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@clarry100 wrote:

I've often wondered about refunding the buyer's return postage. We have never had a return as yet.

 

In "the real world of shopping" if you take an item back for refund/exchange do they repay you your costs to get it back to them.

Maybe you travelled by bus/train so there are fares, or drove so there is the cost of petrol etc etc.

 

People seem to happily accept that these costs are theirs but on the other hand will demand that the seller pays their return postage costs. Seems a tad unfair to me to expect this.

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I have personally always found the comparison of return postage costs to travel expenses to be a poor one (I actually feel that way about most comparisons between online and B&M retail, they present unique situations and don't often have direct comparisons, it's just that B&M retail has more well established and standard practices when something similar occurs).

The point of collection for an online purchase and the point of collection for a B&M purchase is where a closer (though not perfect) comparison can be made, IMO. For an online purchase, you pay a total price to get an item to a point of collection (be that your home, a PO box, or whatever). Same deal at a B&M shop - the total price you pay after you get there includes things like freight costs to get items to the store.

If I buy something online that's faulty, I then may incur travel expenses plus return P&H costs, and no matter what, I know I won't get those travel expenses back from the seller (nor would I expect to). 

If I buy a DVD player from Target and it doesn't work so take it back, they're not going to cover my travelling expenses back to the store, but if the product needs to be sent somewhere else, they're not going to charge me delivery costs, either.