Trustpilot: customer anger stems more from transparency breakdowns than stricter rules
Americans who buy online and return by mail are confronting a steady stream of new fees, shorter return windows and longer waits for refunds — a shift from the free return policies retailers previously offered.
Sixty-eight percent of retailers now charge a fee on returns at least some of the time, up from 43% five years ago, according to Loop Returns. Mail-in return fees at Zara, H&M, Uniqlo and T.J. Maxx now range from $4.95 to $11.99, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Refund windows have shrunk alongside the fees. Across the retailers Loop tracks, return windows fell by 5% over the past two years, from 39 to 37 days; among larger brands, windows fell by 12%, from 43 to 38 days. Macy’s used to accept returns for a full year but reduced its window to 180 days in 2017, to 90 days in 2019, and to 30 days in 2023. Talbots shortened its window from 60 days to 30 days in July. That same month, Home Depot said Halloween and holiday decor must be returned within 30 days, and that pumps, portable evaporative coolers and portable heaters must be returned within seven days, unused and with proof of purchase, for a full refund. Home Depot spokesman Tyler Pelfrey said the updated policy “aligns with industry standards for seasonal items while ensuring we can continue offering a wide selection of high-demand holiday products.”
Processing a return costs on average 27% of the purchase price, according to Optoro — a figure that reflects payment-processing fees plus the labor and time it takes to pick, pack and process the original order. Even when items come back in good condition, many are sold to liquidators or resold to consumers at a markdown as “in good condition” or “not in original packaging.”
April Bradley, a Warren County, N.J., resident, said she paid $7.95 to return a pair of Lane Bryant jeans she had bought online that did not fit. A nearby Lane Bryant store had closed a few years ago, so she could not try them on first, and the company would not allow a free direct exchange for another size. She prepaid for a shipping label and drove to a parcel-shipping center. “I was very angry. I sent an angry message to them,” said Bradley, who acknowledges that she can sometimes be a difficult customer. Lane Bryant responded with an apology and an $8 credit. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Customers looking for Lane Bryant’s return policy cannot find it on the checkout page; a link at the bottom of the page leads to the policy, which states that online buyers are refunded in store credit instead of cash and that a $7.95 fee applies to mail-in returns. Many of the new policies allow free returns when dropped off at a store but charge for mail returns.
According to Trustpilot, the way return policies are disclosed appears to drive more customer anger than the policies themselves. An analysis by the online-review platform found that mentions of returns correlate to a drop of roughly 1.6 stars in its 1-to-5 rating scale. “The sharpest anger doesn’t really stem from stricter rules necessarily. It’s coming from a breakdown in transparency,” said Taylor Cunningham, a senior director at Trustpilot. “The ‘I wasn’t told’ reviews indicate that the policy was a surprise or buried, or was misleading,” Cunningham said. Bradley said the $7.95 fee should have been clearer at checkout.
Retailers are also adding friction in other ways. Amazon now flags some product listings as “frequently returned” or with a badge that says “customers usually keep this,” and has begun asking customers why they are returning items. The company also sends informational messages to a small fraction of frequent returners — customers who return 10 times more than typical — suggesting how to select products they are more likely to keep.
“A tiny fraction of customers who return 10 times more than the typical customer receive informational notifications with advice on how to find the right product and avoid spending time on returns,” an Amazon spokeswoman said, adding that the messages are intended to educate customers and are not punitive. The company does not close accounts based on return rates, she said. Through third-party vendors that verify refund claims, including the Retail Equation, merchants inform individual consumers that their future return claims may be denied based on their patterns of returns, refund requests and frequency of delivery issues; about 1% to 2% of the customers the Retail Equation tracks receive such warnings.
Some frequent returners defend the practice. Liangyu Wang, a student at Georgia Tech who estimates returning around 60% to 80% of the items they buy online, said: “I do carefully read product descriptions when buying online, but often it’s not possible to tell what a product is like just from descriptions and a few pictures online.” Sotira co-founder and chief executive Amrita Bhasin attributed part of the problem to a small subset of customers who return items that cannot be resold, including people who visibly wear out clothing before sending it back or shoppers who buy Halloween decor in October and return it, worse for wear, in November. “They’re treating e-commerce sites as rental sites,” Bhasin said.
Many retailers now state in their return policies that they reserve the right not to issue a refund when products arrive in poor condition, and refunds are taking longer in more cases as retailers inspect returned items. Home Depot said such refunds can take as many as 17 business days to appear in a customer’s account.