More Than Living

How to return unwanted gifts and presents

Well, the mince pies have been eaten, the wine drunk and chances are you’re a tad bored of turkey. Now comes the delight of work­ing out what to do with your unwanted Christ­mas gifts. That jumper from Auntie Beryl? That tie from Uncle Bob? What to do?

Retail­ers are under no legal oblig­a­tion to refund or exchange an item unless it is faulty. In prac­tice most will allow you to exchange your unwanted gift for some­thing else or give you a credit voucher – and some will even give you a cash refund if you ask for one.

But policies can vary… so here are my Living Top Tips for Return­ing Unwanted Christ­mas gifts.

1) Don’t wait around and don’t spoil the pack­aging
If Auntie B did her Christ­mas shop­ping weeks early, the stand­ard 28 day period for return­ing goods might be very close to past by the time you hit the high street in early Janu­ary to return that jumper. Many large-​​brand retail­ers relax their normal 28-​​day return period post-​​Christmas and allow you to return unwanted gifts up to the end of Janu­ary, but it makes sense to get in there early. Many retail­ers require the ori­ginal pack­aging for items such as DVDs or CDs to be unopened. So if you’ve politely opened your gift and ooh-​​ed and ahh-​​ed to keep the peace, you may well have to keep the pressie.

2) If you want a refund, make sure you have the receipt…
Increas­ing num­bers of retail­ers provide Gift Receipts these days. They’re a proof of pur­chase that doesn’t show the price paid, so they can be included with a gift without let­ting on how much it cost. Take the present back with Gift Receipt and you should have no prob­lem get­ting an exchange or vouch­ers. If you’re after a cold, hard cash refund how­ever, it’s harder. Gift Receipts often won’t do. The retailer may well only give you vouch­ers or an exchange. So, if you want cash, it’s better to ask the person who bought you the gift for the ori­ginal pur­chase receipt and go along armed with it. Some retail­ers will allow you a cash refund without a receipt, but it’s by no means guaranteed.

3) …unless the present was bought with a credit or debit card
Many presents are bought with a credit or debit card these days. You’re highly unlikely to be able to get a cash refund if this was the case. Any refund given has to go back to the card account that was deb­ited to buy the product. If you know the present was bought with a credit card, you want a cash refund and you don’t mind being eco­nom­ical with the truth (shame on you), don’t offer the shop staff your receipt. If you do, it’s highly likely the refund will have to be cred­ited to the card used to buy it. You’re better off explain­ing that you don’t have the receipt and asking, nicely (see Tip 5 below), for a cash refund. You never know, it might work.

4) Ask.. even if you don’t have a receipt
Many retail­ers will at least give you an exchange or vouch­ers if you don’t have a receipt, and as explained above some will even give you a cash refund if you ask nicely. Be aware though that the value of the refund or exchange will almost cer­tainly be the value of the product at the time you return it. So if there’s a 50% Janu­ary sale on and your item has been marked down, you’ll prob­ably get back less in the way of refund value or vouch­ers than was ori­gin­ally spent to buy it.

4) Be ready with your exchange item
If you know there’s some­thing else in the same shop that you want, take it along with you to the returns desk and ask for an exchange straight away. It’s always much easier to get an exchange rather than a cash refund or credit voucher. You’re always in a much stronger nego­ti­at­ing pos­i­tion if you already know what you want.

5) Be nice, smile
Let’s face it, there will prob­ably be a queue. You’ll end up arriv­ing at the counter with your unwanted jumper feel­ing just a tad hot and hassled. Take a deep breath. Remem­ber that the people at the returns desk will have been inund­ated all day with people demand­ing their money back or asking for exchanges. You’re much more likely to get your refund or exchange sorted out without hassle if you make a point of being nice. Stores will have policies, but they are not always hard and fast. Some­times it really is up to the returns desk staff to make a decision themselves.

6) Be aware of the added com­plic­a­tions of presents bought online
The net has been huge for pur­chas­ing presents. Buying online is quick and con­veni­ent. Return­ing gifts bought online less so. If your present was pur­chased from the online arm of a high street retailer, many will allow you to take you unwanted gifts back to the high street store, rather than having to pay to mail them back. It’s worth call­ing in advance to make sure, but HMV, Deben­hams, M&S and Tesco all told me this was pos­sible when I called to ask.

If your present was bought from an online retailer that has no high street stores it gets more com­plic­ated. Let’s say Uncle Bob bought me ‘Great Fish­ing Spots of the West Coun­try’ using Amazon​.co​.uk. Unfor­tu­nately I’m not into fish­ing and want a book about cars. With a bit of luck he’ll have had it mailed dir­ectly to me by Amazon as a Gift Order. If he did and I have an account with Amazon I can log on, enter the details, get a return label, mail it back and get a gift cer­ti­fic­ate to spend on a dif­fer­ent book – rel­at­ively straightforward.

But if he got it mailed to him and then wrapped it and handed it over to me on Christ­mas day, there’s no way I can return it without get­ting him involved. He needs to give me the ori­ginal order number before I can return it and the credit will have to be applied to his account, not to mine. Ideally returns need to be made using the ori­ginal pack­ing too. All-​​in-​​all, return­ing unwanted gifts to online retail­ers is not that simple if you didn’t buy them your­self in the first place.

7) Flog it
Whilst returns are rather prob­lem­atic online, selling unwanted stuff isn’t. If you’re stuck with an unwanted gift and there’s no easy way to return it, then why not try selling it instead? The obvi­ous place to start is eBay. If you don’t have an account already, you need to set your­self up with one and that takes a while to do, but selling is actu­ally quite good fun!

8 ) Give it away (and feel a bit smug)
Or else, maybe that jumper could be just the ticket for keep­ing someone else warm this winter? Brand new clothes and other goods are almost always wel­come at char­ity shops. In the cur­rent less stable fin­an­cial times char­ity shops are boom­ing, so you should have little trouble. Or else try one of the online giveaway com­munit­ies. Free­cycle is one of the most well known. You advert­ise your item and people who would like it tell you why they want it.

You can choose who you think is the most deserving case – who knows; you might even make some new friends in the process.

Fur­ther help and advice

There’s a really excel­lent guide to con­sumer rights for returns on the Cit­izens’ Advice Bureau Web­site. You can also find out more about your legal rights at Con­sumer Direct, or your local trad­ing stand­ards office.

IMAGE by Flickr user Paul Keleher

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Ori­gin­ally posted 2008-​​12-​​29 06:29:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

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