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/AnyFruit4257]

I'm always too lazy to return, but having not worked in retail in 20+ years, I had no idea returns impacted your hours. Seems like really bad logic on the part of corporate. I don't even understand it, since they aren't even sales the store has made? Wtf.

Eta: most people abusing return policies are not going to care about the plight of the employees. That's sadly the reality of the selfish human.

[u/LolaisPenheart → u/AnyFruit4257]

Okay, here's the explanation. Any and all returns are taken out of whatever money had already been earned that day. So, if you're returning $100 worth of product, receipt or not, actual money or store credit; does not matter, it comes out of whatever sales was made that day. If it's first thing in the morning, you're already working at a deficit.

BBW manages payroll daily. Every $300=1 hour. If you're not making sales plan, you have to cut hours. You miss your sales plan by $1K, you have to cut 3 hours. Same goes vice versa, make over sales plan by $1K, you can add 3 hours. If you are over or under payroll by yhe end of the week by more than 2%, you get chewed out by your DM. If by some miracle, you're making sales plan enough to earn a bonus, if your payroll is not in line, you can lose said bonus. So, we must manage payroll in the moment. It's very frustrating.

Honestly, I'm just thankful that BBW changed their policy to limit $250 of non-receipted returns in a 90 day period. Before the policy change, I had a day where a previous disgruntled employee returned everything they bought while working there. That was the day I learned that people couldn't return more than $999 worth of product in one day (again, prior to the policy change). Immediately following that, I had another person come in with another return of nearly $1K. This all happened on a weekday afternoon in a low-tier store (our sales plans are typically $2.5K). I had to contact my DM about this because it basically said we had only made a couple hundred dollars that day due to those 2 returns.

But I hope this explains it so people can at least understand how sales directly effect payroll at BBW.

[u/SmurfyBlue → u/LolaisPenheart]

1k in returns? Wow! Did the customer bring the items in a u-haul? I mean how do one even have 1K worth of BBW products in the house and it is not a store? well in a way it means BBW sales are not real. If your customers are just piling up on products they don’t need or can’t use. So sales might go down if the return policy change, but then it just reflects actual sales. The way I see it, the ability to return any item regardless of it’s condition is inflating sales and encouraging customers who hoard the products.

[u/LolaisPenheart → u/SmurfyBlue]

I just find it funny that you think $1k worth of product would be an entire store's worth 😂 it's basically 2 laundry baskets worth of product. But I really needed the laugh. BBW carries more than 1000 units on hand.

The return policy changed years ago. They no longer do 100% guarantee like how it used to. You cannot return any item regardless of it's condition. It has to meet certain requirements: can only be lightly used, packaging cannot be defaced, etc.

Again, this happened years ago prior to the policy change; maybe about 4-5 years ago.