Woman buys loads of clothes and returns almost every single one.

[notedbiscuits]

Just returned home from Asda. As well as buying a few groceries, I wanted to return an item of clothing which wasn’t suitable. At the customer service desk, there was a woman who was returning about 45 items of clothing in the sales.

She was still at the CSD when I finished the shopping. To pass the time, I went to the clothing and browsed just in case I found something to exchange for. Nope.

So I saw the woman leaving and took my chance and went to the customer service desk. The assistant was fed up with the woman as she does this every time Asda do a massive clothes sale. The woman picks up for example every single girls dress in the available sizes in the sale and return at least 95% of the items. She and her colleagues want her banned as she creates so much work for very little sales.

Not sure if the woman has a MH issue or what.

Most people including myself buy two different sizes of the same clothes and return one of the sizes.

^^ is not doing anything wrong

I also laugh at the staff suggestion of having her banned because it creates work for them!

They are paid for their hours/time and it's not brain surgery or rocket science to scan in items and produce a refund!

No different from 46 people coming in and returning one item or one woman returning 46 items.

Exactly.

Unfortunately some people become abusive to staff if they have to wait and it also slows down the number of genuine sales you can put through which can earn you flack from your higher-ups

yeah tbh I don't think this would make any difference to the particular woman OP described, who does seem a bit extreme (I suspect because Asda has such a long returns period she buys it all and tries to flog it either on vinted or somewhere or to friends and family, and then returns anything she can't make a profit on), and I wouldn't blame the shop for stopping her specifically.

But generally yes, it is a huge pain to not have a changing room and essentially no option other than to buy, try, and return. I buy a lot from asda (often online) and often bring a lot back because there's no way of trying it on and their sizes aren't very consistent - I've got one jumper that a size 4/6 and a pair of leggings that's a size 16, and everything in between.

What is the likelihood that the elastic in the swimsuit’s elastic is ok before your daughter is big enough to wear it?

I used to work on the phone line during the Next sale and people would ring with a list of 100 items, I'd tell them an item was out of stock and they'd have me try it in every size till they finally found a size it was available in. So they'd call wanting a size 6 skirt and end up ordering a size 22.

Most of it would be returned a couple of weeks later.

Did you actually read the op? It appears not, because even with a changing room this woman would still buy a huge number of clothes. Do you think she has a child every age from 3 to 13 hence dresses in EVERY size they have. The volume that shopper returns is off the scale.

I used to work in retail and we had a woman who did this every year. She bought it all online and then returned 90% of it in store.

I think over the years she'd spent about 15k and kept maybe 2k's worth. She took up so much of our time and our store never made a penny off her.

There was talk about getting her banned, or becoming stricter with returns, but I have no idea if anyone followed through with it or not 🤷‍♀️

They may have changed it because it's been quite a few years since I worked at Next, but they had an algorithm that decided who would get access to the VIP sale and what credit limit people would be allowed on their accounts. Returns did factor into that, so if you had a high return rate you were less likely to get advance access to the sale than someone who bought less but kept most of it.

Is there some kind of weird market for Asda childrena clothing ? How could you make enough selling on eBay to make it worth all the trouble of listing, selling a couple of things and returning 40 plus. Youd spend more on the petrol going to buy then taking them back surely

So they want her banned because they don’t like an aspect of their job 🙄

Ultimately the store policy allows her to purchase and return her unwanted items, so unless seek to change their return policy , they suck it up, do there job, stop bitching to customers and also stop being unprofessional about a customer to other customers!

I think there's a deeper problem. Why are so many people addicted to the transitory thrill of purchasing material goods?

I work in next and this is daily / hourly practice

Honestly it's ridiculous the amount people buy and return but it's part of their business model .. we even have a lockers for returns and they fill within half an hour ..

People have no shame either. !

They were very unprofessional to share what they did with you OP. If the retailer's returns policy allows it then there will always be someone who seems to be playing the system.

Agreed. I've worked in retail and it's mostly incredibly boring. I'd rather be busy doing refunds than standing about or tidying clothes.

Maybe she has loads of kids or grandkids and grabs reduced stuff in lots of sizes and it's then rejected by kids or parents. Maybe she is trying to resell but sale stuff normally has a 14 day return so she'd have to be doing a quick turnaround for low value items which seems like alot of effort for very little money.

This. It’s not like this is taking them away from their work, they are “womaning” the returns desk. Now if they are getting grief from other customers who are waiting that is a pain.

most people sell clothes on vinted, depop etc rather than ebay now, so there aren't any listing fees, buyer pays postage etc. So basically no expenses, only profit.

Unless you live in the middle of nowhere most people have supermarkets very near by? I have at least 5 different ones within about 3 miles, so at, what 15p a mile that's less than a quid for a return journey. The whole point OP is making is that she's returning them all at once rather than multiple different journeys, and she's probably tying it in with her weekly shop anyway rather than making a specific trip, so no/very minimal petrol cost. My asda has a post office in it so she could even post some of the items at the same time.

If she's buying several of each item she only has to take photos of say, 1 dress then duplicate that listing with the different sizes. Listing something on vinted takes me about 30 secs per item, if that. So even if she only makes £3 profit, on 50 things that's £150 profit tax free (i.e. probably equivalent to about 2 days work at minimum wage), for comparatively little effort (you could list things while watching tv), compared to scrubbing toilets or serving arsey customers.

Would I bother, probably not. If you get paid a decent wage then the money is probably not commensurate with the time it takes out of your day, but if you're not working or doing a hard job for low pay, it's a comparatively easy way to make some extra money on the side.

I listened to a podcast about returned clothing.
Since the pandemic, where we all ordered loads of clothes from home and returned those that didn't fit, It's costing retailers a fortune (and therefore us) as they have to bin a lot of the returns.

It's called shopping bulimia. As PPs said, Next sale is common for this.

I agree with this. I want some new jeans, but I’m between sizes and not sure what style to go for. In reality if Tesco still had their changing rooms, I’d probably try on 6-10 pairs, but I’m not going to buy 6-10 pairs to make sure, so I just don’t bother, but loads of people would buy that amount then take them all back.

What a silly comment.

Just being able to work out that 1 of 2 garments is 50%, is nowhere near the same as bringing back 45 items

Honestly. The stretches some posters go to, to try and show the OP is "wrong" 😂

I buy a lot, if buying jeans I would need to buy a few and probably only keep one but Next sale used to be on a different level with what people bought and brought back