How Retailers Like T.J. Maxx And Home Depot Quietly Target 'Problem' Returners

I hate when retailers put returned items back into inventory without making sure the item works or has all the parts.

One day I overheard a guy saying he bought a snow blower the day before a storm and returned it two days later. People like these ruin everything for us.

They'll refuse to process your return, but not refuse to process your purchase without telling you that you are banned from returns. Something a state AG should look into pursuing.

I used to work for a Walmart in Ohio. I was helping in the return department one day. I opened a box to make sure it had what it was supposed to have in ot. It didn't. People will buy a tv,keep the tv and put something in the box that feels and weighs about the same ,like a piece of plywood. Return it to the store in the hopes that the persin working the counter doesn't open the box. This was the problem at the store I worked at. I brought it to the managers attention and cut our losses by 75%. I saved the store tons of money and never got any recognition for it. The manger took all the credit

Interesting how they blame everything except for the fact that their inventory is increasingly being filled with made-to-fail and cheap products that rarely live up to the descriptions, expectations, and information listed on their websites.

If The Retail Equation told the reporter, as stated, that consumers have the ability to request their data related to a retailer, they were lying. The data can only be requested AFTER a particular retailer has rejected or "warned" a return. TRE's website explicitly states this. Congress should provide that consumers have the right to view information collected about them, just as the Fair Credit Reporting Act does for credit reporting bureaus.

My wife used to shop at Costco a lot. Let's say she wanted a new vacuum cleaner. She would buy like four of them, bring them all home, decide which one she wanted to keep, and then return the other three. She didn't do this much for groceries of course, but she did it for other product categories all the time. I kept warning her that Costco would cancel her membership if she kept doing it. I explained that she's going to be a net-loss customer returning such a high percentage of purchases. She said they wouldn't even know. I told her that was naive, because every transaction is linked to her membership account number or whatever. I said it's pretty silly to think they wouldn't keep such records, and have some sort of algorithm that flagged excessive returners. I didn't realize it might be a third party doing the analysis, but the concept seems pretty obvious. She argued that she was just following their policies, and wasn't doing anything sketchy. She wouldn't listen to me, and continued the behavior. Six months after that conversation, she got the membership cancellation letter in the mail.

My brother in law bought a leaf blower at Home Depot just to find that someone replaced it with an old one. Employees don’t check they just put it back on the shelf.

🤔 I've had to request a refund on items recently that were being sent to me broken in padded envelopes. I specifically called customer service, told them the items arrived broken and requested for them to please send them in boxes next time instead of padded envelopes. They said they'd change the mailing method. They sent them again in padded envelopes broken again. I reached out to customer service for a second time to request my money back and they offered to send the items again instead. I had to insist on a cash refund instead. I was done playing this game with them. At some point there are process issues with the retailers that are reducing their profits. If they had sent the item in the correct type of packaging originally, they'd have gotten their money and we'd have all been happy. There are definitely people who are returning things fraudulently, but frequent returns doesn't necessarily indicate fraud.

A classic case of enshittification. Online retailers had to implement very permissive return policies to get people comfortable with online shopping and put local shops out of business. These policies were never sustainable. Now that they have the market share they're walking them back.

It would be nice if retailers would go after the people who are actually brazenly walking out of the store with stolen items. My husband works big box retail and they lose thousands of dollars weekly due to thieves who know there will be no one going after them. Employees are not allowed to intervene. Police are never called no matter how expensive the item. It makes everything cost more for the rest of us.

When ordering large, heavy items like window air conditioners, I pay online and have them shipped to store (Lowes or Home Depot). When picking up, I get the store employees to remove the heavy item from the box for my inspection, because there is often hidden damage from boxes being dropped, but the box itself does not appear damaged.

Simple fix for me, might not be for everyone: curtail shopping as much as possible and be really finicky about the quality of what I do buy in store. More money in my pocket, that much less in those of participating retailers.

Used to work at an electronics retailer. We had a couple that would come in frequently and talk to salespeople for hours about some fancy tech product. Invariably they returned it within 3 days. The sales manager printed out their transaction history and they had never actually held on to anything. Next time the couple showed up, the manager told them we would be unable to sell him anything ever. They never came back.

All the thieves stealing from retailers and going back and returning merchandise without recepts is probably a big cause for these return policy changes!!

I remember working retail years ago and the absolute worst was luggage. People would purchase premium 5-piece sets to go on the occasional vacation and they'd always return them a few weeks later packed neatly in their pristine boxes and the damn airline flight tags would still be on all the handles. It got to the point that we basically considered our luggage section a free rental service.

Idiots abusing the system makes it worse for everyone

Knowing I can return something that may not work for me causes me to purchase more. Change the return policies and I will make less purchases. This is especially true with online purchases.

When I ran a store, I generally felt that a lenient return policy was good business. Customers felt comfortable purchasing because we stood behind the product and pretty much guaranteed satisfaction. Also, I didn't want conflict between my customers and my staff. In general, I ignored our posted return policy and just used my judgement. It's a value proposition. I could refuse to return a $20 item, but if the customer gets upset and stops shopping at the store I could lose far more value from all the other purchases they would have made in the future. However, as the video states, there are people who are net-zero or negative-value customers because of their returns and the time demands they place on staff. For those customers I instituted a very strict return policy, compliant with our posted policy but nothing else. Retailers are completely within their rights to "fire" customers who they no longer feel comfortable doing business with. And yes, people (or companies) who abuse the system are why we can't have nice things. Companies are often guilty of being greedy, but customers are often not any better. It's a problem of parties not acting in good faith, not being okay with both sides coming away with equal value.

I will not purchase anything from a retailer that charges a fee to return an item!