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

I think the bigger thing folks are missing

[rsilvergun]

is that this is the big data folks keep talking about. I'll leave figuring out how this can (will?) be abused as an exercise for the reader, but regardless this puts more power in the hands of retailers and contributes to tipping the balance between consumer/retailer. Airlines do the same thing with rapid price changes, and yes there's a bit of an arms race on right now, but I don't expect plucky consumers to come out ahead. There was already a lopsided power imbalance before all the mergers and acquisitions and leveraged buyout fueled bankruptcies.

TL;DR. We need to consider the effects of large sets of cheaply available consumer data being easily traded among the few retailers that are left.

Re:How can you return a stolen item?

[Anonymous Coward]

you steal an item from a store. You hang around outside the store, looking for dropped receipts that have your item listed, and usually was not paid for with a credit card (as the store will either refund the card, or only offer store credit), then you take your stolen item and the receipt inside and get your refund.

Or, you hang out in the parking lot looking for a dropped receipt with a big-ticket but small physical size item on it, you go inside, slip the item from the shelf, make your way back to the front of the store and head for the customer service desk and get a refund on the device you didn't even steal since you never left the store! (this is fraud however, still illegal of course).

Or, you steal items at one store location, then go to another store location and try to get a refund without receipt. Then be a complete asshat when they refuse until a manager caves and gives you money cause he's a spineless coward too stupid and scared to do his job properly and call the cops. (this last one is a constant source of irritation to a friend of mine working in retail)

Oh, and no, device serials are not always (or often) printed on purchase receipts in the US. That's why 2 of the above work yet the major US retailers still aren;t doing it.

So is there a market for tech rental?

[swb]

I get the outrage, like everyone else it's hard not to think of this as a blacklist designed to rip off customers and with all the Kafkaesque elements you'd expect from an opaque, privately run blacklist.

That being said, if a big part of this is tech "rental" -- buying an item for limited use and then returning, why not approach this as a business opportunity? Create some business model where people can more or less rent these items (purchase minus restocking fee) and where each iteration of sale-return results in a declining, "open box" selling price?

If this "problem" is big enough that it's worth the pure overhead cost of running a blacklist of abusive consumers, it sounds like there's a way to run to use that overhead instead towards basically renting these items to abusive customers.

Re:charge back when best buy fails will change the

[Daralantan]

I used to work at Bed, Bath, and Beyond when in college. Our return policy was so insanely easy to abuse. I only ever recall one person being spoken to about their returns, and this was because they had made something like 78 returns in the past year. There were customers that would buy items with a coupon, then return without receipt (I didn't use my card, I paid cash) and get 100% store credit back for something they paid 20% off for... then just use their store credit on something with yet another 20% coupon. And they'd just do this all year. And we couldn't say anything about it ever... only the loss prevention guy was allowed to in extreme cases. But we'd have the same "super bowl party" tv situation. Except in ours, people would buy tons of outdoor furniture for summer parties - then just return it a week later scuffed up and dirty. And our policy allowed for this.