How Your Returns Are Used Against You At Best Buy, Other Retailers (nbcnews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): At Best Buy, returning too many items within a short time can hurt a person's score, as can returning high-theft items such as digital cameras. Every time shoppers returns purchases to Best Buy, they are tracked by a company which has the power to override the store's touted policy and refuse to refund their money. That is because the electronics giant is one of several chains that have hired a service called The Retail Equation to score customers' shopping behavior and impose limits on the amount of merchandise they can return. Stores have long used generous return guidelines to lure more customers, but such policies also invite abuse. Retailers estimate 11% of their sales are returned, and of those, 11% are likely fraudulent returns, according to a 2017 survey of 63 retailers by the National Retail Federation. Return fraud or abuse occurs when customers exploit the return process, such as requesting a refund for items they have used, stolen or bought somewhere else.

Amazon.com Inc. and other online players that have made it easy to return items have changed consumer expectations, adding pressure on brick-and-mortar chains. Some retailers monitor return fraud in-house, but Best Buy and others pay The Retail Equation to track and score each customer's return behavior for both in-store and online purchases. The service also works with Home Depot, J.C. Penney, Sephora and Victoria's Secret. Some retailers use the system only to assess returns made without a receipt. Best Buy uses The Retail Equation to assess all returns, even those made with a receipt.

Comments

Re:charge back when best buy fails will change the

[mark-t]

Refusal to give a refund is not generally a valid reason for a CC chargeback. For one thing, you still have the merchandise you paid for.

Machine Learning Failure?

[mentil]

It seems the retailer inputs driver's license number and address, or scans the barcode if it has one. That's how one is tracked. Retail return policies generally have a catch-all "we can refuse any refund for any or no reason at our discretion" clause, which is used in this case. It seems The Retail Equation (TRE) presumably uses machine learning fraud-detection systems, like a credit or debit card company uses, only you can't call them to force the transaction through, so you're just stuck with no way out. Given that returns are a cost-center for retailers, this is a 'feature' rather than a bug. Getting flagged means no returns to that store for 365 days, and you only find out after you've bought your merchandise; so if you bought clothes unsure if your spouse likes how they look, or if they'll be comfortable, then you're SOL if not. TRE has been around for several years, their website says 1999, and I found complaints about them online dating back to at least 2011.

TFA gives an anecdote of a guy who was blacklisted from his first return... before he even made it. So he was allowed zero returns from Best Buy before being banned from returns. Apparently, it triggers so rarely that there haven't been enough complaints about false positives to cause retailers to ditch the system. In my experience, customer complaints can cause a company to loosen its return policies to the point of letting pretty-obvious fraud through, although larger companies are probably less likely to care. I guess the moral is, shop at smaller stores if you're not certain you want something, and check the return policy.

Re:"How Your Returns Are Used Against You"

[guruevi]

The problem is not taking advantage of the system, the problem is that many people are unaware of their rights and these lists are typically turned abusive rather than stopping actual 'fraud'. It's easy to end up on the list because you returned a number of high value items and you otherwise don't frequent the retailers for high value items.

On the other hand you can always initiate a chargeback on your credit card. AutoZone once attempted to refuse me a refund. Sold me a set of wipers where one wouldn't fit and they wouldn't take it back because "store policy" (I opened the package and only then noticed that they sold me the wrong length for one side). I told the manager: sure, I'll just contact my credit card company and get the purchase voided. Instantly changed their tune.