As the cost-of-living crisis looms, more and more online shoppers have taken up the practice of wardrobing: buying clothes online, wearing them once, and returning them to get their money back. Some think it thrifty, others illegal, while a minor few are being banned outright from certain outlets. What path is right? Kate Demolder writes.
You'll see them in your local post office around lunchtime. Hoards of shoppers, wrapped packages in hand, waiting in line to return items they bought online. However, this time, these items weren’t in the wrong size, or different to how they looked on the website. They were in perfect condition, which is why people wore them, before returning them to get their money back.
This practice is called wardrobing, and it entails buying a piece of clothing online, wearing it, and then returning it to ensure no loss of pocket.
Though the practice is a relatively new one––dawning around the same time as online shopping peaked––wardrobing has grown to become a particularly difficult element of online consumerism for retailers, with the cost-of-living crisis largely taking the blame.
As per a new report from US-based retail organisation the National Retail Federation (NRF), total returns for the industry amounted to some $743 billion in merchandise in 2023, with 17.6%, or $247 billion, of merchandise purchased online returned in the same year.
Closer to home, a 2023 survey conducted at the Retail Technology Show found that millennials are returning an average of 20% of their items per order, while Gen Z is returning an average of 22%.
"Sadly, this sneaky little scheme is catching on like wildfire," sustainability activist Pat Kane says. "A recent study spilt the beans that one out of every five shoppers have dabbled in this practice. And guess what? Almost half of those young guns between 16 and 24 are planning to keep the trend alive and kicking."
Steady growth in Internet shopping has been met by steady growth in returns of all kinds; a national park’s worth of artificial Christmas trees is sent back every January; bags of summer dresses are repackaged and shipped every September and returns of deluxe television sets surge immediately following canon sporting events like the World Cup.
Today, returns to online retailers sit around the 20% mark, with returns to clothing retailers sometimes hitting double that. Things seem to have accelerated during the pandemic when the option to try things on in-store was stripped away.
Suddenly, when in-person shopping became difficult, and we had nothing but time to repackage and return, the best way to compare products was to order multiples and send back the rejects.
"I used to do it all the time in college," Mary-Kate* (30) shares. "If there was a ball or a big night out or whatever. The only pain would be waiting up to six weeks before the money came back into your account. Otherwise, it was a no-brainer."
Returns are expensive for sellers, as oftentimes the shipping costs alone are pricier than the items can be resold for. A number of retailers have responded to this by limiting the amount of time one can return for a refund, or imposing fees. Some offer store credit only.
Amazon now adds a "frequently returned item" label to listings of problematic offerings and encourages potential consumers to check reviews of such items before ordering.
However, the discouragement of returns, not to mention the penalties accrued should one choose to return, can oftentimes be the difference between a consumer choosing to buy from one store or another––meaning that companies often choose to build free returns into their business strategy.
That said, some retailers are finally reaching their limit. Such as Amazon and ASOS, who are handing out lifetime shopping bans to those they determine have returned too much and/or too often.
The definition of what exactly that entails––either by weight, price, or frequency––has not been publicly shared, but, instead, vague language like "unreasonable" and "patterns of ordering and returning items" have been shared as grounds for restricting orders.
Consumers involved in situations like this often come to this place confused, having grown accustomed to an internet where returning an item is as straightforward as purchasing it in the first place. (Both retailers were contacted for this article, ASOS never replied, while an Amazon rep said they had "nothing to add").
In Ireland, under EU distance selling regulations, the right to return online purchases for any reason at all is yours, once you do it within a 14-day period. A long list of things that fall outside the remit of the regulations exist––tickets, hotel bookings––but clothing, once it is in 'good condition,’ is not one of them.
However, something activists are keen on spreading awareness of is the environmental element; returned clothing items rarely make it back into the selling process, in part because inventory and point-of-sale systems don’t allow for it and partly because wardrobing accounts for as much as half the number of items returned.
"About one in four returned goods are landfilled, and the rate for returned clothing might be higher, since even items in perfect condition may be out of season or cheaper to dispose of than to restock," Kane says. "Which results in 24M metric tons of CO2 emissions worldwide annually. That’s the equivalent of 5.1M cars revving up their engines for a year."
According to a report by the Institute of Positive Fashion, 50% of returned items that can't be resold go to landfills. This leads to a need for more packaging and, in turn, extra delivery vehicles which go on to pollute the air.
Last year, fashion returns were responsible for 750,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in the UK. In the US, according to returns solution provider Optoro’s 2020 Impact Report, returns generate roughly 16M metric tons of carbon emissions during their reverse journey and up to 9.5B pounds of landfill waste each year. In simple terms, that’s 10,000 fully loaded Boeing 747s. (Inmar, the largest returns liquidator in the US, processes half a billion returned goods each year across 17 warehouse facilities.)
This has caused groups to insist that the practice become illegal. In a 2022 study of 2,000 adults, market research company, OnePoll, found that 46% of survey respondents believed that wardrobing should be considered a "serious illegal offence."
Respondents also shared their thoughts on the behaviour of creating multiple email addresses to take advantage of discounts or free trials, with 43% and 40%, respectively stating they believe these are "serious crimes."
"Do I think it should be penalised? Yes and no," Kane shares. "Some will argue that the overconsumption issue is driven by retailers––and, I’d wholeheartedly agree––but wardrobing isn’t something driven by the retailer. Today, there are some types of software already in place to help retailers weed out wardrobing and those who abuse free returns policies. It’s up to each retailer to get on board though.
Retailers can review their return policies, being a bit more specific when it comes to their rules. For instance, "free" clothing returns aren’t really free because they come at the expense of the environment. Excessive refunds and returns are unsustainable for businesses so blocking the ‘perpetrators’ might be a far better solution than charging honest customers for perfectly reasonable returns. And, a silver lining does exist.
Retailers can step up their game to curb these impacts. They can educate customers on their products, including reviews from fellow shoppers, to help us make more informed, educated choices.
Also, when it comes to returns, they can work some magic by reselling, donating, or recycling clothes instead of dumping them in landfills. In other words, fine-tune their ‘reverse logistics’.
