Gift of angst: returning goods bought on Web
Despite popularity of e-commerce, sending items back remains a hassle
Alex McMurray thought he scored the perfect Christmas gift when he ordered a Warriors jersey with Draymond Green’s number.
He snapped up the jersey for $44 at the team’s online store. His mother — a big fan of Green’s — would love wearing it at her next Warriors game, he thought. But the jersey that arrived in the mail was too small, and an exchange for a larger size never got sorted out before Christmas, so McMurray had to go with a backup gift — a bobblehead doll.
“It’s frustrating,” said the 43-yearold Castro Valley resident. “I feel like it should have not been so complicated for me to go through these hoops.”
As online holiday shopping reaches record levels this season, the process of returning or exchanging gifts bought on the Web routinely causes angst. Many retailers have embraced free shipping for online purchases, but returning an unwanted present remains a hassle. Some businesses, like Nordstrom, offer free shipping for returns through the mail, while others, like
Patagonia, charge a fee. Getting your money back can take weeks, as shipping businesses are inundated with packages during the holiday season.
That’s partly why Chris Ota found himself waiting for 10 minutes in line at Uniqlo in San Francisco’s Stonestown Galleria to return clothing he had purchased online for a snowboarding trip. The weather in South Lake Tahoe was warmer than he expected, so he went to the store to return long johns and shirts.
Uniqlo charges $7 for shipping back returns. But going to the store was more about “just piece of mind, being able to return it and get it back on your (credit) card quickly,” said Ota, a 33-year-old designer.
In December, consumers shipped more than 1 million return packages each day back to retailers, according to UPS.
Some shoppers, including McMurray, have had issues returning items purchased online. McMurray said he received his jersey promptly, but when he realized it was the wrong size, he shipped it back with a note asking if he could exchange it.
By Dec. 22, he hadn’t heard back, so he called the customer service line and left a message. On Wednesday, McMurray said he hadn’t received a call back.
“It’s the Golden State Warriors,” said McMurray, a middle school teacher. “It’s not the mom-and-pop shop at the corner. They should have enough personnel to handle my inquiry about a jersey.”
The Warriors say there was a misunderstanding. McMurray emailed the store on Dec. 15 and a store representative emailed McMurray back on Dec. 18, according to Brandon Schneider, a Warriors senior vice president of business development. When the Warriors did not hear back from McMurray, they sent a follow-up email, Schneider said. McMurray said he never saw the first email.
Schneider said the Warriors’ store processes online returns in three to five business days, but tries to do it in as quickly as one to two days. The timing depends on how fast shippers can get packages back to the retailer. Customer service calls are typically returned within 24 hours. It appeared the Warriors did not receive McMurray’s Dec. 22 voice message, he said.
“A fan experience is the most important thing to us,” Schneider said, adding that the Warriors aim to make sure every “touch point” with fans is positive, including online shopping. “We work really hard to do this,” he added.
After The Chronicle made inquiries, the Warriors sent a larger-sized jersey to McMurray. McMurray also said the Warriors offered him tickets to the Dec. 29 game. He invited his mom. “She’s about to get the surprise of a lifetime,” McMurray said on Thursday.
Would things have gone better had McMurray brought the jersey to a Warriors team store in Walnut Creek or at Oracle Arena? Possibly. A lot of businesses, including the Warriors, allow customers to bring online purchases for returns to physical stores. Many people prefer that option because they don’t want to deal with the uncertainty of when a return shipment will arrive. And disputes regarding the refund or exchange — like damage to an item — can be settled in person, preventing misunderstandings.
At J.C. Penney, more than 90 percent of returns of online purchases take place inside a store and often result in the item being exchanged or the shopper making another purchase, the company said.
One issue retailers increasingly face: fraudulent returns. Organized crime groups steal merchandise from stores and attempt to return it for gift cards that are then sold online, according to Ana Serafin Smith, a spokeswoman with the National Retail Federation. Retailers expect 11 percent of returned items will be fraudulent, according to the federation’s survey.
“The reason why many retailers haven’t really explored out-of-box ideas for returns, especially online returns, is the fear of them falling into an extra layer of fraud,” Serafin Smith said.
Nonetheless, some businesses are trying to make the process of returning items bought online inside stores even faster. Walmart customers can log into the retailer’s app to start a return. After entering details, they can return the item to a Walmart store through a line called the Mobile Express Lane. A Walmart employee takes the package from the customer and scans a QR code displayed on the customer’s app. The company says its goal is for the process to take 30 seconds — a third of the time it otherwise takes to handle an online return in-store.
Few businesses have the physical and digital reach of Walmart, though. Santa Monica’s Happy Returns places kiosks in malls like San Francisco’s Westfield Centre, where customers can bring back returns from retailers like Mizzen+Main and Chubbies that have few or no retail locations.
Brett Lamb, a co-owner of Fleet Feet Sports San Francisco, said customers may choose to return items purchased online inside a store because they may not want to deal with packing the items and going to the post office.
Lamb says his store has a 60-day return or exchange policy and takes back shoes even if they are worn. “If you can drop it with us, it makes it a lot easier to end the conversation,” he said.