{"id":1028,"date":"2025-02-11T11:12:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T16:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/?p=1028"},"modified":"2025-02-11T05:33:30","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T10:33:30","slug":"return-policies-changing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/return-policies-changing\/","title":{"rendered":"Retailers Are Changing Their Return Policies \u2013 Here\u2019s How to Get a Refund Without Sending Anything Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shopping online means you, quite literally, have access to an entire planet’s worth of products and every so often, we are bound to make an impulsive purchase or two during some late night scrolling — that we will ultimately regret in the morning. Is returning the item worth the effort, will you have to pay return shipping fees, will you have to drop the package off at a distribution center, or do you just cut your losses, forfeit the already costly shipping fees and keep the item knowing you will not be using it — what is the most convenient option?<\/p>\n

Implementing return policies and processing a refund for items purchased online may be just as inconvenient to the retailer<\/a> as well when you consider return shipping fees and other sundry costs to restock an item. Retailers at large appear to have come up with a good solution to this by making some changes to their return policies, and customers stand to benefit from it.<\/p>\n

“Returnless Refunds” — an oxymoron that is saving companies money<\/h2>\n

The term “returnless refunds” is almost comical because why would any company with common sense process a refund without receiving the purchased product back. It almost sounds like giving away money for free and yet, this somewhat bizarre notion is actually a far more cost efficient option for e-commerce departments in companies.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt that the convenience and excessively wide variety of offerings available when shopping online leads to impulsive overconsumption, especially if the price point is cheaper overall than that of a brick and mortar store. Subsequently, shoppers are bound to request a return for their hauls once shopper’s remorse sets in.<\/p>\n

Retailers are now introducing a new “returnless refund” policy that will allow customers to have money refunded to their accounts whilst still keeping the unwanted item. Retail giants like Costco, Amazon, Walmart, Target, and more, are adopting this new return process in order to eliminate additional costs like shipping and processing fees that accompany a product return. It should be noted that this kind of system would only work for multi-million dollar corporations who can afford to write off the refunded products.<\/p>\n

Data collected by the National Retail Federation shows that 17% of online purchases were submitted as returns, amounting to a massive total of $250 million for the year of 2023.<\/p>\n

When asked about why companies are choosing to make this small sacrifice, founder of the\u00a0<\/a>Rather Be Shopping\u00a0<\/em>retail blog, Kyle James said, “I think for retailers, it helps their bottom line and it also kind of provides good customer service and it and it really builds customer loyalty.”<\/p>\n

Terms and conditions of newly implemented return policies<\/h2>\n

Kyle James spoke with Mike Brookbank — an anchor at Good Morning Cleveland — about the finer details of the “returnless refund” return policies, such as item value and item eligibility.<\/p>\n

James shared, “I’ve noticed it mostly on items that are $20 or less, on things like kind of your cheaper electronics, kind of gadget stuff, things that are that are fairly inexpensive, but they’re big and bulky, and so they cost quite a bit to send back.”<\/p>\n

It was expected that the items eligible for a “returnless refund” would only be applicable to smaller ticket items, likely worth less in value than the shipping costs it would incur. Additionally, if this policy was open to larger, costlier items, it would potentially be taken advantage of, thereby increasing risks and expenses rather than saving the company money.<\/p>\n

Even though the items eligible for this policy are cheaper and smaller, James has still warned against trying to get items for free by taking advantage of this loophole. Every retailer keeps records of purchases and if a discrepancy with returns and refunds are picked up, the retailer could just very well ban you as a customer so shop with with caution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shopping online means you, quite literally, have access to an entire planet’s worth of products and every so often, we are bound to make an impulsive purchase or two during some late night scrolling — that we will ultimately regret in the morning. Is returning the item worth the effort, will you have to pay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1029,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","share_position":"hide","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"custom","post_date_format_custom":"m\/d\/Y H:i","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"no-crop","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-715"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-top-retailers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}