By: Jeanie Ahn
For: NY Post
Retailers have a new motto this year: you buy it, you keep it.
With razor-thin margins expected to come under pressure and returns of holiday gifts expected to rise to 8.8 percent, stores from coast-to-coast are making it harder – or more expensive – to return gifts.
Close to two-thirds of retailers said their return policies changed recently to combat the rash of returns – some of which are part of a growing trend stores call return fraud – which may cut profits at all stores as much as $3.5 million, according to the National retail Federation.
Stores have to cut the retail price of returned goods returned to shelves.
“What I’ve noticed since last year is that there is a trend in stricter, more subjective returning and restocking policies,” Jennifer Litwin, author of “Best Furniture Buying Tips Ever!,” told The Post last week as Black Friday and the holiday season was about to start.
One way retailers are combating returns is with restocking fees, which range from 5 percent to 25 percent of the item’s cost. And buyer beware, these fees are not clearly disclosed at every store.
Electronic stores like Best Buy and Circuit City have 15 percent restocking fees.
“Once the box is open, we have to sell it as an open box product and can’t sell it as a new item,” said a spokesman for Circuit City. “We charge the fee to make up for the loss. If a customer wants to upgrade or if the product is defected, there is no fee.” A representative from Best Buy concurred that open-boxed items had to be marked down.
At Target, returns without a receipt are now limited to within the same department. Rival Wal-Mart requires a manager’s approval after 3 returns in a period of 45 days.
Consumers are beginning to react to the stricter policies.
On one Web site, ConsumerAffairs.com, a woman identified as Kimberly, of Winchester, Calif., said she was “in disbelief that [a store] would not exchange a defective $12 craft kit for my 5-year old because I returned or exchanged two items in that entire year.”
“The big retailers are just becoming more difficult to work with so as one starts to change others join in. I even heard jewelry and bedding is harder to return this holiday season,” stated Litwin.
In all 70 percent of stores have tightened up their return policies in the recent past and one in four have done so this past year, according to the NRF.
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