How to Dispute a Chargeback with Ross Stores
Ross Stores publishes no reason-code table, no fee schedule, no dispute window, and no dispute channel. All of it sits behind the password-gated Ross Partners portal at partners.rossstores.com, so the current filing path and any deadline must be confirmed against the Vendor Compliance Manual on that portal, or with your Ross buyer contact, before you file. What Ross does publish, in its 2021 domestic routing guide, is the operational surface a Ross deduction is written against: how routing is requested, how far ahead, how Ross and dd's freight must be kept apart, how cartons are labelled, and, most usefully for a dispute, the two identifiers that tie a deduction back to a specific shipment. Those identifiers are the RTS Number and the Ross Bill of Lading (BOL) Number. They are different things, and only the BOL Number belongs on your bill of lading.
At a glance
- Submission channel
- Not published by Ross. Confirm the current dispute path on the Ross Partners portal or with your Ross buyer contact
- Dispute window
- Not published by Ross. No deadline appears in the 2021 domestic routing guide; confirm against the current Vendor Compliance Manual on the partner portal
- Reason codes / fee schedule
- Not published by Ross in any public document
- Shipment identifiers
- RTS Number (issued on routing submission) and the Ross BOL Number (issued when a carrier is assigned); the BOL Number is the one that must appear on your bill of lading
- Routing portal
- Ross Transportation Portal at transportation.ros.com; the 2021 domestic routing guide notes it is not compatible with Internet Explorer 11 and points to a TMS Vendor User Training Guide
- Ship-window term
- Ross uses the purchase order's start ship date; Ross's own routing text does not use the term cancel date
- Banners covered
- Ross Dress for Less and dd's DISCOUNTS, which runs a separate routing program and DC network under one shared Ross/dd's Discounts Transportation desk
Submission channel
Ross does not publish a deduction-dispute channel. The 2021 domestic routing guide is a freight-routing document: it contains no dispute, deduction, or chargeback procedure of any kind. The vendor documents that would carry one, including the Vendor Compliance Manual and the separate dd's domestic, international, and vendor-direct routing guides, are distributed only through the password-gated Ross Partners portal at partners.rossstores.com. Confirm the current channel there, or with your Ross buyer contact, before you file anything.
Do not route a deduction dispute to the Ross/dd's Transportation line at (803) 396-2232, Option #4. That is the freight-routing desk described in the routing guide, and it is the right number for a routing or carrier-assignment question. A deduction dispute sent there spends a filing on a desk that does not process one.
Reason-code taxonomy at a glance
Ross publishes no numbered reason-code table and no violation-code list, so there is no Ross code taxonomy to map. Treat the deduction notice text itself as the authoritative statement of the claim, and read it against the published routing rules it enforces: routing request and carrier assignment, the start ship date and readiness window, Ross and dd's freight separation, carton labelling content, and the identifier trail on the bill of lading. Ross also distributes its EDI specifications through the partner portal rather than publishing them, so confirm the document set with Ross rather than assuming a standard one.
Routing requests and the readiness window
Ross ties routing to the purchase order's start ship date and to a short readiness expectation after a carrier is assigned. The 2021 domestic routing guide states that routing can be requested up to 3 weeks prior to the Purchase Order's start ship date, and that vendors should only be submitting Routing information if they can have it ready to ship within 3 days of Ross assigning a carrier. Those are two different clocks: how early you may ask, and how quickly you must be able to tender once Ross answers. A shipment routed early but not physically ready inside that readiness expectation is the operational shape most routing-related deductions are written against, so keep the routing submission timestamp and the carrier-assignment notification together in the file. Ross's own term here is start ship date; Ross routing text does not use cancel date, so do not describe a Ross window that way in a dispute letter.
Ross and dd's freight must be kept separate, at two levels
Ross states two separation rules in the 2021 domestic routing guide, and they are not the same rule stated twice. At the routing-request level: do not request routing for Ross and dd's freight on the same routing request. At the trailer level: Ross and dd's shipments cannot be shipped on the same trailer. A vendor can satisfy one and still violate the other, for example by filing two clean routing requests and then consolidating the freight onto one trailer. dd's DISCOUNTS has its own routing documents and its own DC restrictions, which makes it a separate routing program and DC network, even though the guide names a single shared desk, Ross/dd's Discounts Transportation, for both. If a deduction alleges a mixing violation, establish which of the two rules is being cited before answering it.
The identifier trail: RTS Number versus Ross BOL Number
Ross issues two distinct identifiers across the routing lifecycle, and confusing them breaks the audit trail a shortage or routing dispute depends on. First, per the 2021 domestic routing guide, RTS Numbers will be provided immediately after successfully submitting for routing in the Transportation Portal, and if the request was faxed or emailed, RTS Numbers will be provided within 24 hours of receipt. Second, and separately, the guide states that you will automatically receive an email when a carrier has been assigned to pick up your shipment, that the Ross Bill of Lading (BOL) Number will be identified in that email, and that you should be sure to include the Ross BOL Number on your Bill of Lading. The RTS Number evidences that routing was requested and accepted. The Ross BOL Number ties the physical shipment document to the Ross record, and it is the number that must be printed on the BOL. Putting the RTS Number on the bill of lading instead is a common and expensive supplier error: it leaves the carrier-signed document with no clean join back to the Ross shipment record, which is exactly the join a shortage dispute rests on. Ross's own materials never expand the RTS acronym, so refer to it as the RTS Number rather than guessing at what it stands for.
Carton labelling
Ross states one explicit carton-labelling content requirement in the 2021 domestic routing guide: label ALL cartons with vendor warehouse name and address, PO number, Style, Color, Size and Quantity. That is the published list, and it is a content requirement rather than a barcode-symbology requirement. The routing guide publishes no label symbology standard, so do not assume one. If a deduction alleges a labelling failure, the answerable question is whether each of those elements was present on the cartons as shipped, which makes retained label artwork, label proofs, or dated carton photographs the relevant record.
The Transportation Portal
Ross routes through its Transportation Portal at transportation.ros.com, where routing is submitted and where the RTS Number is returned immediately on a successful submission. The 2021 domestic routing guide notes that the portal is not compatible with Internet Explorer 11 and references a TMS Vendor User Training Guide for portal use. Routing may also be requested by fax or email, in which case the RTS Number comes back within 24 hours of receipt rather than immediately. That difference is worth recording, because it changes what a timestamped routing record looks like in your file. Ross/dd's Transportation is reachable at (803) 396-2232, Option #4 for routing questions.
What Ross does not publish, stated plainly
Ross publishes none of the following in any public document we were able to open: a reason-code or violation-code table, a fee or penalty schedule, a dispute or deduction window of any length, and a dispute submission channel. A full-text search of the 2021 domestic routing guide for dispute, deduct, chargeback, expense offset, fee, penalty, and non-compliance returns no hits at all. That absence is the honest state of the public record, and it matters more than a filled-in table would: a guessed deadline could cause a supplier to miss a real one. Get the window, the channel, and any fee detail from the current Vendor Compliance Manual and vendor documents on the Ross Partners portal at partners.rossstores.com, or from your Ross buyer contact. Note also that per Ross's corporate materials the Vendor Compliance Manual's published scope is product safety, testing, labelling, and labour and human-rights standards, so do not assume it is the source of AP deduction mechanics until you have read the current edition. And because the routing guide cited here is the 2021 domestic edition, and Ross has since revised at least one companion guide, confirm you are working from the current edition on the portal before quoting any of it back to Ross. For the same reason, Ross publishes no per-claim-type evidence matrix, so the evidence list below is general dispute practice applied to the Ross identifier trail, not a Ross-published requirement.
What evidence you need
- Carrier-signed bill of lading carrying the Ross BOL Number, the document that joins the physical shipment to the Ross record
- RTS Number and the routing confirmation from the Transportation Portal, against a routing or unauthorised-carrier claim
- The purchase order and its start ship date, plus the carrier-assignment email, against a timing claim
- The invoice and the carton count, against a quantity or shortage claim
- Carton label records, artwork, proofs, or dated photographs showing vendor warehouse name and address, PO number, Style, Color, Size and Quantity, against a labelling claim
- The routing request record showing Ross and dd's freight were requested separately, and the trailer record showing they moved separately, against a mixing claim
How Roy disputes Ross Stores
Roy starts a Ross deduction from the identifier trail, because Ross gives no code to classify against. It reads the deduction notice text as the statement of the claim, resolves the shipment through the Ross BOL Number on the carrier-signed bill of lading, and holds the RTS Number and routing confirmation alongside it rather than treating the two identifiers as interchangeable. From there it assembles the record the claim actually turns on: the purchase order, its start ship date, and the carrier-assignment email for a timing claim; the invoice and carton count for a quantity claim; the retained carton-label records for a labelling claim; and the routing-request and trailer records for a Ross and dd's separation claim.
Because Ross publishes no window and no channel, Roy infers neither. It flags the deduction as needing the current window and filing path confirmed from the Ross Partners portal or the buyer contact, and assembles the packet in the meantime so nothing waits on that answer. A person reviews the packet before anything goes to Ross, and cases where the claim text is ambiguous, the identifier trail is broken, or the evidence is silent route to human review rather than being filed.
Related retailers & next steps
Related off-price context: Burlington and Bealls for the carrier-signed-BOL evidence bar, and TJX as the other off-price retailer whose dispute channel is not published. See the Deduction Code Library for how these retailers publish compliance requirements instead of a dispute code table.