Online retail in German-speaking markets has particularly high return rates, and in fashion the figures at some retailers sit well above what's common elsewhere.
The reason is known: free returns as standard, plus the habit of ordering several sizes and keeping the one that fits. What's less known is what happens afterwards and why it costs so much.
The journey of a returned parcel
An item arrives at a returns centre. From there begins a process consisting overwhelmingly of manual work.
Somebody opens the parcel. Somebody checks whether the item matches what was declared. Somebody assesses condition: has it been worn? Does it smell of perfume or smoke? Are the tags attached? Is any accessory missing?
Then the decision: can the item go straight back into stock, does it need cleaning or refurbishment, does it go to a secondary sales channel, or is it no longer usable?
If refurbishment is needed, more work follows: pressing, repackaging, relabelling, restocking.
Estimates from research in this area put the pure processing cost of a textile return in the range of a few euros per item — return shipping, labour, warehouse space and systems combined. For electronics or furniture it's considerably higher.
The time factor
What's often missing from the calculation is the loss of value through time.
A garment ordered in September and returned at the end of October may no longer be in the current range. Between return, processing and restocking, two to three weeks pass easily.
In seasonal ranges that can mean a perfectly good item is only saleable at a discount. The loss then arises not from damage but from the calendar.
The destruction question
The topic that generates the most public anger.
The logic behind it is purely commercial: if processing an item costs more than its likely resale value, disposal is the cheaper option.
This affects cheap items with high processing requirements above all. A twelve-euro garment that would need cleaning and refurbishment simply doesn't pay.
Germany now has a duty of care in its circular economy legislation obliging retailers to handle goods responsibly and to document destruction. How effective that is in practice is assessed differently by different observers, and the data is thin — partly because nobody voluntarily publishes good numbers on it.
Why returns stay free anyway
Given these costs, the question is why retailers offer it.
The answer is simple: charging for returns reduces willingness to buy. Anyone unsure whether something will fit doesn't order if sending it back costs money. For most retailers the lost revenue exceeds the return costs.
Then there's competitive pressure. A single retailer introducing fees loses customers to rivals. It's a classic situation where all participants produce an outcome none of them considers optimal.
Some larger retailers have introduced fees or restricted serial returners. That's a cautious attempt to escape the trap.
What actually helps
The more interesting approaches start earlier, at prevention.
Better size information. Concrete measurements rather than just S/M/L, and notes on how an item runs compared with others. This measurably reduces the main cause in fashion.
Customer reviews on fit. Surprisingly effective, because other buyers describe more precisely than manufacturers do.
Better product images. Multiple views, realistic colours, the model's measurements stated.
Individual recommendations based on past orders. If you know which size a customer kept, you can advise specifically.
All of this costs effort upfront and saves considerably later. Retailers who invest here have measurably lower rates.
What customers can do
There is an environmental dimension that gets discussed loudly and measured poorly.
The transport emissions of a return journey are real but modest — one parcel on a delivery round that was happening anyway. The larger footprint sits in the production of items that end up being discarded, and in the packaging consumed by the second and third delivery attempt.
Which points at the same conclusion as the cost analysis: prevention beats processing. An item that fits first time has no return journey, no reprocessing, no repackaging and no risk of disposal.
It also suggests that the most useful regulation would target information quality rather than the returns themselves. Requiring accurate, standardised measurements on clothing listings would do more for both cost and emissions than any restriction on returning things, and it would not shift the burden onto the customer who simply guessed wrong about a garment described only as "medium".
Without wagging a finger, since the behaviour is a rational response to a system that offers it.
Still: ordering one size instead of three after spending two minutes with a size chart creates substantially less work. And anyone returning something should send it back in the condition it arrived — carefully packed returns are considerably cheaper to process than items rattling loose in a box.
This isn't a moral question. It's simply that these costs end up in the prices of all items, including the ones nobody returns.