A parcel coming back runs the bench in reverse, and it is booked in before it is opened

Returns arrive at the same collection door the outbound run leaves from, and they are the one kind of parcel that is logged before anything about it is touched. The reason is simple: once a carton is open, nobody can say afterwards what state it arrived in. The route below is the order the bench works in, and the order it writes things down in.

Correspondence about a parcel on its way back goes to returns@rabexa.store. That inbox is read at the bench and it is the only address for it; a note sent there is attached to the inbound record rather than answered from somewhere else.

The inbound route, door to shelf

01 Booked in at the door, unopened
The outer carton is photographed as it stands, the outbound routing line on the old label is read and written down, and the parcel is given an inbound line on the day’s return sheet. Nothing is cut, peeled or lifted until that line exists. A carton with no readable label is booked in as unidentified and set aside intact rather than opened to find out what it is.
02 The outer carton is read, not just looked at
Four things are noted on the line: whether the tape is the tape this bench applied, whether a seam has been cut and re-taped, whether a corner or edge is crushed, and whether the box is the box that went out or a different one. Each is written as a yes or a no. “Looks fine” is not an entry.
03 Opened over the bench, onto a clear surface
The carton is opened across the centre seam so the original tape line stays readable, and the contents come out onto a cleared bench rather than into a tote. Fill is taken out and kept with the carton until the read-back is done, because how a thing was packed is part of what is being assessed.
04 Read back against the outbound sheet
The contents are read against the marked sheet from the outbound run, line by line, the same way they were read before they were packed. This is the step that separates a short return from a missing item: the outbound sheet already records what was counted into the box and who initialled it.
05 A condition note is written, then the route is decided
The note records the outer-carton entries, the read-back result and the condition of each line as it came out. Only then does the parcel take a route: back to the shelf it came from, to the held shelf for a decision, or to the quarantine shelf. That route is written on the note, not remembered.
06 The inbound line is closed
The line is closed when the condition note is complete and every item on it has gone somewhere named. An inbound line is never closed with items still on the bench, and the old label is removed from the carton before the carton goes anywhere — never covered with a new one.

What the three inbound shelves are for

Every closed inbound line ends on one of three shelves, and the condition note says which one before the item moves. A shelf is never chosen at the bench and written up afterwards.

Back to stock: the shelf it was picked from, and only as a full unit; a part unit goes to the held shelf instead
Held: anything where the condition note and the read-back do not agree, or where the carton entries say the box was opened and re-taped on the way back
Quarantine: anything that cannot go back into stock at all; nothing leaves it on a verbal decision, the note has to be marked and dated first

Why no window is quoted here

This page sets out a route and a set of records, not a period. Whatever time is allowed for a return on a particular order is part of the terms of that order, and quoting a figure on a corporate page would be quoting something this page cannot see. What the bench commits to is the sequence: booked in unopened, read before it is judged, and a written note before anything moves.

How the inbound record sits beside the outbound one

An inbound line is useless on its own, because almost every question about a return is really a question about how it went out. The condition note therefore carries the outbound routing line, which ties it back to the marked sheet and to the measured carton described in what each step produces. How long both halves are kept afterwards is in what this office stores.

One address, one inbox

Everything inbound — queries, notes about a parcel in transit, a request to look at a condition note — goes to returns@rabexa.store. It is read at the bench in Didcot, and it is the address printed in the footer of every page here.