Online retailers should accept returns without complaining | Letters

Your article says serial returners often send products back “out of buyer’s remorse” and quotes Al Gerrie saying that “this cohort is exploiting retailers” (Serial returners send back £6.6bn of online purchases a year in UK, report finds, 21 October). I am a serial returner, and these claims are not true of me. I would much prefer to go to a shop to try on 15 things and buy two than order 15 things online, wait for delivery and go through the hassle of returning 13. However, clothes retailers (John Lewis, for example) have taken advantage of the internet to have a much wider range available on their websites than they have in store.

Your article mentions Boden, which doesn’t even have its own shops any more. I received a box of 17 Boden items last week and now need to return 14. You say this is “a costly headache for retailers”, but if they were to enable me to try these clothes in store before purchasing them, I would gladly do so. They can’t have their cake and eat it too – they are saving on rent by offering far more clothes online than they can fit in their stores. That is the trade-off of the online model that they are profiting from.
Penelope Jones
London