Issue 5
A customer bought some shorts, loved them, came back for another pair…
…she returned them because the second pair had a different inseam than the first.
Not her mistake: the inseam wasn’t listed on the product page.
When she processed the return, the closest reason code available was “too big.”
If all you worked off of was the reason code, would you label this as a sizing issue or a product issue?
Your likely answer of “sizing based off the data” is where Antonio Colicchio says most return investigations go wrong before they even begin. He knows where you should start.
But first, your industry brain teaser of the week:
What percentage of shoppers say a good return experience increases their likelihood to buy again?
Scroll to the bottom for the answer.
What's in stock
Here’s what we have in store for you this week:
- The Rundown: Righting the ship on all the wrong reason (codes)
- Worth Your Time: AI toys, donation startup and why your package might be missing
- What We’re Up To: Women in Retail, The Takeback Talks, NRF Protect
The Rundown
Your reason code is probably giving you the wrong reasons.
Or at the very least, only a sliver of the full picture.
Antonio has spent over two decades inside customer care organizations, and that vantage point is why he knows that customers tell you exactly why they’re returning something. You just have to dig deeper than the “code.”
His four-step investigation method starts with customer care data and ends with, well… math.
- Step one is listening for specific complaints that point upstream.
What do you get when you cross one customer email, four merchants, and irregular inseam measurements? Returns. In the case of the missing inseam (above), Antonio was able to trace the cause to different merchants managing similar products, but they differed in their processes for listing products. - Step two is a quick audit to determine whether that complaint is isolated or structural.
A dozen products. Some with the inseam listed. Some without. It screams “process gap.” Where there are ten, there are sure to be a hundred. In Atonio’s experience, these kinds of gaps usually indicate a problem at scale, not in isolation. - Step three is mapping where your own policies create returns.
A 30-day return window paired with a 7-day price adjustment policy is a megaphone to customers shouting: rebuy at the sale price, return the original. When that return inevitably comes, that’s an outcome based on policy outcome, not fraudulent behavior. - Step four is the cold, hard math.
Once you know the probability of a return and the cost of that return, you can calculate whether an incentive to prevent it makes financial sense and exactly how much room you have to work with.
If you’re thinking it’s time to rework how you see your returns, we’ve got you covered.
Read the full playbook here.
Worth your time
We know time is money, so we won’t waste yours
- Hasbro’s CEO says the toy giant has moved past AI experimentation and is now running it across the business (Retail Dive)
- A startup called LiquiDonate says it’s helped brands offload more than 15 million items to nonprofits since 2022 (Retail Brew)
- Porch pirates are everywhere. Chain Store Age breaks down which state has the most active package thieves (Chain Store Age)
What we're up to
We were at the Women in Retail Leadership Summit in Miami, April 27-29. I took the stage Monday for a session on helping teams find their professional north star, and hosted retailers in a private meeting room all week.
Our first Takeback Talks session brought ten brands—including Dick’s Sporting Goods, Foot Locker, and Starbucks—into one closed-door conversation, and the consensus was clear: returns and claims abuse is the most under-resourced loss category in the business, and almost nobody has a unified view of it yet.
We were also on stage at NRF Protect on June 9 with Tim Murfin from Winn-Dixie, on why grocery is the ultimate proving ground for total retail loss—and what it takes to get there. If razor-thin margins and constant cost pressure can’t sharpen your approach to loss, nothing will.
Want to know where we’ll be next? See our upcoming events.
