People who return almost everything they buy online – BBC News

The return of a recently purchased item is easier than ever thanks to the Internet. In fact, traders have the obligation to guarantee this right, but what about customers who change almost everything they buy?

The Call "Wardrobe Buyer" purchases and returns items compulsively C & # 39; is a customer profile that has grown in recent years and poses some number of problems for some companies in difficulty.

Harriet Gordon matches this profile.

This 28-year-old man works in London, UK, as a human resources consultant, retaining only half of his online purchases

. He usually spends about US $ 500 a month but returns items in which he spent US $ 250.

Most of the time, he does it because the clothes do not fit him, or because the color or the fabric has nothing to do with the photography that convinced him of it. buy the product on the Internet.

"You see models wearing things that look fantastic," he says, but he maintains that does not look the same when it is tested .

The fact that many of the stores he buys offer home returns. facilitates the process.

Test and Map

Despite his work in a central and commercial area of ​​London, Harriet Gordon states that it is much easier to buy online and from there. Avoid the queues and stress of physical stores.

This looks like what happens to Hester Grainger, a 41-year-old woman who bought seven dresses for a wedding on the Web site Asos one of the shops Online Fashion

He knew that he would finish with one, but he wanted to make sure that it was the right one.

This was not a special case When he needs new jeans, he asks for five pairs, then he chooses one.

In total, he calculates that he spends between $ 480 and $ 510 per month for the purchase of clothes, but he returns so much that he ends up spending so much. 90 or 100 USD.

"I spend hundreds of dollars buying various items in different stores over the course of a month, but I probably go back around 80%," he told the BBC.

Hester, founder of Mumala Club, an online platform for mothers, states that her buying habit is related to her small size .

She is 1.5 meters tall and finds it difficult to know if something suits her, so she often asks for three sizes of the same item.

Heartbeat

Buyers like Harriet and Hester are not unusual.

A recent study by the supplier or even the multinational credit card company Barclaycard, which badyzed nearly half of debit and credit transactions in the UK, indicates that a quarter of retailers saw the number of returns increase over the past two years.

According to the report, consumers report nearly half of what they buy in clothing and footwear stores,

Social Networks Help Spur the Trend : around 10%. Shoppers confess to having taken a selfie for Instagram or Facebook, posing with a new item, and then returned the purchase.

Geoff Beattie, professor of psychology at Edge Hill University in England, says he is surprised that the number of returns is not even higher.

His own research shows that our pulsations are accelerated when we buy. This emotion lasts until we report the article at home and show it, but it disappears quickly and we regret having spent the money or the fact that we do not have the money. did not wear this garment. So we give it back, he explains.

"What happens next is the least exciting part of the whole process," he told the BBC.

The increase in online shopping favors this habit, because "there is no guilt or shame" nor the need to give too many explanations, says the specialist.

] In addition, large discounts, such as Black Friday or Cyber ​​Monday, encourage "panic buying" which is generally more related to later buyer remorse.

A Problem for Stores

Returns include not only shipping costs, but also packaging and cleaning. In addition, they are a waste of time.

If an article is not available, it may be because it's returned. And to prevent some stores from asking more than what they hope to sell.

Another problem is the fast cycle of fashion . By the time an item is returned, it may be on sale, which means that the store can no longer sell it at its original price.

This forces some traders to raise prices . According to Barclaycard, in the United Kingdom they make a third.

The fact that the shops are striving at all costs to guarantee sales during the sales, customers have easier to return items without paying additional service fees. Sometimes they even offer the option "try before paying" .

It is inevitable that many profit from the system.

But some companies are fighting against this. The Internet giant Amazon, for example, began blocking customers who send back too much stuff.

"We want everyone to use Amazon, but sometimes, abuse our service for a long time," said a company spokesman at The Wall Street Journal.

Other companies follow suit.

Understanding the Customer

Vicky Brock, Director of Data and Innovation in eBound Returns, a software tool for managing returns, says it's wrong to badume that people who come back frequently are bad customers.

Brock argues that a small proportion of buyers generate the majority of returns, but this group includes both the best and the worst customers.

"Putting a veto on buyers by returning items repeatedly ignores the value of each customer and the merchant does not understand the behavior of its customers ," says the BBC.