Stores Happily Brace for Refund Season

Dear, sweet Aunt Tish--warm, giving and with a sense of color that finds her covering her heart with her hand and lip-syncing the “National Anthem” every time she passes a pennant-festooned Jack in the Box.

So, never mind that her Christmas sport-shirt present to you looks like a full-color rendering of a galaxy in eruption. It’s the thought that counts, after all.

But, on any Dec. 26, there is the reality of it to be faced: What tribute is it to Aunt Tish’s thoughtfulness to consign the gift shirt to an untouched life on a remote closet shelf?

This is why, for the next week, you will venture into any Southern California shopping mall at your own peril. The refund/exchange stampede should crest this weekend but will predictably run well through New Year’s Day and beyond.

Predictably too, consumers--despite a tidal wave of media attention devoted to the matter--will continue to be puzzled about their God-given right to a refund or exchange, and about individual store policies covering such issues as the handling of gifts purchased at a pre-Christmas price but returned for refund or exchange after the identical item has been slashed to half that for after-Christmas clearance. On which price is the refund or exchange based?

Queries on the retail refund/exchange subject continue to rank among the top three complaints received by both the state Department of Consumer Affairs and the local Better Business Bureau. And, in many cases, smaller retailers tend to be almost as confused about it as consumers are.

No Legal Obligation

And so it bears repeating: No store, anywhere, is under the slightest legal obligation to take a single item back for refund or exchange, whether there is a posted policy to that effect in the store or not. (Although, to avoid prolonged hassles, most stores with such a no-refund, no-exchange policy do post it prominently.)

About a week before Christmas this year, a spokesman for the Better Business Bureau said complaints and queries on refunds and exchanges were “running pretty slow but that’s typical. It isn’t until after Christmas, naturally, that we start getting ‘the store wouldn’t take it back’ complaints and the other big one--about goods that didn’t show up that were sold over the telephone or by direct mail with ‘delivery by Christmas guaranteed.’ ”

While the no-refund, no-exchange policy does, indeed, rule supreme (not only at Christmas but year-round), its implementation is actually rather rare, according to Charles Zahka, the Broadway’s vice president for consumer affairs, because “it’s a matter of good will regardless of the size of the store. However, it’s a good argument for sticking to established stores.”

With sidewalk and parking lot vendors, of course, it may be significant that any “Refunds Cheerfully Given” signs are normally posted on the tailgate of a pickup truck that already has its motor running.

There is, the business bureau points out, one exception to the no-refund, no-exchange rule: when the consumer can prove that there was misrepresentation or fraud involved in the sale. And the store can also get into an awkward legal hassle if it does post its refund/exchange policy but then reneges on it.

But while most reputable stores will exchange merchandise with varying degrees of cheerfulness, cash refunds are extended much more cautiously. Pre-Christmas “inventory shrinkage”--as employee theft and shoplifting are euphemistically called--is a crushing burden for all retailers, and it’s particularly rankling for them to discover, in retrospect, that they’ve been buying back their own stolen goods.

All of which makes proof of purchase--the sales receipt--a virtual “must.” Although a few prestige stores will sometimes waive this rule (taking the perhaps chancy position that the ordinary, run-of-the-mill shoplifter rarely goes to the additional trouble of stealing not only the merchandise itself but also one of the store’s matching, and distinctive, boxes, wrapping paper and shopping bag as well), it’s infinitely safer to have the receipt in hand. The old excuse that the bill of sale accidentally ended up on the bottom of the parakeet’s cage rarely cuts it anymore.

Prices Reduced

The old business about returning merchandise for exchange or refund and finding that, in the meantime, the price has been cut dramatically for post-Christmas clearance isn’t really as sticky as it might appear to be on the surface. Most established stores will refund the higher price at which the gift-giver bought it. In cases of exchange, however, the Broadway’s Zahka adds, most shoppers are fair minded and are quite willing to swap on a like-for-like basis. While there’s nothing, technically, to stop them from getting the higher-priced refund and then turning around and buying the same item back at its lower post-Christmas price, the number who actually do it is surprisingly low. (Of course, there’s another, more cynical explanation for this too: Getting a refund is more of a hassle than a straight exchange.)

We might point out, however, that finding returned gifts sharply marked down in price from those prevailing before Christmas may be something of a moot point this year, because, as Zahka puts it, “I’ve never seen in my entire career in retailing the sort of price-cutting before Christmas that we’ve had this year. The lateness of Thanksgiving this year really distorted things--we lost an entire week of selling, and it’s the shortest season it’s possible to have. So, there was this rash of pre-Christmas price-cutting the likes of which you almost never see until after Christmas.”

But, in terms of the inevitable exchanges, Zahka adds, the type of merchandise most commonly brought in for this purpose this week and next will, predictably, be clothing and clothing that is sized. According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, virtually all men in the country range in size from 5 feet, 2 inches (weighing from 130 to 148 pounds) to 6 feet, 2 inches (weighing from 185 to 204 pounds), and the ladies range from 4 feet, 9 inches (111 to 131 pounds) to 5 feet, 8 inches (147 to 168 pounds), but the infinite variety of sizes represented in such dull statistics boggles the mind.

One fashion trend that has emerged in recent years, according to those who study such matters, is reducing the volume of wrong-size exchanges rather dramatically: The Japanese trend toward looser clothing generally is encouraging more “one-size” clothing or, more commonly, clothing that is simply designated Small, Medium and Large. (This is all based on girth rather than height, and S translates as a 27-to-29-inch waist, M is 30 to 33 inches and L is 34 to 36 inches). It doesn’t completely rule out buying the wrong size (“I hadn’t seen him since last year and didn’t realize how dramatically Dan had fallen off his diet”), but it does sharply reduce it.

Color, Zahka says, continues to be a common rationale for exchange, reinforcing the old, old principle that, sure enough, one man’s “puce” is another man’s “Ugh!”

“But duplication is always another big reason for exchange,” Zahka says. “The mother puts a coffee maker on her Christmas wish list, and then her three kids neglect to check with each other, and so she ends up with three coffee makers.”

One long-time retailer mentioned still another major motivation for gift-exchanging: “Just plain inappropriateness . . . . I’ve often thought that some sociologist ought to make a study of gift-giving and how it relates to the image we have in our minds of the person we’re buying for.

“The husband buys his wife an expensive set of really daring, revealing lingerie. Well, that’s the way he sees her, but she’s no more the slinky, sexy type than I am.

“Or, on the other hand, she sees him as the executive type and buys him some clothing item that’s sharp and well-tailored.”

Not the sort of wear, certainly, that’s required for propping your feet up on a footstool to watch Monday-night football with a cold beer.

Whatever the reason for the gift exchange--size, color, duplication, appropriateness--many otherwise-rational consumers shrink away from doing it, not merely because of the hassle but because--deep down--it seems like an unproductive imposition on already-harried store clerks.

Retailers are the first to admit that the crush of bodies in the first few days after Christmas is, indeed, the sort of thing that can send a foot-weary clerk to the happiness cabinet in short order once the long day is done. But both Broadway’s Zahka and May Co.’s chairman of the board, Edgar Mangiasico, are in complete agreement that no retailer in his right mind views it the same way.

Bodies are bodies, in other words, and, as Mangiasico puts it: “The more people who come into our store--whatever the reason--increases our opportunity to sell them something.”

And, Zahka adds: “We don’t view this rush with any dismay at all. With some stores the Christmas season can account for as much as 30% of their entire annual business--most of that, traditionally, is in pre-Christmas selling, of course--but a fair share of it is in post-Christmas selling too.

“And don’t forget that both cash and gift certificates are popular Christmas presents too. And so, particularly with gift certificates, we get people coming in who don’t normally shop with us. Hopefully, if they like the way they are treated and the merchandise they see, we’ll get them as regular customers. It’s a tremendous opportunity for us to interface with customers we might not normally see,” Zahka adds.

“It’s a peculiar thing about Los Angeles,” May Co.’s Mangiasico continues, “but we do a lot more after-Christmas business here than we do anywhere else in the country. I don’t know what the explanation for it is. Maybe it’s because of different buying habits here or greater opportunities and options. I really don’t know, but that’s the way it is.”

So, don’t feel guilty about what you are prepared to do today--the retailers are braced for you and are gambling heavily that, sure enough, you won’t have the willpower to trade in Aunt Tish’s sport shirt for something in a quiet mauve and let it go at that.

That, halfway out the store, you’ll pass a special post-Christmas sale on handblown-crystal swizzle sticks that will prove irresistible.

Don G. Campbell cannot answer mail personally but will respond in this column to consumer questions of general interest. Write to Consumer VIEWS, You section, The Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053.