Playbook, fashion retailer
Two histories end with the same mark on a sleeve
Damage in this trade is almost never a broken object. It is a mark, a pulled thread, a hem coming down, a missing button, a seam that was never closed. None of it is visible through a mailing bag, none of it produces a crushed box to photograph, and the same mark could have happened in transit or could have been sent out that way after coming back from somebody else. Those are different routes with different evidence, and the customer cannot tell them apart.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for lost or damaged goods holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Clothing travels in a soft bag rather than a box, so the standard instruction to keep and photograph the outer packaging produces nothing usable, and the evidence that matters is on the garment itself.
- The commonest thing wrong with a garment in a parcel is a security tag left attached, which does the item no harm at all and makes it completely unwearable, and it is the one problem that can often be solved without the piece coming back.
- A marked garment has two possible histories, damaged in transit or resold after a return that should not have gone back on the rail, and which one it is decides whether this is a carrier matter or an inspection failure inside the shop.
- The customer's own suspicion is specific here and has to be handled rather than ignored: they believe somebody wore it, and a reply that talks about transit without acknowledging that reads as a shop avoiding the question.
How it arrives
- there is a security tag still on my dress
- the jumper came with a mark on the sleeve
- a button was missing when i opened it
- the hem was coming down out of the bag
- i think this has been worn before
- my delivery bag was split open at the end
What has to be indexed for this to work
| What to photograph on a garment, part by part | The fault itself, the composition and care label, and the swing ticket or barcode if it is still attached. The label photograph is the one nobody thinks to ask for and it is what identifies which run the piece came from. |
|---|---|
| The security tag route | Whether a shop will remove one over the counter, whether one has to be posted back, and what a customer must not do, which is attempt it themselves. This is high volume, it is entirely resolvable in writing, and it is almost never on a help page. |
| Your standard for putting returned stock back on sale | What inspection checks before a returned garment is resold, and what you want a customer to do when something has clearly got through. Written as a standard you hold yourself to rather than as a denial that it happens. |
| Where a damaged on arrival report goes, and how soon | Stated separately from the ordinary returns route, because a customer who files this as a change of mind loses the distinction and pays return postage they should not have paid. |
The reply
Do not try to remove a security tag yourself, because taking one off without the right release is how a garment gets ruined and it stops being returnable at that point [1]. Tags are taken off over the counter at any of our shops, and if that is not practical the piece can come back to us on the damaged route rather than the ordinary returns one, which is not the same thing and does not cost you postage [2]. On the mark, photograph the mark itself and the composition label sewn into the side seam before anything else, since those two pictures are what the team works from. If you think it went out having been worn, say so plainly in the message, because that is checked differently from transit damage. Leave your name and the email on the order with the photographs and it goes straight over.
The warning goes first because it is the only instruction that becomes impossible to follow once ignored. The shop counter is offered before the postal route, since it is faster and free for both parties. Naming the damaged route as distinct from returns is what saves the customer the postage they would otherwise pay by filing it wrongly. The suspicion is invited rather than deflected, because a shopper who thinks the garment was worn will say it somewhere and it is better said here.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor describes a specific garment that arrived marked, incomplete, tagged or apparently worn, or says the bag arrived open.
This needs somebody who can look at the pictures rather than me. Leave your name, the email on the order, the order number, and photographs of the fault and of the care label, and the team will pick it up on the damaged goods route.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never tell a customer how to get a security tag off, since a home attempt destroys the garment and ends any claim they had.
- Never say a garment was not worn before, because nobody in a chat window has seen it and the customer is holding the thing they are describing.
- Never send a damaged on arrival report down the ordinary returns route, which costs the customer postage they should not be paying.
- Never characterise a mark as transit damage or as a manufacturing fault, both of which are findings made by looking at the item.
Questions
- Can it decide whether a mark happened in transit?
- No, and it should not try. It has seen nothing. Its job is to get the two photographs taken while the garment is still in the state it arrived in, and to keep the report off the returns route where the customer would end up paying postage.
- Why the care label photograph specifically?
- It carries the information that identifies which production run a piece came from, which matters when several people report the same fault on the same line. Customers photograph the mark and nothing else, and the second picture costs them ten seconds.
- Is the security tag question worth a page of its own?
- It is worth being answerable in one reply. It is high volume, entirely predictable, and the failure mode is expensive: somebody takes a knife to it, ruins a garment they paid for, and now has a complaint instead of an inconvenience.
Keep reading
- Everything for a fashion retailerFit is both the most asked pre-purchase question and the biggest cause of returns. Here is what a clothing retailer can safely automate.
- Handling lost or damaged goods in generalThe claim window, the photographs needed, the carrier's role, and why this reaches a person sooner than almost anything else in support.
- Three numbers on one swing ticket and none of them is wrongWas, now and further reduced are three numbers on one ticket. Codes that die on sale lines, and one size cleared while the run stays full price.
- Cancel it and the size goes back on the site within the hourOn a seasonal line, cancelling hands the size to somebody else for good. Pre-orders and stocked pieces cancel on different terms.
- The document they want is the one with the price removedThe commonest paperwork request here is for a document with the price taken off, and it has to be decided before the parcel is packed.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.