Did you get everything you wanted from Santa this year? Maybe one or two items didn’t quite make the cut, and now you want to take them back to their place of origin for a return, exchange, or in-store credit. For consumers, this is the usual scenario year after year, and while it’s not an unexpected phenomenon, it does come with a seemingly endless new variation every time. There has also not been an economy like the one we find ourselves facing today, in a long time. While the concept of great customer service should be firmly rooted within the minds of all retailers and wholesalers who take exceptional care of their customers… this is a time to be a little more careful about how these returns are handled, and how finding outlets for them can be a reward – or a risk.

Good customer service means handling the return of unwanted used/opened merchandise with some degree of grace and poise, as you try to keep your customers from going elsewhere because of a bad return policy that leaves them with an equally-bad taste in their mouths. Competition is fierce, and there is little room for error in the way these returns are handled. While it sounds like returns are a necessary evil in the world of retail, they are also a great source of feedback and valuable market research from your customers, which may help you to streamline your next order of goods to stock the shelves with. In addition, there’s nothing better than building a sale with a customer who has just been quickly and courteously given a return on merchandise… which helps add sales to this month by suggesting and offering new goods, once you’ve got the returning customers in your store. Online sale can work this strategy into the program as well, with instant offers and time-out rebates that are designed to circumvent the losses of exchanges and refunds after tailoring a solution based upon a customer’s past buying history and pattern of browsing your site. Every time your customers visit, this information is saved somewhere, and the most successful sellers are known to use it.

Wholesalers looking to capitalize on the flood of returned inventory can look to the sellers who don’t need to destroy their product, but rather send it back to the manufacturer or liquidate the merchandise. Those retailers and vendors are eager to offload their merchandise, and this could be a great source of discounted goods for the ones who move quickly and forge good relationships with their sources early. It should be noted that successful buyers looking for these deals aren’t waiting for a phone call from liquidators… but rather they are building the needed relationships ahead of time with them, so they can identify – and purchase – the best selection of goods before competing buyers get their hands on them. The window of opportunity will be small, as the holiday season comes and goes in a whirlwind fashion. Make sure you are one of the first to reach out and make your bid on a truckload of merchandise, before it’s swept up by another buyer. Diversification is key, as you will increase the likelihood of getting a great deal from a seller who has exactly what you’re looking for.

Finally, there is the reality of return fraud as a major point to consider when tying up retail return buys, and pulling merchandise from liquidators to supply your own business. It’s not a new situation, as fraudsters and crooks have been doing this for a long time… but the level of sophistication and the sheer volume of return fraud may be reaching some new and impressive heights in the coming months, due to the economic hardships we are facing these days. Criminals are getting wiser to the ways of credit card fraud as well, and some have even been boldly going where no one should go as delivery trucks – and even freight vehicles – have been hijacked or robbed as thieves look for more high-end, high-dollar merchandise to supply themselves with their own form of inventory to liquidate. There’s big money in returning to a retailer with a $2,000 HDTV set, especially if you’ve got a bunch of them stashed somewhere. As retailers deal with this problem, some of the less-scrupulous out there will undoubtedly attempt to accept returns that should otherwise arouse suspicion… in an attempt to satisfy corporate sales goals and keep loss forecasts within their parameters. In short, it’s becoming a buyer beware situation for everyone, including the wholesaler, who might pick up a truckload of hot goods without knowing it.