Sick of waiting in line to make returns? Some shoppers are hiring people to do it for them

Debbie Greenberg doesn’t mess around in January.

If she got a Christmas gift that doesn’t excite her, the package is going back to the store.

“My family and friends are well aware — I’m a good returner,” said Greenberg, a 58-year-old teacher who lives in Wynnewood.

She became a “good returner” years ago when money was particularly tight. One holiday season, she returned or donated most of her gifts.

“I’d rather get the credit and use it toward something I could use or need,” she said. “I don’t want to keep something I wouldn’t use or (that) didn’t fit or wasn’t my style.”

This holiday season was light on returns for Greenberg. Over time, she has started exchanging fewer gifts with family and friends, and this year she only returned three items. She did have to call some retailers as many as three times before being able to get credit for merchandise for which she had no gift receipt.

“My biggest advice is just to be persistent,” she said. “The worst thing that can happen is they say no.”

For many people like Greenberg, the season of giving is always followed by the season of returning.

The National Retail Federation projects U.S. consumers will return $148 billion in holiday gifts this year, about 15% of all gifts. That marks a slight decrease from last year, when consumers brought back nearly 18% of holiday gifts.

Despite the dip this year, the rapid growth in online shopping during the pandemic caused the annual retail return rate to double since 2019, in turn prompting the growth of an entire reserve logistics industry. Experts in the field debate how to make returns easiest for customers, most affordable for retailers, and least wasteful for the environment, as a portion of these items can’t be resold and end up in landfills.

“It is kind of like the chicken and the egg,” said Yanliu Huang, an associate professor of marketing at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business. “Because it’s so convenient to return, people return the product before they have a chance to experience the product, before they have a chance to be dissatisfied.”

Companies have to strike a careful balance between trying to trying to cut down on returns and retaining customers — many of whom, researchers have found, would stop patronizing an online retailer if it made it harder to return items.

“If you can make return policies more convenient in terms of time and money,” such as by shipping products with preprinted return labels, Huang said, “in the long term this can actually encourage purchases instead of encourage returns.”

The Grinch for unwanted gifts

During January’s postholiday return rush, consumers prioritize a painless return experience.

In Bryn Mawr, 27-year-old Naial Casanovas Mack has capitalized on that demand with his business, Dropupp. For $9, he will pick up unwanted packages at a customer’s door, then pack, label, and return them. For $20 a month, subscribers can get up to four pickups of four items each.

Since launching in October, the business has grown to around 50 customers in the city and western suburbs, he said.

“It was a huge pain point for some people: having to leave their house and having to set aside 30 to 40 minutes of their day to do a return,” he said. Many of his customers are “new moms or moms with kids between 4 and 15, and it’s just a time-saver for them. They don’t mind paying the $20 fee to not do another trip.”

Casanovas Mack said he anticipates more growth in January. In recent days, he said there’s been a spike in people visiting Dropupp’s website and interacting with its Instagram page, likely due to the company being featured in the Philadelphia Business Journal and a promotional video that includes its founder dressed as the Grinch.

“Santa delivers gifts to households and the Grinch takes them away,” he said. “In the same way, we are taking the unwanted gifts away from the house.”

Convenience and flexibility are key for consumers

For some people, their return experiences this month could influence where they shop in the future.

Huang, the Drexel professor, said consumers are more likely to become repeat customers at places that save them time and money in the return process. Due to competition from industry giants like Amazon, known for simple returns, she said she doesn’t foresee other retailers making returns harder anytime soon, even if they’re losing money.

Amanda Dabbeekeh, a 44-year-old wedding planner living in Limerick, said she “100%” takes into account the return process when she’s buying gifts, including for her young sons. That’s one of the reasons she shops at large retailers like Kohl’s and Target, which have flexible return policies.

“I want to be able to return it,” she said. “I’m not a final sale shopper.”

In the days after Christmas, she went to Target to return a $50 pack of baseball trading cards, which she hadn’t realized her son already had. She was frustrated, she said, to learn that trading cards are among the exceptions to Target’s return policy, which typically allows customers to return most items within 90 days, or a year for Target-owned brand items.

“How can you tell a customer after they’ve bought something that they can’t return it?” said Dabbeekeh, who said she saw no special signage in that section of the store. A Target spokesperson said stores “are provided with shelf signage notifying guests that trading cards are not eligible for returns.”

After talking to several employees in store, she called Target customer service, she said, and eventually received a $60 gift card for her experience. She’s unlikely to purchase collectible items from Target again.

“I definitely think about the return process” said Eryn Travis, 49, of West Chester. “If I know the return process is going to be fast and easy, I’m way more likely to put it in my bag.”