Online shopping as a concept has been around for more than 20 years. Online retail giants like Amazon and Ebay began their empires in the mid-90s, and are some of the most popular platforms today for shopping and, in Amazon’s case, a multitude of other functions. In recent years, online shopping has become so prevalent that big retailers have been forced to shut down physical locations to focus more on their web-based demands.
We, as students — and as Millennials — are particularly enthusiastic participants of online shopping networks, which is unsurprising given that the technology practically developed alongside us. Things like textbooks and other school materials, as well as everyday necessities like clothes and leisure items, are much easier to find online, often at comparably cheaper prices to what is sold in stores. Essentially, it’s safe to say that online shopping is something that we’ve not only embraced, but also fueled into a booming global market.
Of the few, one of the biggest drawbacks to online shopping is the inability to try things out before purchase. Whether it’s how comfortable furniture may be, how well an article of clothing fits or how easy to use the operating system of some new gadget is, the consumer experience of trying before buying is something that is often missing from online retail processes. This, of course, sometimes necessitates returning products people have bought, either in exchange for something else, or just for the money back.
However, a new policy being introduced by many retailers — particularly clothing retailers — is customers being punished for returning too many items. The punishment is being banned from returning or exchanging any items for a given amount of time. Although this practice has been around for at least five years, it has recently received more attention as more retailers hop onto the bandwagon.
Now, you might be thinking, sure, if someone branded a “habitual returner” returned upwards of 10 or 15 items within a month, or returned a number of high value items over a short period of time, maybe a retailer would want to look into what’s going on. According to an article in Business Insider, though, customers are being monitored by a third-party company — The Retail Equation — and are being banned for returning as few as two or three items.
To me, this seems like a horrible business strategy. To ban customers from returning items is essentially to discourage them from buying products without trying them. That is, it discourages customers from shopping online, thus drastically reducing the market that has had businesses booming in recent years.
Moreover, in the clothing industry, the move to ban returns rings as particularly punishing for those who identify as women, given the way that sizing varies from item to item, store to store. The convenience of shopping online rarely provides a way to try on clothes or test out makeup before buying, which means that returns are sometimes necessary.
According to a report by NBC News, by monitoring returns, retailers are hoping to crack down on fraudulent returns, which amount to just over one percent of returns overall. While I’m sure this is a valid problem in the retail industry, the policy of banning returns for a year or more — until those items can’t be returned at all — is unfair to customers whose return records are otherwise spick and span.
There are many problems in the American retail industry, from exploitation of workers and toxic customer entitlement to corporate monopolies. While this new stain on the industry hardly comes as a surprise, it certainly shows the way that retail corporations are much more focused on their own money than they are anything else. In the meantime, I suppose I’ll have to be careful in my buying habits, to avoid worsening my return habits.
