Some stores are making it harder, more costly to return items. What to know

For customers, it makes little difference how soon the item is returned as long as they are refunded, but for retailers, it's a big deal.

H&M will soon test a fee for returns in Europe. Uniqlo Canada already charges one for online returns. So does Miniso’s Canadian outposts, which treat most purchases as final sale.

Shoppers, it’s not your imagination. Stores are making it harder and more costly to bring back items as consumers remain hooked on a big pandemic habit: online shopping.

Retailers are tamping down because returns cost them big bucks _ and every dollar counts at a time when they are recovering from the economic shutdown and coping with supply chain troubles, said Sylvia Ng, chief executive of ReturnBear, a returns collection service operating through Cadillac Fairview malls.

Ng said the pandemic left some retailers grappling with return rates around 20 or even 30 per cent of items sold.

“For their inventory and ultimately for their company to be profitable in this economic climate, I think it’s very important that you look at the returns,” she said. “When it’s around 20 per cent of your business, you can’t afford not to.”

While little Canadian data exists capturing how prevalent returns have become, the country’s retail trends typically follow those in the United States, said Prabhjot Gill, a McKinsey & Co. associate partner focused on retail.

Across the border, consumers returned US$428 billion in goods in 2020 with e-commerce responsible for at least a quarter of those returns, said a National Retail Federation and Appriss study released in January 2021.

A McKinsey survey and discussions with roughly 35 North American retail executives across 2019 and 2020 found 86 per cent of respondents see a lenient return policy as critical to increasing revenue and 75 per cent called returns “a necessary evil.”