Retail Death Spiral Continues

Stores like Walmart and Target have been fighting the likes of newcomers such as Amazon for years. This battle has been almost completely one sided as big box retail stores continue fighting for customers, we see online options such as Amazon signing up millions of new members every month. This surely dumbfounds the bean counters at stores like Sears and Walmart because Amazon charges a membership fee for access to their “Amazon Prime” program. Regardless of the competition online, big box stores will be tightening control over the one thing they had over on stores like Amazon. Immediate returns. Well, returns at all actually.

Walmart has been slowly tightening their grip on returns without a receipt for years. It seems that big box stores have a new option in tracking returns even when a receipt was kept.

The Retail Equation (TRE), based in Irvine California, works with big box retailers to record and rate customer return activity. TRE’s service is allegedly in use in over 34,000 stores right now.

The Retail Equation statistics show stores losing between $10.8 and $17.6 billion each year in the United States due to fraudulent activity by customers.

While that is a staggering number, it is also interesting to note that in many cases, The Retail Equation has been given control over allowing a return or not by a customer.

“We are hired by the retailers to review the returns, look for suspicious situations and issue approvals, warnings or denials,” Tom Rittman, an Appriss marketing vice president, was quoted as saying. “You could do things that are inside the posted rules, but if you are violating the intent of the rules, like every item you’re purchasing you’re using and then returning, then at a certain point in time you become not a profitable customer for that retailer.”

This process is allegedly handled via ratings that TRE gives customers based on their purchase and return activity.

If you feel that you have been wrongly targeted by The Retail Equation algorithms you can obtain a copy of your activity report.

The process of returning an item, with or without a receipt, is pretty simple. Taking the item to the store, usually the Customer Service desk, and giving it to the employee to scan the barcode. If you have the receipt then it is sometimes more streamlined, though if that retailer is using the TRE system it could be just as complicated as without a receipt.

Once the item and or receipt are scanned, the TRE system tells the employee to either accept the return or warn you that you are close to, or have surpassed, the threshold of returns that retailer allows during a certain period of time.

If you are denied a return by a retailer that uses The Retailer Equation systems then contact the company at [email protected] and file a dispute.

Frankly, this is the last bastion of hope that brick and mortar stores had over online retailers. Simple, immediate, returns.

I understand chain returns and fraudulent activity is a concern but making it harder for the normal person to return an item is not going to help keep that person from simply going online and buying it.

When we go to a big box store we are giving up the one thing that online shopping offers to save us. Time. Complicating returns will simply force former customers to online options such as Amazon and eBay.

Source: Clark.com