ClownLoach wrote: ↑January 3rd, 2023, 1:34 pm
This really has become essential. Lowe's already has the policy that seasonal cannot be returned for any reason after the holiday. Stupid deal websites give coaching to people on how to try to con a store into returning and reselling your Christmas items to you at clearance price after the holiday.
The amount of fraud is absurd. And the way these return policies are written does not make sense. The worst one is when customers will go buy a holiday item on clearance on 12/26, then come and return it with a receipt that is dated 12/19 (without leaving the store). Some customers are dumb enough to not realize the UPCs are different on different color lights/ornaments etc. and of course the return is rejected and they argue about it. My favorite was one who blamed a cashier for using the "quantity key" on completely different items "oh I didn't buy 3 of those, the cashier must have done a 3 quantity on those and not scanned these that I want to return." This retailer had updated its software so if a cashier scanned the same item 3 times separately it displayed on the receipt as a single line item 3 quantity. Now it is possible the cashier scanned the same ornament 3 times but since these were completely different items I again found that unlikely. At that time the quantity key was limited by said retailer and in order to use it, a manager override was required, which I am confident no manager would have done an override so someone could 3 quantity key on some Christmas ornaments. The only time that was overriden with a manager key was if someone was buying a case of items and the UPC was being hand keyed in.
Pretty much all return policies, if the store does price adjustments at all, "NO PRICE ADJUSTMENTS ON CLEARANCE ITEMS."
Yet the customer can just return the Christmas item, then re-buy it at the clearance price. Nothing in the policies says the customer cannot do that.
My guess is at the end of the day the amount of loss from customers doing screwy stuff like this on holiday returns is minimal. This is the type of fraud these return monitoring systems various retailers use should flag. If a customer returns a UPC and receives back full price, then turns around and buys the exact same UPC 20 minutes later at 75% off, that should end up in the system as potential suspicious refund activity. And many next time the customer return of full price seasonal items after the season is over will automatically be declined by the system.
But the better thing would be to just change the return policy. You return items that are on clearance at the time of return? Okay- all you get back is current clearance price. Item broken? Okay- you can have an even exchange I guess (I don't like this one because I could see it abused too, but might be a reasonable compromise to help people who legitimately get broken items but can't get to the store to return them before the holiday passes).
Where this also gets fuzzy is many of these holiday items are private label items. Most retailer private label items have a money back/satisfaction guarantee.
