weeks or even months to process. Slow refund processing ties up capital for extended periods, negatively impacting cash flow.
More importantly, there's the low efficiency of handling returned goods. Lacking local quality inspection and sorting capabilities, returned items often have to be cleared out at low prices or scrapped, wasting potentially resaleable inventory.
As return volumes increase, these problems amplify, directly impacting the seller's overall operational rhythm.
From "Return to China" to "Local Processing": Sellers' Mindsets Are Changing
Against this backdrop, more and more cross-border sellers are re-evaluating their return processes. Instead of sending goods long distances back to China, it's better to receive, inspect, and process them locally in the US, then decide their next destination based on their condition.
The core change in this approach is that returns are no longer just a "return," but a process of reassessing inventory. Whether the goods can be resold, whether they are worth returning, or whether they need to be destroyed can all be decided quickly locally. The key to achieving this is having a stable and controllable US return warehouse as support.
U-Speed US Return Warehouses: Providing Actionable Return Solutions for Cross-Border Sellers
Based on the actual needs of cross-border sellers, U-Speed has established two major return warehouses in the US—one in the East Coast and one in the West Coast—covering major consumer areas and logistics hubs, helping sellers handle domestic US returns more efficiently.
U-Speed's East Coast (New Jersey) return warehouse covers approximately 7,250 square meters and has a daily processing capacity of over 20,000 returns. The U-Speed West Coast (Los Angeles) return warehouse is also 7,250 square meters and can handle over 10,000 returns daily.
Both warehouses are equipped with forklifts, light and heavy-duty shelving, fire protection and monitoring systems, and implement 24-hour security and CCTV surveillance to ensure the safety and traceability of returned goods within the warehouses.
The process from return receipt to processing completion is clearer.
In terms of execution, U-Speed's US return warehouses do more than just "provide an address."
After returned goods arrive at the warehouse, quality inspection can be completed within 2 days, and the product status can be reported simultaneously. Subsequent return logistics processing takes 3-5 days, helping sellers complete refunds or inventory adjustments more quickly.
In terms of team configuration, the Chinese return business management team centrally controls the process, while the local Chinese team in the US handles on-site operations, working in conjunction with a professional customer service team to reduce information discrepancies caused by cross-time zone communication. Returns are no longer an isolated process, but an integral part of the supply chain.
In addition to the return service itself, U-Speed also provides local US warehousing and dropshipping services, integrating returns and forward logistics into a unified service system.
For cross-border sellers, this means that after returned goods undergo quality inspection, they can be relisted, shipped locally, or processed in other ways depending on the actual situation, without frequently contacting multiple service providers, thus reducing overall management costs.
With the continued development of cross-border e-commerce in the US, returns have become an unavoidable operating cost. The real difference lies not in whether returns are available, but in whether returns are controllable, efficient, and capable of generating value.
For cross-border sellers, choosing a suitable US return service provider is essentially about "shock absorption" for the entire supply chain. When return processing is clear and stable enough, front-end sales can go further.
