Our checkout asks buyers to provide pressure washer information that populates the AddInfo field. A screen shot is below.

Even after testing many versions of adjoining text to emphasize that this information is required, about 25% of buyers leave the box blank, and another 25% type invalid entries like "I don’t know."

Blank or bogus responses often signal a high return risk, so we currently email each buyer who doesn't enter valid information, then follow up by phone to confirm their machine and use case before shipping.

Has anyone found a reliable way to require buyers to enter information in this type of text box - or even better, a method to validate that the input isn’t nonsense?