Jump to
An online fashion store blocked 42,000 consumers after the company said they returned too many pieces they bought.
Sweden-based Bootz AB said the profits also went to businesses and the environment.
Bootz’s policy is part of a larger trend among stores blaming consumers for making too many returns, as Insider’s Avery Hartmans recently reported. While applying those measures to new consumers, shoppers are making more returns than ever before, Insider reported.
And processing returns can be costly for retailers: Online orders can charge 21% of an order’s value, analyst Zak Stambor wrote in an Insider Intelligence report.
Some stores now require consumers to take charge of returns, charging them a payment to make returns, Insider reported. Amazon, TJ Maxx and Abercrombie
Just ask Kirkeskov Riis, a spokesperson for Bootz, the multi-brand e-commerce online store that promotes attractive clothing and products, said stranded consumers indefinitely returned parts because they were incompatible with them or because they regretted the purchase.
It said those consumers “repeatedly exploit high levels of inaccurate delivery and return service to the detriment of our business, other consumers and the environment. “In an email to The Associated Press, he said they accounted for less than 2 percent of the “more than 3 million consumers on Boozt,” but about 25 percent of the total volume of returns.
“By postponing those accounts and reducing unnecessary returns, Boozt stored some 791 tons of CO2 in 2022, eliminating the need for about six hundred delivery trucks for a year,” he said.
Some stores are taking a different approach, adding that they offer discounts to consumers in exchange for consumers keeping the pieces they ordered, Insider reported.
But for many visitors, convenient and affordable returns are part of their grocery buying behavior, and stores like Target and Nordstrom are selling generous return policies to attract unwavering visitors. This ingrained visitor behavior can be difficult for some consumers to break.
As Insider Intelligence’s Stambor said, “If you don’t provide a smart feedback process, they’re moving somewhere else. “