J.Crew Free Shipping & Returns {what's the story?}

A big "thanks!" to Rae (in this post) who shared some interesting news, and also "thanks!" to Genny (in the same post) who suggested it should be its own post.

Rae found the following:
Completely off-topic, but here's a new practice (?) to watch out for: when you return an order for which you used a free shipping code (and were hence not charged shipping), J. Crew subtracting the would-have-been shipping from your refund. Has happened on my most recent order, and an order placed (and returned) the same week by a good friend in a different city and state.

I am not sure if this is a new J.Crew policy, so I am curious to see if anyone else has encountered this situation with returns and using a promotion of some kind. That would be very useful information to know when making purchases online with a free shipping code and the like.

Have you recently returned an item from an online purchase that involved a free shipping promotional code? If so, did J.Crew subtract the shipping from the refund? Thank you in advance for sharing! :)