No Dressing Up This Bad Behavior

In my city, there used to be an annual sporting event that developed into a two-day social party at the stadium. Attendees generally went in costume; there could be prizes for best, most original, best group, etc.

There weren’t that many costume shops in the city, and rental places had a heck of a time because of the state things would be returned in. Our department store had cheaply made costumes in our party section. The general policy was that we wouldn’t take returns, refunds, or exchanges on costumes unless they were faulty and had not been worn; tried on should have been fine, except the number of people that returned “faulty” items that had been damaged because people had bought the wrong size caused problems.

Still, people would try to return costumes as “unworn” when they had clearly been through the wash (frayed edges, colour bleed) or, worse still, reeked of spilt alcohol and body odour. People would even wear them just for the first day and bring them back the morning of the second, hoping to exchange it for something new.

Mostly, our manager stood with us on not taking used costumes back, but enough people complained on social media that the head office ruled that any item could be returned if not fit for purpose within a week of purchase.

Then, they couldn’t understand why our store would take a financial hit from returns and faulty goods every February.