It’s January and the time that returns start flooding in from the Christmas period and, perhaps a record for the first unwanted Christmas present was a return that took place on Christmas Day at 7:02am in Salisbury. Christmas Day Returns now appear to be a routine part of ecommerce with hundreds of consumers taking advantage of a quiet retail day to deal with unwanted purchases.
Amazingly, either someone opened up a present and decided to return it, or perhaps it was a return that never got as far as being wrapped up, but it wasn’t the only Christmas return at a Collect Plus convenience store open on Christmas day. The second Christmas Day return took place at 7:40am Glasgow with the third just minutes later at 7:43am in Norwich.
In total, there were 419 Christmas Day Returns through the Collect Plus network. Some customers returned more than one potentially unwanted present: in Enfield, a single customer returned seven parcels at 12:09pm, while in Wokingham, Berkshire, a customer returned six parcels at 12:44pm. A further five were returned by a customer in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, at 6:50pm.
However, there were hundreds of potentially happier customers who were still able to collect parcels on Christmas Day. In total, 1,043 parcels were collected on December 25th – there’s nothing like leaving things until the last minute with some probably hastily wrapped gifts opened later in the day.
First 10 Christmas Day returns
7:02am Salisbury, Wiltshire
7:40am Glasgow
7:43am Norwich, Norfolk
7:54am London
8:24am Bracknell, Berkshire
8:46am Slough, Berkshire
8:51am Swindon, Wiltshire
9:27am London
9:28am Bury, Lancashire
9:32am Barnsley, South Yorkshire
Doubtless today will be a busy day shipping the backlog of orders placed over the New Year Bank Holiday, although many in Scotland will be enjoying another Bank Holiday today. But set some time aside to deal with returns and keep on top of them – the quicker stock is turned around the better and there’s nothing more depressing than a return being escalated to a marketplace to resolve adding a ding on your customer metrics to the insult of an unwanted purchase.
