[vorpalhex]

Would it make sense to have retailers that cater to these heavy returners? Charge them a subscription and give them a monthly box they can return items in, allow partial refunds with a well described contract, and generally work with their use cases?

[pythonistic]

I think I first saw one of those nearly a decade ago: it was definitely high-end, catering to men, and all designer labels. I honestly don't know if it survived or failed because the category isn't interesting to me.

Returns are the problem: returns may not get the nice discounts for shipping, they require manual review of the products (are it the correct SKU, the correct size, is it in a resellable condition, etc.), restocking and reinsertion into buyable inventory, etc. And then refund processing, which may take 7-10 days or more.

But it doesn't address the problem of renters: they won't buy a subscription box if there's a monthly fee associated with it. They like being able to get new shoes, clothes, and accessories to wear once and then return for free. Identifying renters and either directly contacting them to change their behavior (this is high touch, but the company culture encourages this) or removing them as customers are the best solutions I've seen to date.

[xienze]

There are already services that do this. I've seen ads for a shoe service (name escapes me) and a clothing service (Gwynnie Bee).

[mbreese]

Zappos (owned by Amazon) has unlimited returns for a year. It makes shopping for shoes really convenient — you can order multiple sizes, styles, etc and just send back the ones you don’t want to keep.

The downside is that you buy them all and get a refund on return.

[biggc]

You mean Stitch Fix?