Online orders: Zalando punishes "immoderate" returners

Until 2019, Zalando advertised on TV with the slogan "Scream with happiness or send it back". In principle, free returns are still part of the online mail-order retailer's promise for shoes, clothing, cosmetics and accessories. However, this no longer applies to customers who the Berlin-based company assumes are overstepping the mark.

Anyone who returns too many items will be branded a returns offender and will no longer be able to order anything online from Zalando. The ban will apply for twelve months, writes Wirtschaftswoche. During this time, those affected will only be able to access their account and view all past orders and returns.

Only a few customers are affected

"We have identified a small group of customers – around 0.02 percent of our total customer base of more than 50 million customers – who have made excessive use of our guidelines and shown unusually high returns behavior," a Zalando spokesperson told the magazine. This customer group had ordered a large number of items in the past twelve months and returned the majority of them.

With around 50 million customers, around 10,000 customer accounts were affected by the measure to avoid excessive returns. Zalando did not specify after how many orders and returns the accounts would be paralyzed.

According to the report, the e-commerce company has also included the new rule in an updated version of its general terms and conditions. According to Zalando, the company is investing in improved product displays to reduce returns.

Many returns due to unsuitable sizes

The company is also using technologies such as computer vision. The aim is to use artificial intelligence (AI) to help customers find the right size when ordering. Currently, returns due to unsuitable clothing alone account for around a third of all returns at Zalando.

The German government considered the environmental footprint of mail order and online retail to be worrying in view of this development at the end of 2022. If the figures from previously published studies are correct, almost one in four parcels will be sent back to the retailer. This corresponds to a total of around 530 million returns. The transportation route causes considerable amounts of CO2 emissions. Furthermore, a returned product is often not marketed again as A-goods, but disposed of.

(nie)