They Want Their Money Back

I

IN the May Atlantic an exasperated shopper asks, ‘Who Wants My Money?’ and concludes that department stores do not, since they seem to make it difficult for her to buy the things she needs. If she found salespeople incompetent and department managers negligent, hers is a legitimate grievance and she does the inefficient stores a real service when she calls attention to it. Just the same, she has not painted the whole picture by any means. After reading her article, I feel impelled to tell another side of the story — the story of those countless customers who demand their money back on every conceivable pretext and make a racket of returning the things they buy.

The present extent of this evil is astounding. During 1930 between 16 and 17 per cent of the net sales made in department stores throughout the country were returned, and in New York City the figures were higher still. Two thirds of these returned articles came back by truck at the purchaser’s request. In other words (the harried pedestrian will not be soothed by this thought the next time he has to leap for his life while crossing a street of congested traffic), hundreds of trucks are kept needlessly busy cruising about our larger cities picking up crêpe slips and service plates that customers have bought and ceased to want. The figures show that the returning racket is almost entirely a feminine sport; men almost never return anything without good and sufficient reasons.

Nowadays most department stores operate under the policy, ‘The customer is always right.’ No doubt the stores were well advised in adopting this policy, but as more and more of them have fallen in line and made it a general rule, it has given rise to grave abuses. Chief of these is the steadily mounting flood of returned goods, and the principal offender is the well-to-do customer. Women of limited means do less shopping just for the fun of it, — most of them are too busy, — and they are less likely to demand the last inch of ‘service’ from the store.

Among the items that appear most frequently as chronic returns are duplicate wedding presents, Christmas gifts which people do not like, and lamp shades that do not harmonize with rugs or drapes. Women also send back books that have been read and torn, and bags without their coin purses, as well as bags which contain small change, showing that they have been used. They purchase seven neckties and return six. They telephone or write asking that drivers call and pick up tooth paste, cigarettes, toilet paper, or two rolls of dental floss. This season there has been a vast outgo and prompt return of evening pyjamas that have been worn once and pressed.

The traffic in returned goods shows a marked seasonal trend. Galoshes and woolen stockings come back in large numbers in March, and of course Christmas gifts swamp the stores in January and even continue to come in as late as June. The spring and fall outbursts of redecorating are accompanied by flurries of returned merchandise. Silk lamp shades come back in the spring and parchment shades in the fall. When a customer vows that these things have never been used, the policy of most stores is to take her word for it, even though the condition of the articles may show plainly that she is lying. The habitual return-for-credit customer apparently conducts her business by the calendar, for returns are always much heavier the last few days of the month just before the itemized statements are issued.

The proportion of returns on charge sales is considerably larger than that on cash sales or C. O. D.’s, which means, of course, that the store’s expenses are thereby increased. The extra time spent in making out charge sales slips, the expense of recording the charges on the customer’s account, the necessarily complicated routine of crediting a return — all this involves much more work for the store than a return on a straight cash sale. Each year millions of dollars’ worth of goods are sent back to department stores throughout the country. The cost of handling these returns and the losses caused by damaged merchandise run into hundreds of thousands more, which in turn must be reflected in increased prices. In a typical large New York store, thirtynine different employees (telephone operators, salespeople, bookkeepers, credit clerks, packers, and drivers) must make some move in connection with every article that is called for and returned. In direct expense the average cost of each return is about forty cents, and this is quite apart from the other losses caused by depleted stocks, lost sales, damaged goods, and markdowns.

Store managers are well aware of these conditions, but as yet they have registered no open complaint; with business in its present state they would hardly dare to do so. Still, when a customer can buy and return twenty-nine dresses in one month, as one customer recently did, the system calls for reform. Indeed, the evidence shows that the habitual returner will stop at nothing, however ridiculous. One woman recently wrote in: ‘Please call for one package of needles [35 cents] which I wish to return and one rubber dog bone, for which I have a duplicate.’ Obediently the store took them back; its managers might well use the dog bone as an aid to rumination.

II

If the letter just quoted seems too absurd for belief, let us give you a look into the files of the Returns Department of a large midtown store in New York City. The excuses offered are varied and often ingenious. Illness is a favorite plea for excessive delay, or the purchaser has just returned from a long trip and discovered this article and that which she had completely forgotten, or she has been cleaning out a closet and run across a package which has never been opened. There are many communicative ladies who write in and tell the stores all about it. They have plenty of time to shop and plenty more for lengthy correspondence about their returns; they go thoroughly into every detail of the business. One woman asks to have a driver sent around to pick up a package of dog food, explaining that little Fifi does n’t tike that particular brand. Another calls upon the store to take back purchases charged by her daughter without mother’s consent. Under the prevailing system the stores are compelled to grant all these requests.

For sanitary reasons most stores make it a rule not to exchange hats, so one woman writes: ‘I have not tried on this hat, of course, but it looked as if it would be too small, and my husband could tell at a glance that he would n’t like it.’ Another excuses herself in this fashion: ‘I bought this hat at the end of a busy, tiresome day of shopping. I was extremely tired, and just in the mood to be susceptible to the saleswoman’s talk. The minute I looked at the hat at home I realized that I had simply been a victim, and that your store was wholly at fault.’ It is no longer necessary to make the best of a bad bargain; indeed, it just is n’t being done. The thrifty buyer’s idea of how long a garment should wear is often astonishing, to put it mildly. In a small New Jersey town there actually lives a woman who bought her husband a suit of underwear in October 1929, and asked to return it in November 1930. She said it wasn’t ‘wearing well.’

The price war between Now York department stores has produced another type of returner: the thrifty woman who buys a dollar lipstick at Black’s, learns a week later that the same lipstick is selling for 63 cents at White’s, and promptly sends back her purchase, usually with a broad hint that Black’s has tried to swindle her. These careful shoppers make small savings in every possible way, even using for their correspondence the business reply postcards sent out by mail-order houses and charitable organizations. One enterprising woman lately asked a department store for a supply of its own envelopes; her correspondence about returns had assumed such proportions that the overhead for stationery had to be considered! The request was granted — the store was too undone to refuse it.

Only once in a great while does a customer confess that she has used poor judgment and bought foolishly. These instances are so rare that the return department complies with the customer’s requests with more than usual grace. How, for example, could one remain indifferent to a letter as engaging as this? ‘Thursday last I came into your store to buy a slip and saw the lovely pastel linen dresses which you are selling at $4.95. They were so reasonable and so lovely that I forgot my age and ordered four for this summer. To-day I have tried them on, and must admit that they look too much like sweet sixteen to be becoming to my years. Will you be kind enough to call for these dresses and credit them to my account? I will then come in and select something more suitable to my age and avoirdupois.’

To understand the motives behind this perpetual buying and returning, one must take into account the many varying degrees of honesty and dishonesty in the human animal. It is probably true of most returners that they buy things which they neither need nor want, simply from an inherent love of shopping. They think of shopping as a diversion rather than as a serious business — and this in spite of the fact that women do 80 per cent of all the buying for the home and for members of their families. It is too much bother to consider real needs in advance. A vast number of returns can be accounted for on this score alone; many women simply do not know their own minds. They buy in the grand manner, go into a huddle with themselves on the way home, and often send back their purchases without even opening the package. Still others shop to impress their friends. On the way to a matinée, they see something new, handsome, and expensive, and order it charged and sent solely because it seems elegant to do so. Such magnificent gestures involve no real expense — except to the store which has to maintain its machinery to effect returns.

Some women have no scruples about buying and returning to suit their welllaid plans. Evening wraps come back regularly with theatre programmes in the pockets. Glassware and china go out week after week to be used for a special party and then returned the day after. Frequently only ten cocktail glasses arc returned out of a dozen sent; a note always explains that the other two were broken when they arrived. To protect themselves from unnecessary losses, the stores now find it advantageous to send packers when china is to be returned; this adds to the overhead, but it is not so expensive as the breakage caused by careless packing.

Other buy-and-return shoppers make a genuine racket of it, reaping their reward in dollars and cents. Perfume bought abroad is sent in for credit at the much higher American selling price; the customer pockets several dollars’ difference in duty and profits. Even when it is known for an absolute fact that this is the nature of the transaction, the customer will insist stoutly that she has lost the sales check and the store will feel obliged to accept her word for it. Racketeers who operate on a smaller scale will buy twelve hairnets for 79 cents and then return them one or two at a time, having them credited at 10 cents each. The total profit to the customer is 41 cents; the loss to the store in operating charges alone is $4.80.

There is, of course, a small percentage of returns which are entirely legitimate: the store has sent out imperfect articles or a duplicate order, or has filled the original order incorrectly. Another justifiable excuse for returning goods is that garments do not fit. The stores are trying to overcome this difficulty by training salespeople to insist on more careful fitting at the time the sale is made. With the increased vogue for separate blouses it has been discovered that few women know their own sizes, and it has long been an established fact that the wearer of a size-twenty dress prefers to think that an eighteen fits her to perfection. Most women do not know the correct sizes of their children’s garments, and since they can’t conveniently take the children on long shopping trips, the result is a continuous outgo and return of children’s clothing. This is one of the reasons why several of the New York stores have lately set up branches in suburban towns.

III

Recent years have witnessed an increase in department-store expenses, together with a drop in the volume of sales and a decline in profits. It is obvious that one reason for the decline in profits is that the policy in regard to returns has been too easy. Managers are agreed that the only way out, assuming that reform is possible, lies in a revision of their policies through concerted action of all the stores. Even if that could be done, however, it is still something of an open question whether such a move would help business or hinder it. It would cut expenses, certainly, but it might also reduce the volume of business and the final total of sales that stick. With business conditions so demoralized during the last year and a half, the stores have not dared to attempt any innovations in this direction. If anything, they have become more cordial toward all kinds of buyers and have made the returning of goods even easier than before.

Department stores investigate each other and compare data on leniency of terms. Impressive charts are prepared to show the results and they indicate that all of the larger New York stores are invariably easy — they try above everything else to please the customer. The same is true in other cities. A thorough survey made by department stores in Boston revealed that more than seven and a half million dollars’ worth of goods is returned annually. These operations cost more than two million dollars, which is eventually paid by the patrons of these stores in the increased prices of all merchandise.

One of the oldest stores in New York has a rule that all returns must be made within seven days. It is a good rule, but, like many another, it is not enforced. In a few cities the stores have been somewhat more strict. Those in Pittsburgh, Detroit, and, to a smaller degree, Chicago, have tried to agree on a common practice and have had some success in educating their customers to be more responsible in their buying. Not long ago the stores in Oakland, California, conducted a campaign urging that all goods be returned within four days with a satisfactory explanation to cover each instance. The number of returns has been reduced appreciably since this programme went into effect, and the time that merchandise is kept out of the store has been cut about 40 per cent.

In New York, however, there seems to be little hope for reform. Frankly, the stores are afraid to alter their present liberal policy; in general they agree to call for anything they deliver. A typical delivery chart includes 483 towns within a radius of 43 miles of New York. For the time being, then, women in Ossining and Passaic and Stamford, as well as the hordes within the city itself, will continue to descend upon the stores buying indiscriminately whatever their fancy lights upon, will go back home and look the things over, will decide that they have made bad selections, and will telephone or write to the stores with flimsy excuses and definite instructions to send for the merchandise and haul it back again. Meanwhile, a lot of skillful truck drivers will be assured of jobs.