Returning Gifts Bought Online

The day after

Today, across the country, people are holding presents in the wrong size, colour or style and wondering how to change them.

A gift from a shop goes back with a gift receipt. A gift from an online store goes to its returns page, and most returns pages were written for the person who paid.

They ask for an order number from an email the recipient never saw and an email address the recipient does not know. Refunds go back to the buyer's card.

That leaves the recipient two choices: ask the giver for the details, which spoils the gift, or keep something they will never use. Neither helps the store.

What a recipient does not have

• The order number, which went to the buyer's inbox.
• The buyer's email address, or any account login.
• The price paid, usually on purpose.
• A usable packing slip, if prices were printed on it.
• Any reason to have read the terms before today.

The first decides whether a return can begin at all. A form that will not go further without an order number stops every recipient at the first box.

Finding the order without the buyer

Give recipients another way in. The simplest is the name and postal code the parcel was shipped to, which every recipient knows and a stranger is unlikely to.

Better still is a gift receipt: a slip in the parcel with a return code and no prices. Most store platforms can produce one, sometimes with a small change to the packing slip.

Staff should be able to find orders the same way by phone, or at the counter if you have one. Someone who walks in holding a parcel and a name deserves an answer.

Credit for the recipient

A card refund goes back to the card that paid, which is the buyer's. The recipient gets nothing, and the buyer may get an email saying their present came back.

For gifts, offer an exchange first and store credit second, issued to the recipient as a gift card or code. The sale stays with the store and the gift stays a gift.

Say on the returns page that the buyer will not be told, then make sure it is true. Many store platforms email the customer automatically whenever an order is refunded or changed.

A page written for the recipient

Add a section, or a separate page, headed for the person holding the gift: returning or exchanging a gift.

Say what they need, which is the gift receipt or the name and postal code on the parcel. Say what they will get, how long they have, and who pays to send it back.

Say what cannot be returned and why, in plain words. Then link the page from the footer, the order confirmation and the gift receipt itself.

Write it as if to a stranger, because it is.

A worked example

A uniform supplier with a shop near a hospital sells scrubs, nursing shoes, lab coats and chef jackets, in the shop and through an online store used mostly by clinics ordering for staff.

Every December a different customer appears online: parents and partners buying scrubs and shoes as presents for nurses and nursing students.

Last January the returns form asked for an order number and the buyer's email. Recipients phoned instead, and staff could only search by the buyer's name.

One refund went back to a grandmother's card, along with an automatic email telling her the present had been returned.

This Christmas, gift orders carry a slip with a return code and no prices, and orders can be found by the recipient's name and postal code. The returns page has a section for gift recipients.

Exchanges come first, then credit on a gift card in the recipient's name, with the buyer's notification switched off. Embroidered names are marked final sale on the product page, before anyone pays.

A longer window for holiday orders

A thirty-day window that starts on the order date has nearly closed by the time a present bought in late November is unwrapped.

Holiday orders need a window that starts later, and many stores accept holiday returns until the end of January. Whatever date you choose, state it on the product pages, the gift receipt and the returns page.

Then honour it at the counter as well as online, so the answer does not depend on who picks up the phone.

Postage and the parcel

Decide who pays to send a gift back, and say so before anyone packs anything. A recipient asked to pay postage on a present they did not choose is less annoyed when told in advance.

For a different size, an exchange in the shop or a replacement sent as soon as the original is on its way saves everyone a week.

Put clear return instructions in every parcel, and say what happens when a return arrives and how long it takes.

The recipient is a new customer

A recipient who exchanges a gift smoothly has just used your store for the first time, and may come back.

Do not add them to the newsletter because they returned something. Offer it on the exchange form with a separate, unticked box, and let them decide.

The counter-case

Some products cannot come back: perishables, personalised items, and hygiene products once opened. Say so on the product page before purchase, not for the first time on the returns page.

A store that sells few gifts may need only a paragraph on its returns page and staff who can find an order by name.

But any store that sold in December will meet recipients this week. Write the returns process for them, and keep the buyer out of it.

Before the next return

1. Add a gift section to the returns page.
2. Let orders be found by name and postal code.
3. Offer exchanges first, then store credit.
4. Switch off buyer emails for gift returns.
5. Extend the window for holiday orders.
6. Say who pays return postage.
7. Show staff how to find orders by name.

Step four is the one most stores miss. A returns page can promise discretion in the warmest words, and an automatic email can undo it a minute later.

Gifts that arrived late bring returns of their own, which begin with the promises covered in holiday pre-orders for stock still on the way.

Frequently asked questions

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