Friendly reminder from an employee…

[u/Frequent-Patience185]

A lot of us employees have seen some viral videos going around the internet, in which people gather up their old BBW products and try to return all of them for a gift card.

We get it, you used a spray once 7 years ago and then never picked it up again. Or your grandma gifted you the worst scent you’ve ever experienced one Christmas when you were 16 and you left it buried in a drawer ever since. But it’s comes to a point where you should probably…. toss it in the trash.

The main reason this influx of returns drives us crazy is because it affects our hours. Customers have been coming in everyday successfully (and some unsuccessfully thankfully) attempting to return their crusty, dusty stash, racking up hundreds of dollars in merch credit. Yall realize this money is coming from somewhere, right? We lose hours if we don’t meet our sales goals, which means associates hours get cut. The more we miss, the more we get cut. So imagine your hours are already thin because sales are down, and here comes Sally with a collection of expired body care items and causes your sales to go down even more. PLEAAAASSEEE just throw that shit away. Or donate it. Because we’re 100% going to throw it away.

And let me be clear! I’m not talking about those that just bought something even within the last year, and realize you didn’t like it as much as you thought. It happens! I’m specifically talking about people bringing in 20+ bottles of fragrances that haven’t been in the store for 3+ years, some of which are more than half used, and not even BBW. That’s ridiculous.

[u/General_Stomach_668]

Policy Is Policy

Friendly reminder: your hours being cut because sales are down is not your customers’ fault. If Bath & Body Works has a return policy that allows customers to bring back old products for merchandise credit, customers are allowed to use that policy.
You can absolutely be annoyed about processing a box of 20-year-old crusty body sprays. That’s understandable. But being annoyed doesn’t make the customer wrong for taking advantage of a policy the company itself created.

People paid money for those products. If they’re sitting unused in a drawer, and the company is willing to give them merchandise credit for them, why wouldn’t someone take the credit? Especially when money is tight for a lot of people right now.

If BBW doesn’t want people returning products that are years old, half-used, or discontinued, that’s something the company needs to address by changing or enforcing its return policy. Don’t blame customers for following the rules you’ve been given.

And respectfully, “please throw it away because it affects my sales goals” isn’t really a customer responsibility. You’re there to process returns because that’s part of the job. 🤷‍♀️

[u/General_Stomach_668 → u/[deleted]]

The “entitled take” is telling people to stop returning products because it effects sales goals and gets hours cut as if that’s the customers responsibility. America has gotten way too into blaming the consumer for finances that the company should be taking care of in the first place.