With the holidays behind us, people have been swarming stores to return gifts they don't want to keep. But if you were planning to give something back to Nordstrom, a store famously lenient about returns, you may meet more resistance than usual.
The store is cracking down on people who take advantage of its "case-by-case" return policy spokesperson Emily Sterken told Yahoo Style.
Before, Nordstrom would issue gift cards to people returning products no longer on sale. Perhaps for that reason, people on social media have reported returning items as much as a decade old.
I just witnessed a @Nordstrom employee look up 4 items without tags from 2 years ago to make a return for $108.08. This is why I shop here.
— Lauryn Ash (@laurynashling) January 18, 2017
I went shopping with pms and bought a pink dress, a green dress, and a blue shirt.
— Chris (@cabridged) February 23, 2016
Nothing black.
Nordstrom return policies comfort me.
So many shoppers were buying dresses for just one event and returning them soon after, customers were complaining about new clothes that looked worn. The store's records showed that many dresses had indeed been bought and returned. As a result, people are no longer allowed to bring back Special Occasion dresses without tags, Sterken said.
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shout out to nordstrom for their A+ return policy so i can give them back this dress i bought in june that didn't fit
— katie dzwierzynski (@kdzwierzynski) January 17, 2017
God bless Nordstrom for letting me return this stupid dress with no receipt or tags ??
— Jordan (@jordandiershoww) August 15, 2016
By God... look at this dress that I could buy and then return for free bc Nordstrom. I won't. But I could. WHOO BOY it's so pretty ? pic.twitter.com/N3ZI8RTR7u
— Katy (@kaydubby) January 1, 2017
The retailer also used to offer all refunds in cash, but customers will now have to settle for store credit unless the customer paid in cash.
Since the store's system logs people's purchases and examines their IDs when they ask for cash refunds, they can catch repeat offenders. "We’ll follow up with the customer directly and may ultimately make the decision to stop serving them in our stores and online," said Sterken. "Occasionally there have been situations where we have felt a customer wasn’t being fair with us, like when their returns to Nordstrom were greater than their purchases with us or when we have no record of ever having sold the item being returned."
You can't blame the company for watching its back. An NRF report found that return fraud around the holidays cost stores over $2 billion in 2015.
Of course, if you genuinely got something at Nordstrom you don't want anymore, you should be fine. But be warned: Your buy-and-return sprees may not fly anymore.