Many happy returns

“Our advice is for con­sumers to ask for and read return poli­cies before buy­ing or order­ing something.”

— Frank Dorman,

Fed­eral Trade Commission

“They give with one hand and take it back with the other.”

— Edgar Dworsky,

Con­sumer World

It was a fas­ci­nat­ing Christ­mas. Among the presents I received were a bacon cook­book, a bacon candy bar and a spec­tac­u­lar T-shirt that says, “Bacon is a veg­etable” on the front of it. Clearly, my fam­ily has real­ized that I really like bacon. The candy bar is already gone and I’ll cer­tainly be wear­ing the shirt and using the cook­book, but if you weren’t as for­tu­nate in the gift depart­ment, you might just be head­ing back to the store to return some of your gifts.

While there are state and fed­eral laws that gov­ern gift cards, there are no fed­eral laws gov­ern­ing the return of store pur­chases. Even the state laws that exist in the area gen­er­ally try to strike a fair bal­ance between the hon­est con­sumer who is gen­uinely try­ing to return some­thing and the store that has to pro­tect itself against fraud and theft.

Ohio has a state statute that gov­erns gift cards. When it was enacted in 2006 it was the only game in town, but many of its pro­vi­sions were super­seded by the adop­tion, in 2009, of the fed­eral Credit Card Account­abil­ity, Respon­si­bil­ity and Dis­clo­sure Act. Among other things, the fed­eral leg­is­la­tion pro­vides that gift cards must be good for at least five years from the date that they were issued or last recharged, that main­te­nance fees can only be charged if the card has been inac­tive for one year and that infor­ma­tion about fees and charges must be printed on the card or on an infor­ma­tion sheet that comes with it.

If you’re return­ing a gift to the store, you are largely at the mercy of the poli­cies that the store sets. The National Retail Fed­er­a­tion (NRF) reports that four out of five stores tight­ened those poli­cies this year. Many stores have short­ened the return time on elec­tron­ics or pro­vided that tech­no­log­i­cal devices can­not be returned at all once out of the orig­i­nal pack­ag­ing. Other stores have lim­its on how often you can return items or the total value of items that can be returned. Online giant Amazon.com has more than 30 dif­fer­ent return poli­cies depend­ing on the nature of the item being returned.

Retail­ers are attempt­ing to counter a grow­ing num­ber of schemes used to defraud. In fact, the NRF reports that fake hol­i­day returns will cost more than three and one half bil­lion dol­lars this year — a cost that will be passed on to hon­est con­sumers. In the most basic of schemes, thieves sim­ply steal mer­chan­dise and then return it to the store seek­ing a refund for items that they never paid for in the first place. The NRF says 90 per­cent of stores have been vic­tims of that feint.

To counter that ploy, some stores require that a sales receipt or gift receipt be pro­vided at the time of the return. Not to be deterred, crim­i­nals have begun to coun­ter­feit receipts for stolen items in an attempt to be able to return them hassle-free.

One of the newer trends is some­thing that retail­ers call ‘wardrob­ing,’ a term that orig­i­nated from the fact that it began as a trend involv­ing high-end cloth­ing. In a wardrob­ing ploy, some­one will pur­chase an arti­cle of fancy cloth­ing, wear it one time and return the item for a full refund. The scheme has expanded to include high-end elec­tron­ics and other items. To counter wardrob­ing retail­ers now often require that high-end items be returned with all orig­i­nal tags still attached.

You can also expect that retail­ers will ask for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion when you return an item. Your per­sonal infor­ma­tion is used by retail­ers to track your return habits through a Cal­i­for­nia com­pany called The Retail Equa­tion. TRE tracks return and refund trends and warns of cus­tomers who return a large quan­tity or value of items, a sys­tem that oper­ates in much the same way that credit card com­pa­nies scan for sus­pi­cious and poten­tially fraud­u­lent activ­ity on credit cards.

The sim­plest way to have an easy return expe­ri­ence is to have all orig­i­nal tags and man­u­als, to keep items in their orig­i­nal pack­ag­ing, if pos­si­ble, and to have a store receipt as proof of pur­chase. Gift receipts are equally valuable.

Being mind­ful of store poli­cies will make your gift return­ing expe­ri­ence far more pleas­ant. As for me, there are no returns in my future. Come spring, I’ll be proudly wear­ing my “Bacon is a veg­etable” T-shirt.

David Hej­manowski is a mag­is­trate and court admin­is­tra­tor of the Delaware County Juve­nile Court and reports that, despite his love of bacon, his cho­les­terol level is quite good.

Posted by Dave Hejmanowski on Dec 30 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.