Were these gifts shoplifted? Or just really old?

[PamFritters]

I have posted before about my SIL and her over gifting at Xmas and birthdays. It’s often clothes, very rarely anything I would wear. I usually take to a charity shop but this year I decided to be a bit more frugal and return them for credit. All had price tags on, various shops but today I took the Next and M&S ones in as I was near.

All of it scanned and came up. But all of it came up as ‘not sold/no sales record’. Oh and all the Next ones were coming up as £3. The lady in Next said she had worked there for 4 years and didn’t recognise any of the items. Basically they are either a) nicked or b) older than the system.

I think this might finally be the push I need to tell her to stop giving me clothes I don’t want, because she’s either stolen them or had hanging around with tags on in her wardrobe for five years. I’ve spent the last 20 years being subtle and it clearly doesn’t work.

I’m not being unreasonable to think these are weird gifts, right?

At the risk of being completely outing, our husbands are ID twins and she gives DH clothes that are HUGE. He wears size S and she gives him t shirts in XXL for example. It’s all so weird. Why does she do it? Any guesses welcome.

Well regardless of where she's got them from, what do you intend to do? Keep accepting and donating them?

Just accept and donate.

Don't make a thing about it. Yes it is weird, but what is the harm in it really? Just say thank you and donate to charity.

My SIL gave my DC Next pJ's this year. They were the wrong size so I took them to exchange. When we were there my DC wanted to exchange them and the same thing came up on the till - not sold. I'm fairly sure she paid for them but probably off a market stall where they've been nicked off the back of a van or something

I work at Next and deal with this a lot.

Next has a unique system where every single item has a different POS (point of sale) code and is connected to the transaction regardless of which store it was bought at. The till will tell you the card it was purchased with and whether it is within the returns period of 28 days or not. It is a very sophisticated system.

No record of sale absolutely means it was stolen.

A charity shop buy would bring up the original transaction from the person who first bought it.

I can't comment on the M and S purchases though.

Was just going to say similar - I've seen dates on clothing labels before that tells you when it was sold in the shop.

I know this sounds mad but you have to still have the tag for the barcode, then? It's just I bought a shirt from M&S and took the tags off and hung it up. I can't find the receipt. I went to put it on and the shoplifting tag is still on it. If I take it back will they at least take the tag off?

I'd say to her that next year rather than buy each other gifts, let's meet up for a meal/day out/night out instead. Just knock the present thing on the head entirely.

The security tag?

Charity Shop - OR some tat out of her wardrobe that she bought 7 years ago.

Defo not new.

@NoNotMyHair Yes, sorry, the security tag. I couldn't think what it was called! I bought quite a lot of stuff that day and didn't notice until just now.

She’s probably bought them new with tags off of vinted

Look on You Tube for ways to get them off. This happened to me in Nov and my husband got it off following one of them. I had bought the item in the USA, only discovered it when got back here.😂

Do you have a Sparks card or anything else that might evidence the purchase?

I did the same with another store over Christmas and when I went back I offered my loyalty card as evidence of the sale. The lady on counter just said don't worry and took the tag off. I guess the fact I offered meant I was confident the evidence was there.

It was a good job as otherwise one of my four kids would have had to spend Christmas Eve with a massive security tag in the neck of his Christmas jimjams!!! 😂

Is there not a sort of best before date? Like if you purchased an item 2/3/4 years ago would it still have that info? Otherwise that's a huge amount of data to store. Also we have a discount store that sells ex-high street stock, so how would Next have the details? As in what happens when they sell off dead stock?

@ZellyFitzgerald it goes off the system after around 18 months so if bought before this it comes up no record of sale too ✅

She buying them online from other people vinted/ebay etc

After a year my now husband proposed. He had a ring already. I was quite surprised. The ring was a bit too big. I tried to take it back to get it resized and.... the shop had CLOSED DOWN. Ten times worse than an item of clothing no longer being re-stocked.

Of course I asked for an explanation. Turns out he had the ring a long time. It wasn't bought for someone else, but he had returned a ring he had bought for someone (they broke up before he'd asked her) and got another one instead of his money back. I joke that any girl who stayed over with him was in danger of waking up with a ring on her finger. :-)

I bet she's shopping in outlet stores. I worked for Next for years (pre-magic barcodes) and they do buy stock that only appears in sales and the outlets which could explain why the sales assistant didn't recognise it. I'm not sure whether they use the magic bar codes in outlets, but I would suspect not. Or the stock could have been hanging around in an outlet for so long that it pre-dates the system (I remember a hideous coat that was in the Next outlet near my office for four or five winters!).

As an aside I don't think Next would know from a barcode whether an item had been stolen. The unique barcodes will record all sales and returns transactions for an individual item, but I very much doubt that their stock tracking has improved to the point where they can identify items that have been stolen because that's obviously not going through the till. If I am wrong and their stock tracking has evolved to that stage I think they'd be raising questions about how you had those items and why you were trying to return them!

probably the next outlet stuff, them ones in the designer outlet places, that’s why it won’t show up on system too.

@fairymary87 Actuslly it is true. Every single item in next has its OWN unique** barcode. When scanned it shows whether sold or not

@RandomButtons I don't think you understand how Next & M&S' new fancy unique barcode system works. Every single item has its own barcode. Individual to every other item. It's NOT the same for every item in that line on this new system

Missing point of thread but my DP is an identical twin and about 10 sizes larger than her twin, twins don't always remain the same exact size as they age!

I'd have said they were charity shop or factory outlet buys too OP.

M&S KNOWS if an item has not been sold each item is tracked individually through unique codes.

i bought an M&S dress bnwt from vinted and happened to see it in store. The dress was a bit big so I went to exchange it for one size down.

I was chatting away to the sales assistant about a few other things before exchanging.
she then asked where the dress came from …

I thought it was more polite chit chat and just lied and said my mum got it for me as “I bought it on vinted” seemed a bit pikey…

she then very diplomatically said there was no sales record Ie. It’s been shoplifted
She was very nice about it - let me keep it and “check with my mum and see if she had a gift receipt or email confirmation”

i was like 😳😳😳😳 so embarrassed for besmirching my poor lovely mum 😱

the M&S stuff is 100% robbed
either she shoplifted it or bought it from a fence

?

When people say "barcode" is it actually a 2d code like a QR code that is being used? I don't see how a standard barcode could code sufficient data to identify a specific item rather than just the type of the item.