Holiday returns 2026: your December sales stay open until January 31, and the fees don't all come back

The short answer

Amazon: most items bought November 1 to December 31, 2026 can be returned through January 31, 2027. Apple-branded products bought in the same period must be back by January 15, 2027. That is from Amazon's customer return policy page, read November 3, 2026. Amazon's seller announcement says the window applies automatically to FBA and seller-fulfilled orders, that no action is needed, and that "this policy will apply every year."

Walmart: most items bought October 1 to December 31, 2026 can be returned through January 31, 2027, per Walmart's August 31, 2026 release note and its seller returns policy (last updated August 31, 2026). Exceptions include wireless phones, protection plans, major appliances, Dyson products, food and beverages, and select seasonal and luxury goods. Walmart's window is already running.

eBay and Etsy: neither has published a 2026 holiday return window. On eBay you choose no returns, 30 days or 60 days, buyer-paid or free (14 days in a few categories), and eBay's developer documentation says "eBay no longer supports holiday returns." On Etsy each listing carries a return policy you set. We did not find a holiday extension on either marketplace's help pages, and we are not carrying a past year's program forward as a 2026 one.

The money differs more than the dates do. The table compares the four from each marketplace's own pages. Where a figure comes only from a secondary source, the table says so.

What changed this year

Amazon's dates are the same shape as before: November and December purchases, end of January. What is new is the wording. Amazon's Seller Central post, "Extended return window for items bought in November and December 2026," says the policy "will apply every year" and that the change is "part of our effort to strengthen customer traffic during the year-end shopping season." Value Added Resource reports that line as a change from Amazon's previous annual announcements. If it holds, the January tail is no longer a seasonal exception to plan around but a permanent part of selling on Amazon in Q4.

Walmart starts a month earlier. Its holiday window covers purchases from October 1, so every Walmart order placed since then is already inside it. Walmart's standard rule, from the same returns policy, is a minimum 30-day window that starts seven days after the item's ship date, and a request made inside the window must be honored even if the return arrives after it closes.

eBay and Etsy have not added anything. eBay's return options are the ones on its "Setting up your return policy" page, and its Business Policies API marks the old holiday-returns field as deprecated. Etsy's help pages describe per-listing policies and say each seller is responsible for their own refund, exchange and return policies.

What a return costs you in marketplace fees

Amazon. Amazon's fee schedule credits you the referral fee on a refund minus a refund administration fee, the lesser of $5.00 or 20% of the referral fee. Amazon's fee-schedule page sits behind the Seller Central login, so we cite Amazon's wording as quoted by Amazon seller support and sellers in its public Seller Forums. Books, music, video and DVD items get all order-related fees back on a full refund. Secondary sources (MyProfit, Oct 22, 2026; SellerMagnet) add that the FBA fulfillment fee is not credited on a refund because the unit already shipped. For that fee at peak rates, use our Amazon holiday peak fee page rather than a number repeated here.

Amazon's FBA returns processing fee works on cohorts. Amazon's own Seller Central post says it counts the units of a product shipped in a month, tracks returns of those units through that month and the next two, and charges only the returned units above the category threshold, billing after the three months close: June shipments are charged in September. Products shipping fewer than 25 units in a month are exempt that month, and New Selection products get their first 20 returned units above the threshold waived. Apparel and shoes are charged on every return, with no threshold. The category thresholds and the rate card are on a Seller Central page we could not open without a login. As reported by Feedvisor (updated Feb 19, 2026) and MyProfit, the Home and Kitchen threshold is 8.1% and the 2026 rate card starts at $1.78 for a small standard-size unit. Treat those two figures as secondary until you see them in your own Seller Central.

Why the holiday window matters for that fee, by our reading of Amazon's rule: a November shipment's cohort runs November to January, and a December shipment's runs December to February. Every holiday return made by January 31 therefore lands inside the cohort of the month the unit shipped. On Amazon's billing pattern, the November cohort is charged in February and the December cohort in March, well after the sales were booked.

Walmart. Walmart's public pages do not say whether the referral fee comes back when a customer is refunded. Its retailer agreement (revision 07/2024) says you reimburse Walmart for cash refunds it makes to customers. Its return-dispute guide (updated Feb 19, 2025) says approved disputes reimburse sale proceeds but not return shipping or referral fees. One secondary source, Retail Reason (updated Sep 6, 2026), says a full refund reverses the sale's commission in the Payments Report. Walmart's payments guide (updated Sep 24, 2026) lists a Transaction Type column that marks sales and refunds and a "Commission from Sale" column, so check that column on your own refund lines. Walmart also refunds the customer when the returned package is first scanned by the carrier, before you see the item.

eBay. eBay's Fee credits page credits the variable final value fee on refunds. On a full refund for a remorse reason, such as "changed my mind" or "doesn't fit", it also credits the per-order fixed amount. On a not-as-described return, an item-not-received refund, a voluntary partial refund or an accepted payment dispute, the per-order amount is not credited. Partial refunds earn proportional credits.

Etsy. Etsy's refund article says that if you refund through Shop Manager, your transaction and processing fees for the refunded transactions are refunded to your Payment account automatically, and listing fees are credited only if you also cancel. Refunds through Etsy Payments are possible for 180 days after payment. If you refund outside Etsy after that, Etsy can't refund your seller fees.

• The table assumes one item, no buyer-paid shipping and no sales tax. eBay and Etsy both charge on shipping you collect, and eBay also charges on collected tax, so real orders differ.
• Our hypothetical FBA cohort: 1,000 units of a Home and Kitchen product ship in December. At the reported 8.1% threshold the first 81 returns are free. If 120 come back by the end of February, 39 are charged. At the reported $3.39 rate for a 12 to 16 oz large standard-size unit, that is about $132, billed in March. Both rates are secondary, so check your own Return Insights numbers.

Why it matters: January is where Q4 margin gets settled

A November 1 Amazon order has 91 days to come back. A Walmart order from October 1 has 122. That is our arithmetic from the published dates, and it means the December revenue in your dashboard is provisional until February. On Amazon, the fee consequences of those returns arrive in February and March. On Walmart, the refund goes out at the first carrier scan, before you can inspect what comes back.

The shipping cost lands on you on three of the four marketplaces. Walmart forbids return-shipping charges to customers outright. Amazon promises buyers a free return option on most items, and on seller-fulfilled orders you provide the address, the label or the returnless refund. On eBay, a not-as-described return is always on you, and eBay's Money Back Guarantee treats an item that "arrived after the latest estimated delivery date" as not matching the listing. Etsy's Purchase Protection covers late arrivals too: Etsy pays up to $250 of the refund and charges the rest to the seller, per its sellers' refunds article.

That is the link to our 2026 holiday shipping cutoffs piece. A ground order that misses Christmas is more than an upgrade you didn't charge for. On eBay it turns a buyer-paid remorse return into a seller-paid one, and you keep paying the $0.40 per-order fee.

The October Intelligence Dossier argues that returns are an acquisition metric, not just an operations cost: buyers who arrive through accurate fit and condition content return less, and it puts the return policy among the structured product data shopping agents read. Hypothesis, not measured: for small sellers this season, a clear return policy and accurate delivery dates will cut January returns more than any change to the return window itself.

What to do this week

Each of these is a setting you can change today, before the Cyber Week orders arrive.

• Amazon FBA: open Return Insights on the FBA Returns page and list the ASINs near their category threshold. The November and December cohorts will absorb every holiday return through January 31. Fix the listing causes, such as size charts, dimensions and photos, now, while those cohorts are still small.
• Amazon seller-fulfilled: decide your returnless-refund ceiling. Below it, the return label and handling cost more than the item is worth. Don't plan on restocking fees: Amazon's refund-workflow rules allow none on in-policy returns in original condition, only on used, damaged, materially different or out-of-policy returns. A fee of 20% or more needs a photo, and you have two business days from receipt to refund.
• Walmart: your window opened October 1. Set Keep It rules by department and price limit for low-value items, and Partial Keep It rules for return reasons where a partial refund beats a round trip. Make sure your return center is a valid US address that isn't a P.O. box. Then reconcile refund lines in the Payments Report, including the Commission from Sale column.
• eBay: make the 30- or 60-day choice deliberately. A 60-day policy covers November gifts through January but brings in more late returns, and some of those come back after the selling season. If you only want it on giftable items, create a second return policy and apply it to those listings. Set auto-refund rules for items too cheap to ship back.
• Etsy: every physical listing outside the EU needs a return policy, even "no returns", or Etsy may show it lower in search. Post your holiday terms in your listings and shop announcement, and refund through Shop Manager within 180 days so your fees come back.
• Everywhere: work your order-by dates back from the carrier cutoffs in our shipping cutoffs piece. A late delivery turns into a seller-paid return on eBay and a Purchase Protection claim on Etsy.
• Price returns into the margin you plan with, using the Amazon, Walmart, eBay and Etsy fee pages, or the fee comparison by item price for low-ticket items.

What we are watching next

Amazon's 2027 US fee announcement, expected December to January. Forecast F5 on our forecast scorecard says it holds headline referral rates but raises net cost through surcharges or restructuring, and it resolves by April 30, 2027, graded hit or miss. A change to the returns processing fee's rate card or thresholds would count as the kind of restructuring F5 describes, so we will track it there.

January 14, 2027: Amazon's peak fulfillment fees end, per our peak fee page. January 15: Apple-branded holiday returns close on Amazon. January 31, 2027: the Amazon and Walmart holiday windows close. February and March 2027: by Amazon's own billing pattern, returns processing fees for November and December shipments post. We will update this piece if eBay or Etsy announce anything for 2026, and log any fee change on the fee change log. Marketplace moves are tracked on the Intelligence hub.

Questions sellers ask

Answers as of November 3, 2026.

When is the Amazon holiday return deadline for 2026?

January 31, 2027, for most items purchased November 1 to December 31, 2026. Apple-branded products bought in that period must be returned by January 15, 2027. It applies automatically to FBA and seller-fulfilled orders, per Amazon.

When is the Walmart holiday return deadline for 2026?

January 31, 2027, for most items purchased October 1 to December 31, 2026. Wireless phones, protection plans, major appliances, Dyson products, food and beverages, and select seasonal and luxury goods can be excepted, per Walmart Marketplace Learn.

Does eBay have a holiday return policy in 2026?

Not one that eBay has published. Your listing's return policy applies: no returns, 30 days or 60 days, buyer-paid or free, and 14 days in a few categories. eBay's Money Back Guarantee still covers items that don't match the listing or that arrive late.

Does Etsy extend return windows for the holidays?

We found no Etsy holiday extension for 2026. Each listing carries the return policy you set. Etsy's simple template is 30 days from delivery, with the buyer paying return shipping.

Does Amazon refund the referral fee when I refund a customer?

Yes, minus a refund administration fee of the lesser of $5.00 or 20% of the referral fee, per Amazon's fee schedule as quoted in Amazon's Seller Forums. On a $30 item in a 15% category, Amazon keeps $0.90.

What is Amazon's FBA returns processing fee?

A per-unit fee on returned FBA units: every return in apparel and shoes, and in other categories only the returns above the category's threshold, measured over the shipping month and the next two. Products shipping fewer than 25 units in a month are exempt that month.

Can I charge a restocking fee on holiday returns?

On Amazon seller-fulfilled orders, only for used, damaged, materially different or out-of-policy returns, never for in-policy returns in original condition. On Walmart, only on return-exempt items not in original condition, up to 20% of the item price. On eBay and Etsy, you can deduct the loss in value when an item comes back used or damaged.

Who pays return shipping if my holiday package arrives late?

On eBay, you do: eBay treats an item that arrived after the latest estimated delivery date as not matching the listing. On Etsy, a late arrival can be covered by Purchase Protection, which pays up to $250 of the refund and charges the rest to you.