Playbook, fashion retailer
Exchanges, reorders and the size that sells out while you wait
Almost every return in fashion is a size swap, and almost no fashion retailer runs a true exchange. The shop refunds and the customer reorders, which is a perfectly reasonable operation and a completely different thing from what the customer asked for. The gap between those two words generates two contacts per return, and one honest sentence closes it.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for returns and exchanges holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The overwhelming majority of returns here are size swaps, which is a different transaction from a return, and describing both with the same word produces two contacts instead of one.
- The risk the customer is really weighing is that the replacement size sells out while the first one is in the post, and no returns page anywhere mentions it.
- Final sale and promotional exclusions are heavier in this trade than in any other, and in most markets they limit a change of mind rather than a claim about goods that are faulty.
- Condition here is judged on wear, tags and scent rather than on packaging, which is a test no electronics or furniture return has to pass.
How it arrives
- can i exchange this for a bigger size
- do you do free returns
- can i return sale items
- i have taken the tag off can i still send it back
- how do i swap a size
- can i return an online order to one of your shops
What has to be indexed for this to work
| How your exchange actually works | Whether you swap the garment or refund it and ask the customer to reorder, how long the refund takes to release, and what happens if the wanted size has gone by then. Write the version you operate, not the version that sounds better. |
|---|---|
| The condition standard, in garment terms | Tags attached, unworn, no perfume, deodorant or makeup marks, no pet hair, hygiene seals intact on swimwear and underwear. Inspection benches reject on these and customers have never been told they exist. |
| Sale, promotion and multibuy exclusions | Which items are excluded from a change of mind return, how a refund is recalculated when a multibuy is broken up, and whether a discount code shortens the window. Write the faulty goods carve-out into the same document so the two are always quoted together. |
| Whether online orders can come back to a shop | Which shops accept them, what the customer needs to bring, whether a refund can be given at the till or has to go back to the original card, and whether a shop can hand over a different size on the spot. |
The reply
We do not hold a size while a return is travelling, so the way it works is that we refund the returned piece and you place a new order for the size you want, which is worth doing straight away if the size is selling. Garments need to come back unworn with the tags still attached and no perfume or deodorant marks, because those are what inspection rejects on. Sale pieces are covered by the exclusions on our returns page for a change of mind, and that does not affect anything you would be reporting as faulty.
The first sentence tells the customer the thing they were about to find out the hard way, and tells them what to do about it in the same breath. The condition test is stated in the vocabulary of a garment rather than of a policy, so it is actionable. The final clause keeps the sale exclusion from swallowing a defect, which is the misreading this trade's material invites.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor says a garment has split, shrunk, lost colour or otherwise failed, or asks about a return outside the published window.
That is not a change of mind and I should not treat it as one. Leave your name, the email on the order and a couple of photographs of what has happened and the team will look at it under our faulty 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 describe a refund and reorder as an exchange.
- Never say a size will be held or reserved while a return is in transit.
- Never apply a final sale exclusion to a garment the customer says has split, shrunk or run.
- Never confirm that a returned parcel has arrived or passed inspection.
Questions
- Will being blunt about reordering annoy people?
- Less than discovering it after posting the parcel. The customer who reorders immediately keeps the sale and gets the size they wanted. The one who waits for a true exchange that was never coming loses the size and blames the shop for both.
- How do we stop it refusing sale returns outright?
- Put the faulty goods carve-out inside the same document as the exclusions rather than on a separate page. Retrieval follows the material, so an exclusion sitting alone will be quoted alone, and a split seam on a sale dress will get the wrong answer.
- Can it handle the return to shop question?
- Yes, and it is worth indexing properly because the answer varies by shop and by whether the refund can be issued at the till. Customers assume any branch takes any parcel and refunds cash, and correcting that before they travel is a genuine saving.
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 returns and exchanges in generalWindow, condition, who pays postage, exclusions. Faulty and unwanted are two different processes with two different sets of rights.
- The three separate waits hiding inside one refundInspection, processing and the card issuer are three separate waits. Naming all three prevents the chasing message on day four.
- Size level availability and the hole in the middle of the runFashion stock is a question about one size inside a line, not about the line. Why the middle of the curve goes first.
- When a return stops being a policy lookup and becomes a decisionPast the window, tag removed, worn once. These are judgement calls a shop makes, and an assistant answering them decides them wrongly.
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.