The percentage of tracked, commissionable sales that are later reversed due to returns, cancellations, chargebacks, or fraud, calculated against total tracked sales over a given period. A high reversal rate signals a quality or attribution problem worth investigating rather than a one-off anomaly.
An advertiser tracks 1,000 sales in a month and reverses 90 of them after returns processing, giving a 9 percent reversal rate that the affiliate manager flags as higher than the program's usual 4 percent average.
It varies by industry, with fashion and apparel typically running higher due to returns, and digital or subscription products running lower. There is no single accepted benchmark figure; advertisers should track their own baseline over time and investigate any sustained rise rather than compare against another program's rate.
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