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Business Insider
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Return fraud is running rampant
Bill Stewart, the owner of LI Toy and Game on Long Island, New York, estimates that he gets "screwed over" by return shenanigans twice a month. Customers falsely claim an item he shipped wasn't as described or doesn't work, or they send back something in much worse condition than how he released it. Recently, a customer returned a Scooby Doo Mystery Machine model kit after two weeks with the box open, the toy half assembled, and pieces missing. Given the condition, there was no way for him to resell it. "Went right into the trash," Stewart says. "The kid played with it, was probably too young for it." Adding up the price of the item itself, two-way shipping costs, and merchant fees charged by the third-party platform he used to sell the item — Walmart Marketplace, in this case — Stewart estimates the exchange resulted in a net loss of $55. For the big guys, he recognizes that's nothing, but for a small business like his, it's a hit, and one for which he has no recourse. "With Walmart, the customer's always right," he says. The ability to return an item you've purchased has become a core part of the shopping experience. Customers may buy a few more items than they would otherwise because it's a no-harm, no-foul situation on returns. Backsies are allowed. But retailers say consumers are engaging in too many backsies. Some are committing outright return fraud — shipping back empty boxes, swapping out different items, or claiming a package never arrived. Others are abusing generous return policies by attempting to send back items after days, weeks, and even months of use. And while it's tempting to blame organized criminals, retailers and return logistics operators say a lot of everyday consumers are the culprits, too. People are strapped for cash, they've been trained to expect super loose return policies, and they don't feel bad about pulling one over on a faceless company. "Consumers who would never go into a physical store and take an item off without paying and stealing are actually being trained socially that it's actually acceptable to take advantage of retailers in these small ways," says David Morin, the vice president of client strategy at Narvar, a retail logistics company. "They think it's OK, right? Stick it to the man." America is becoming a nation of small-time return fraudsters, one box of fibs at a time. A recent report from Appriss Retail and Deloitte found that the total value of merchandise returned in the US reached $685 billion in 2024. Fifteen percent of that — $103 billion — was fraudulent, the report said, meaning the product shouldn't have qualified for a refund under the retailer's policies. America is becoming a nation of small-time return fraudsters, one box of fibs at a time. Morin says it's hard to suss out who, specifically, is responsible for fraudulent behavior — organized criminals versus everyday consumers — but it's clear that a wider range of people are partaking than you may expect. In 2024, Narvar ran a survey of US consumers that found that more than half of consumers admitted to engaging in fraudulent returns at least once. In a separate 2023 survey of US online shoppers from Loop Returns, a returns management software company, nearly four in 10 people admitted to having engaged in returns policy abuse themselves or knowing of someone who had. "There seems to be this mentality that consumers feel entitled to do it," says Jessica Meher, the senior vice president of marketing at Loop. The spectrum of returns mischief is quite broad, and your mileage may vary on what's acceptable versus what's abuse. On the more benign end is " bracketing," when consumers buy the same item in different sizes or colors and send back whatever doesn't work. It's a logistical headache and bad for the environment, but it's generally above board. Inching into the fraud territory is the practice known as " wardrobing," which Thomas Borders, the vice president of operations for Inmar Supply Chain, a reverse logistics company recently acquired by DHL, says is when consumers treat return windows as "free rentals." The practice will sound familiar to a lot of shoppers: You buy a dress or a pair of shoes for a special occasion, you wear it to said special occasion, and then you return it and get your money back. "In an effort to avoid customer dissatisfaction, retailers will process the consumers' refund before items are properly assessed and any damage identified," Borders says. "This results in premature refunds, leaving retailers with very little recourse." E-commerce makes this sort of return abuse even easier to engage in than brick-and-mortar shopping — warehouse employees often don't closely scrutinize every single item to make sure it's in tip-top condition like employees at a retail counter might. In a digital world, the retailer will probably see the wine stains on the dress you wore to that wedding only when it's too late, if they ever notice at all. There seems to be this mentality that consumers feel entitled to do it. On the more nefarious side of the equation, consumers lie and say a package never arrived or was stolen, or they stick a different product back in the box. Morin says Narvar had a client during the pandemic who started to see a trend of consumers returning three empty CD cases to them. Someone online figured out the cases weighed the same as some of their core items, so when the return box initially got weighed in by the carrier, no red flags went up that it was the wrong item inside. Once the box was actually opened, the refund had already gone out. Another trick is when consumers tamper with return labels in order to send empty packages to the wrong destination, so they can just claim it got lost if the retailer tries to check. They keep the product, and they get an automatic refund when the package gets put in the mail. Hilary Koziol, who runs the Cellar Sellers, an online consignment business, has dealt with her fair share of dishonest customers. She recently sold a sealed box of trading cards to someone on eBay for hundreds of dollars, and the buyer claimed Koziol actually sent a box with a pair of jeans inside, returned those, and demanded a refund for the trading cards. She wound up opening a case with the US Postal Service over it. On another occasion, a customer bought a $50 dress from her on Depop and, in return, sent back an old, makeup-stained version of the same style. "You find that happens a lot with clothing," she says. When she encounters these problems, she disputes them with the Postal Service and the platforms she's selling on, and it's "kind of a crapshoot" whether she wins or loses, though as she sells more stuff and accumulates more reviews, the platforms tend to side with her more. "Especially if it's a larger-value item," she says, "it's impacting my business a ton." A lot of people get ideas online and on social media for different return tricks they can pull. It took me about five minutes of searching on TikTok to come across videos with tips and advice for getting free refunds from Amazon. There's tons of content about Target's Cat & Jack kids line's generous one-year return policy that leads many parents to try their hand at returning well-worn clothes. On Reddit, there's a forum where people compare notes on Costco returns, including users asking about the chances the company might accept a furniture return five years after it was purchased or exchange a Christmas wreath after the leaves start to brown. There are also hot debates about which REI returns may count as abuse. "It's almost like coupon sites where consumers have been trained to look for coupons and discounts," Meher says. "That's starting to happen with what companies offer loose return policies." I don't think my social circle is the most crime-prone group in the world, but the more I chat with people in my life about return fraud and abuse, especially in online shopping, the more I realize how prevalent it is. A coworker told me about a friend of theirs who'd returned a box of rocks to a retailer instead of a television. A friend told me they'd never steal — only to acknowledge they'd once returned a big-ticket item they broke to Amazon and claimed it arrived broken, while their partner regularly sends back items they've worn. Another friend said that whenever they send back used items to replace new ones and get the refund, they make sure the seller is a big corporation, not a small mom-and-pop shop. I tried to do the bracketing thing with two sets of curtains last summer but failed. I was too lazy to return the set I didn't want within the return window, so it's accumulating dust under my bed. To many people, low-level return fraud feels like a victimless crime — they're not exactly losing sleep over a giant corporation losing a few dollars here and there. People assume retailers don't really care that much, since they'll often send a refund before getting the item back, if they bother to recollect an item at all. Companies have also given people such a long leash on accepting returns that consumers may not blink at hauling grass shears smeared with clippings back to the Target counter after six months of use. Megan Wyatt, the owner of Wit & Whimsy Toys, a brick-and-mortar retailer in California, says the lax return policies the big guys offer customers have been a headache for her. "They'll just take pretty much any return, it feels like, these days. And so customers feel like they can do that at small businesses as well," she says. Her store has to essentially "train customers that you can't expect to return things at a small business the way that you would at Target, Walmart, Amazon, places like that." Retailers big and small aren't having a good time with return fraud and are cracking down. Many are axing free returns, tightening return windows, or otherwise implementing stricter returns policies. Companies such as REI and ASOS have started to ban certain customers over return abuse. Some retailers are using aggregated data to try to identify bad actors, whether they're a previous customer or not. If a consumer is continually taking advantage of return policies at X retailer, Y retailer may know even before they click to buy. Meher, from Loop, says personalized return policies are starting to become more common, too. "So, being able to incentivize good customers and giving them good return policies and disincentivize bad consumers and people who return a lot and giving them different return windows or different return policies," she says. "That is also starting to become more important as retailers look into, 'How do I make sure that I don't piss off my good customers?'" Across the consumer economy, there's a pervasive us-versus-them sentiment between companies and their customers. Many consumers feel like businesses — especially the big ones — are swindling them and squeezing them for every penny, so when they have a chance to strike back, why not? Maybe that means putting a brick in a return box and hoping nobody notices it's not an iPad. Or maybe it's just seeing that package you'd already declared stolen arrived three days late and not trying too hard to give back that refund that already came through.
Newsweek
5 days ago
- Business
- Newsweek
Woman Bombarded With Mystery Walmart Packages of BBQ Sauce—'Crazy'
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Nicole Nassif, a Chicago resident, has been receiving packages of Sweet Baby Ray's sauce since early 2025, a local outlet reported. At first, she thought nothing of it, as she is a restaurant owner and believed the sauce to be a promotional gift. However, the sauce just kept coming, according to an ABC7 Chicago report. She told ABC7: "It was crazy. I mean, honestly, it was nuts. I was like, what in the hay is going on?" Nassif discovered the sauce was being sent to her house because it was listed as a return address for a page on Walmart Marketplace, Walmart's equivalent to Amazon. Meaning, people thought they were returning sauce to the site they bought it from, but were actually sending it to Nassif, according to ABC7. Walmart told Newsweek that it "takes the integrity of its Marketplace seriously." Newsweek has reached Nassif for comment via LinkedIn. Box with logo for Walmart online ordering and delivery, San Ramon, California, May 12, 2020. This box is not connected to the sauce being delivered to Nicole Nassif. Box with logo for Walmart online ordering and delivery, San Ramon, California, May 12, 2020. This box is not connected to the sauce being delivered to Nicole Nassif. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Why It Matters Data policy analyst Eli Clemens told ABC7 that this situation can happen to anyone with a publicly listed address, as some overseas vendors selling on U.S. marketplaces will list random American addresses scraped from the internet for their domestic returns, likely in order to avoid paying for pre-paid international return labels. What To Know Nassif, who runs Imee's Mediterranean Kitchen in Chicago, told ABC7 that she started getting boxes that specifically contained two bottles of sauce addressed to her restaurant, at her home address. When the boxes of sauce, as well as a few of toilet cleaner, showed no sign of stopping, she called the numbers associated with the addresses on the parcels. She then reached a woman named Debbie. This is how she found out that her home was listed as a return address for a Walmart Marketplace seller. The sauce was "crazy" enough, but she grew more concerned when she got a letter from a sweets and cough-drop manufacturer alleging she was stealing its intellectual property because it believed she was selling its product via the Walmart Marketplace account linked to her address. Nassif told ABC7 she spent at least 60 hours trying to contact Walmart about the sauce, and she added that the account containing her address was not taken down by Walmart from the site for over five weeks. Contacted by Newsweek, a Walmart spokesperson provided the following statement: "Walmart takes the integrity of its Marketplace seriously, using multiple layers of verification and continuous monitoring to help ensure that only legitimate, trustworthy sellers are allowed on the platform. We have zero tolerance for inaccuracies and take swift action to remove noncompliant listings." She is not the only person who has ended up an accidental victim of online marketplace address scams. A woman in San Jose, California, found her home bombarded with Amazon packages on her doorstep after her address was listed as the return site for an overseas car seat cover seller, as reported by ABC7 and The New York Times. Karen Holton told The New York Times that she had to store the parcels in her carport, but that prevented her from being able to park there. She said she was hoping someone would steal a few of them, but "even thieves didn't want it." Amazon eventually sent a large truck to come pick up the parcels from her house. What People Are Saying Amazon spokeswoman, Sharyn Ghacham, said in the statement, as reported by The New York Times: "We'd like to thank ABC 7 On Your Side for bringing this to our attention. We've apologized to the customer and are coordinating with the seller responsible toward a permanent resolution." Eli Clemens, a policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank based in Washington, D.C, told ABC7: "Unfortunately, I think U.S. consumers are just going to be the victims in this, and there's not a lot of options for recourse. Online marketplaces will respond to this media attention, I think that can amplify that. And that's definitely what's happening in this case." What Happens Next Clemens has suggested paying for data removal services to prevent this from happening, but warned that it is very difficult to completely ensure this will never happen.
Fashion Network
20-06-2025
- Business
- Fashion Network
Walmart Vriddhi makes new pledge to MSMEs
Walmart's supplier development initiative, Walmart Vriddhi, has announced a new partnership with the Ideas to Impact Foundation (i2i) to support 100,000 additional micro, small and medium enterprises in India over the next three years. The expanded initiative will leverage Walmart's global supply chain experience and Flipkart's digital commerce ecosystem to help MSMEs scale their businesses nationally and internationally, the business announced in a press release. So far, Walmart Vriddhi has trained more than 70,000 MSMEs, enabling many to achieve around 55% year-on-year growth through personalised mentorship, strategic partnerships and digital tools. 'We are constantly inspired by India's vibrant innovation ecosystem and the growth potential of its MSMEs,' said Jason Fremstad, senior vice president of supplier development at Walmart in a press release. 'As we enter the next phase of Walmart Vriddhi, we're empowering MSMEs with new tools for digital growth, sustainability and export readiness.' The programme also facilitates access to the Walmart Marketplace and Flipkart Marketplace, helping small businesses participate in global and domestic e-commerce. New memorandums of understanding with state governments, including Haryana, are expected to expand outreach. Flipkart Group's Rajneesh Kumar said the partnership reflects an ongoing commitment to making digital commerce more accessible to India's small business community. The programme, launched in 2019, aims to equip entrepreneurs with critical business skills and market access through a free training model.
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Walmart DEI boycott starts today; here's why, what NJ shoppers should know
A week-long boycott targeting Walmart begins today across the U.S., the latest in a string of economic blackouts taking aim at large-scale retailers that have recently rolled back their DEI policies. The spending freeze on the world's largest retailer comes amid an ongoing "40-day fast" of Target, spearheaded by a group of Black faith leaders, and kicks off a series of actions planned through the summer. The People's Union USA has been rallying consumers to avoid retail giants that have since President Donald Trump's DEI cuts, scaled back on their diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The group, led by John Schwarz, was behind the 24-hour economic blackout on Feb. 28 that later expanded to Amazon and Nestlé, which took place in March. Here's what New Jersey shoppers should know. The upcoming Walmart boycott starts today, Monday, April 7, and extends through Monday, April 14. The People's Union USA has asked customers to avoid spending at any Walmart stores or supercenters, online, on apps, through subscription services as well as at its affiliates. From groceries to food and fuel, the People's Union USA has asked customers to pause all Walmart-related shopping: Walmart retail stores: All Walmart stores, including Walmart Supercenters and Walmart Neighborhood Markets Online: Walmart Grocery App, Walmart Marketplace, and the Walmart+ subscription service Financial services: Walmart MoneyCard, any in-store check cashing, bill pay and money transfers Pharmacy and health services: Walmart pharmacy, vision and health centers Grocery delivery: Walmart InHome delivery, curbside pickup and any grocery order fulfilled by Walmart All Walmart gas stations All Sam's Club warehouses and gas stations Schwarz, who founded the People's Union, a grassroots movement dedicated to "economic resistance, government accountability, and corporate reform, has been critical of larger corporations such as Target, Walmart, Nestlé and Amazon. In an online post, Schwarz called Walmart "one of the biggest beasts in the game," stating it has "swallowed up local economies, crushed small businesses, underpaid their employees, and helped fund the same political machine that keeps us all stuck." In an Instagram post on Friday, Schwarz, who goes by the handle TheOneCalledJai, said the boycott "isn't about hate" but rather about the need for Americans to use their power and strategy to stop "feeding these giants." "We've been watching prices rise while wages stay the same," he told his viewers. "We've watched these companies rake in billions while families can barely afford groceries." There are 70 Walmart stores, 35 of which are supercenters, in New Jersey, according to the company's corporate website. There are eight Sam's Club stores, three distribution centers and two fulfillment centers, a facility that handles processing and shipping of products to customers, according to the retailer. Schwarz has also outlined several dates for blackouts or boycotts this spring and summer: Walmart boycott: April 7-14 Second economic blackout: April 18 General Mills boycott: April 21-28 Second Amazon boycott: May 6-12 Second Walmart boycott: May 20-26 Target boycott: June 3-9 McDonald's boycott: June 24-30 Independence Day boycott: July 4 Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to dismantle federal Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Walmart, the nation's largest retailer, stepped away from its DEI policies in late 2024, stating it would no longer participate in the annual benchmark index from LGBTQ+ advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign. The company also said it would no longer consider race or gender when awarding supplier contracts. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is a concept that promotes the fair treatment and full participation of all people, particularly groups that are "underrepresented or subject of discrimination because of their background, identity and disability," according to Many businesses and agencies rushed DEI programs into place in the wake of the 2020 protests against the death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police during an arrest, but diversity practices have been around for decades, dating back to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Several businesses have either modified or removed their DEI programs, including Target, Meta, Costco, McDonald's, Amazon and Lowe's. Lori Comstock is a New Jersey-based journalist with the Mid-Atlantic Connect Team. This article originally appeared on Walmart boycott: What to know about week-long spending freeze in NJ
