Are You A Returnaholic?

People who constantly return products cost businesses money -- lots of it -- and raise the prices for everyone else. Online retailers are not the only ones affected, and more and more brick and mortar stores are also tracking (and limiting) returns.

The occasional return is understandable, but an excessive amount is not. QVC and HSN will send letters to those who abuse the return privilege. I think it is clearly understandable and appropriate. If I were a retailer and a customer were costing me significant amounts of money due to their excessive returns, I would "fire" that customer as well and refuse to continue doing business.

On 7/24/2014 KYToby said:

People who constantly return products cost businesses money -- lots of it -- and raise the prices for everyone else. Online retailers are not the only ones affected, and more and more brick and mortar stores are also tracking (and limiting) returns.

The occasional return is understandable, but an excessive amount is not. QVC and HSN will send letters to those who abuse the return privilege. I think it is clearly understandable and appropriate. If I were a retailer and a customer were costing me significant amounts of money due to their excessive returns, I would "fire" that customer as well and refuse to continue doing business.

If you're going to "fire" the customer for returning too much, then you would also need to "fire" the 30-day money back, NO QUESTIONS ASKED, guarantee, because that would be false advertisement of the guarantee. Otherwise, you would need to clarify the rules about that guarantee, and make the customer aware that there are limits as to how much they can return. Also, would those limits include items that were returned because they were defective, sized wrong, etc., which is not the customer's fault?

The 30 day return policy, no questions asked and the excessive returns warnings, are two different things.

I have never seen one person say that their returns, within the allowed time frame, were declined, or that they were not allowed to return an item, because QVC said it was their fault, item damaged, item was misused, etc. If they were arbitrarily declining some returns, within 30 days, then, they would be violating their policy.

Customer returns, fall under Loss Prevention, and are right up there with Shoplifting and Employee Theft, in the amount of $$ cost to retailers, and eventually, all of us. All major retailers and many smaller ones, have sophisticated tracking systems.

Recently, a poster was ranting about getting "the letter" and how insulted she was. She went on to brag about how much she spent with QVC over many years. In the last year, she said had bought, something like 300 items and returned around 120 or so of them.

She seemed utterly clueless, how jaw dropping that was, and it was all QVC's fault. No clue, that any retailer, seeing a pattern like that, would So have that customer on their radar. Some folks just don't see their own problem, and in a weird way, maybe having retailers force it on them, will help them take a look at their own door.

In over 20 years of admittedly very casualy shopping with QVC, I haven't remotely come close to buying 300 items. If I was so inclined, I could probably sit down and remember just about everything I've had to return or chose to return, in all those years. Maybe I've been lucky, maybe I've (most of the time)been picky, rather than impulsive, in shopping.

Rather than being insulting, hopefully, getting an excessive returns warning, would be a sit down and look at your shopping, moment. Maybe it means you're shopping with a company that is not meeting your needs, at all. Maybe it also means, you need to be honest and look at your own habits. Whatever, something is awry.

I hope QVC (or any business) doesn't penalize a customer for returns due to defective merchandise or other reasons that are not the fault of the customer. If you know for a fact, not just a suspicion or a hunch, that customers are being penalized that way, that's a different problem.

As for eliminating the return policy, I don't agree with that. Businesses have policies in place that generally work out well but are subject to withdrawal if a customer abuses the policy. Example - a restaurant offering unlimited appetizers. If you come in with 10 friends, and only one person places an order for one appetizer but asks for endless refills, the restaurant manager likely would intervene at some point.

Of course the definition of "abusing" a return policy is subject to interpretation, but in general, I have no problem with a business "firing" a customer for return abuse.

"The 30 day return policy, no questions asked and the excessive returns warnings, are two different things."

I have to disagree with this. If a person can have their account closed for making too many returns, then the return policy is not a "no questions asked money back guarantee". It may not be a question that is directly asked of a customer, but it is an assumed question if the company can close your account for returning too many things.

"A money back guarantee shifts the whole risk, or a part of it, back to the selling company. The most generous kind of guarantee is the “no questions asked” money back guarantee. " The reason they offer them is simple. It’s a very wise and effective marketing technique. Meaning what? Meaning that the ultimate reason for them giving these guarantees is that they will bring them more clients and thus more money.

If the selling company then limits the number of returns, it is shifting the risk back to the customer, therefore nullifying the "no questions asked money back guarantee".

I'm not saying that people aren't taking advantage sometimes, but if the guarantee is what it is said to be, then they have every right to return anything at any time within the 30 days for any reason, and not be penalized. I'm just saying, if this is how it's going to be handled, they need to change the wording of the guarantee, because as it is now, it is extremely misleading, if not downright false advertising.

VERY SIMPLY.......if I order something, say a blouse/top....and it doesn't fit right....turns out not to be as described on air......OR... the sleeves are 6 inches longer than they are supposed to be but nobody mentioned on air that the sleeves run long, etc...I AM GOING TO SEND THAT GARMENT BACK!!!! and have.........the REVIEWS however....have actually saved me many times from ordering something on air.........they tell it like it is and sometimes the hosts do not ! READ THE CUSTOMER REVIEWS !

When QVC and other companies say that you can return an item within 30 days with no questions asked, they have to abide by that guarantee. As far as I know, QVC has not breached that guarantee. They have never denied a person the right to return an item within 30 days, no questions asked.

This does not preclude them from setting some standard by which they judge whether a customer has become a liability to them in some way -- in this case, by returning way too much merchandise. You may not like the policy, but it is not false advertising, nor is it actionable as long as no one group of people is targeted.

No company who wants to make a profit would EVER send out an advisory letter or, at some point, actually cancel a customer's buying privileges on a whim or just for the heck of it. I have no doubt that, with very few exceptions, the advisory letters go out to people who have seriously abused the system. And I do doubt that they would tend to admit it here.

Serial returns are a problem throughout the retail industry, but IMO, shopping channels are particularly vulnerable for reasons we all know or can figure out quite easily.

I can't imagine anyone suggesting that a Customer who is unhappy with the item(s) they spent their hard earned money on, keep those items.

What I have a really hard time understanding, is the customer who, is returning close to 50% of what they buy, on a frequent enough basis, to get this return letter.

I can't believe it's all the retailers fault. If you're doing that lousy a job of keeping customers happy, you don't stay in business; much less, in QVC's case, become the world's largest electronic retailer. But, if it is all the retailers fault, that really begs the question, why in the world are you still shopping there?

If a shopping experience isn't working for you, it doesn't really matter, where the fault lies, why not just move on? So many options.

No, I'm not a returnaholic. I keep the majority of what I order. If I get a defective item or something is off with the fit, I will return it. I don't order 3 of the same thing, knowing I will only keep 1. I don't order just by size, I make sure to review the measurements on all garments. I can understand the letter and see a need for it.