As Black Friday 2025 approaches, British shoppers are being urged to look more closely at return policies before making purchases. Retailers across the UK have been quietly tightening their return terms in recent years, making it harder for consumers to get their money back.
The Hidden Cost of Convenience
According to marketing professor Lauren Beitelspacher, returns represent a massive financial burden for retailers, costing the industry nearly $890 billion annually in the United States alone. This staggering figure includes losses from returns fraud, where consumers engage in practices like 'wardrobing' - buying items, wearing them once, then returning them.
The problem has been exacerbated by the shift to online shopping. Online purchases are returned almost three times more frequently than in-store purchases, according to analysis by Capital One. The pandemic accelerated this trend dramatically, with returns accounting for 16.6% of total US retail sales in 2021, up from 10.6% in 2020.
How Retailers Are Fighting Back
Faced with these mounting costs, retailers are implementing several strategies to protect their profits. Many are now offering store credit rather than cash refunds, ensuring that returned sales stay within their company. Others have shortened return windows significantly - beauty retailers Sephora and Ulta recently reduced their return period from 60 days to just 30.
Some direct-to-consumer brands have introduced small flat fees for returns, even when customers cover return shipping costs. Curvy Sense, for example, charges customers $2.98 for unlimited returns and exchanges of an item. Many retailers are also using conspicuous 'do not remove' tags to prevent consumers from wearing items before returning them.
What Shoppers Need to Know
These policy changes are rarely advertised prominently. Instead, they appear in the fine print of return policies that have become longer, more specific, and far less forgiving. As we enter the busiest shopping season of the year, consumers should pause before clicking 'purchase' and ask themselves: Is this something I truly want - or am I planning to return it later?
Experts recommend shopping in person whenever possible and returning items directly to physical stores. For online purchases, always familiarise yourself with the return policy before buying. With retailers becoming increasingly strict about returns, being an informed shopper has never been more important.
