Retail / news
Brands Rework Holiday Return Policies as Q4 Refund Wave Approaches
Retailers are rolling out temporary holiday return policies to handle the seasonal spike in refunds and exchanges, with roughly 17% of holiday sales expected to come back, according to new industry survey data.
Returns platform Loop says it is seeing more brands introduce temporary policies tailored to the holiday season, moving beyond the standard 30-day window that often runs out before shoppers finish traveling or recipients get around to exchanging a gift.
Joe Vancena, vice president of marketing at Loop, said those temporary policies are built to both accommodate shopper behavior and monetize it. Gift givers, he noted, increasingly want to buy only from retailers where an exchange costs the recipient nothing.
A joint survey by Happy Returns and the National Retail Federation in 2025 found that retailers expect about 17% of their holiday sales to be returned. The projection tracks the usual pattern in which a fourth-quarter surge in ecommerce and retail spending is followed by a wave of send-backs.
Loop's own survey data puts the customer-relations stakes in sharp relief: about 58% of consumers say they have walked away from a brand over its return policy, while 92% say return fees change the way they shop.
Vancena's read on that data is blunt — the majority of shoppers will either decline to buy from a brand at all or abandon a purchase outright if they dislike its returns terms, making the policy a live factor in both acquisition and retention during the busiest quarter of the year.