Latest news with #returns
Daily Mail
8 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
JD Williams sent me the wrong jeans three times - then I got £70 bill for phoning them: SALLY SORTS IT
I recently decided to treat myself to a new pair of jeans from JD Williams. They cost £26 and arrived the next day. I ordered a size 12 but they delivered a size 18. I called the customer service number on the delivery note to arrange a return and reordered the size 12. The next day a second pair arrived but, again, in size 18. I called the number once more and went through the same process. The following day a third pair arrived. Another size 18! When I called again, I was advised not to reorder so they could check their stock. Then I received my mobile phone bill – it was unusually high due to out-of-plan call charges on my contract, so I checked with my network provider. They were billing me £70.72 for the calls I made to JD Williams. This is so unfair. N.S., Cheltenham. Readers' champion Sally Hamilton replies: Wallace & Gromit sprang to mind on reading your letter. 'It's the wrong trousers, Gromit! And they've gone wrong.' The fact they went wrong three times seemed, well, crackers. Perhaps JD Williams needs a Wallace-style inventor to sort out its stock management system. But more absurd still was the fact you were facing a phone bill nearly three times the price of your elusive pair of size 12 jeans for calling JD Williams to remedy the mix-up. Scam Watch Drivers should beware fake parking tickets impersonating a legitimate parking company or the council, CEL Solicitors warns. Fraudsters leave a ticket on the windscreen and victims are asked either to scan a QR code or visit a website to make a payment of around £60 to £70. But it is a fake portal, set up to get your personal and financial details. Check if the website on the ticket matches the official parking operator's address and look for spelling or format errors. If in doubt, look up the official website of the company or council and contact them. You told me the three calls totalled one hour and 40 seconds, which you described as 'ridiculous' for organising a simple return. I agree. Not surprisingly, you were stressed at the thought of a £70.72 bill – and still no jeans to show for it. I was happy to give the company a kick in the pants for you. I am pleased to say this did the trick and JD Williams' customer service swiftly contacted you to apologise for your poor experience, the hassle you faced and the costs you incurred. There had been a stock control systems issue, it admitted, which is now resolved. A spokesman said: 'We are replacing the item and dispatching this free of charge, and we have also reimbursed the cost of the calls.' When we caught up last week, you reported your size 12s had finally arrived – and fitted. All's well that ends well, that's what I say. However, your shock phone bill highlights the potential pitfalls when using a mobile to contact a retailer. This didn't cross your mind when you dialled the number printed in bold at the top of your delivery note. It began with '087', a prefix used by many companies to provide a single national phone number for customers, often for a sales or enquiry line. The service charge (the charge made by the company with the phone number) typically costs from zero to 13p a minute – 13p in JD Williams' case. But the actual amount billed depends on the access charge made by a customer's phone provider. Calls to 087 numbers often fall outside the free calls part of a package, as in your case, and are charged per minute or per call at anything from 3p to 93p a minute, depending on the provider. EE's access charge was one of the highest at 89p a minute when you made your calls (it is now 93p a minute). Your situation wasn't helped by JD Williams including two numbers on its delivery note. The 087 number you used is for orders and payments. There was also a '0345' number for enquiries. The first attracts a 13p-a-minute service charge. But 0345 numbers are charged like local calls and are included in many customers' mobile call plans – including yours. You told me the 087 number caught your eye immediately and that you didn't think to look for another. Companies using such prefixes often receive a portion of the revenue made from an access charge. You may not have flinched too much at your phone bill had your calls been dealt with speedily by JD Williams' customer service. But with more than an hour on the line in total, the price rocketed to a level that couldn't be ignored. JD Williams is keen to point out there are other options for contacting its customer service that should avoid nasty bills. In addition to its 0345 number, it offers an online chat service, email or direct messaging via X and Facebook. It is a pity that customers risk falling into an expensive trap simply because they want to speak to a human about their problem. I'm keen to hear from other readers who unwittingly have been caught out this way, so do drop me a line. Overpaid my gas bill and can't get a refund Just before the Easter weekend, I elected to pay off an outstanding £150 debt on my British Gas bill – but accidentally paid £1,500. I immediately rang to rectify the error, which had cleared out my current account. I was told it would be three to five days before I was paid back. After Easter, I still had not received the money, so rang again. Once more I was told it would be three to five days. This carried on weekly until a phone call on April 29, where I was told that the person I was speaking to could not authorise a repayment. Help! D.M., Oldham. Sally replies: British Gas had held on to your overpayment for more than a month by the time you contacted me and you were struggling financially. I asked the firm to put more energy into returning your money. It told me you had been given the wrong information about the timescale at the start. You should have been told ten working days for such repayments but also that the large sum involved required special approval. On my intervention your request was accelerated and a few days later £1,350 was repaid to your credit card – your £1,500 minus the £150 you had intended to pay. BG apologised and sent you a goodwill gesture of £75. Straight to the point I run my own business and in December my accountant told me I was due an £821.53 tax refund. In January I checked my HM Revenue and Customs account which said the refund had been made – but I haven't received it. HMRC told me it went to an account in my name but I don't have an account with the bank they claim the refund was made to. R.N., via email. Sally replies: HMRC apologises and has refunded you, along with £43.65 in late payment interest. It was previously refunded to an incorrect bank account. I own a flat which I let out until October last year and have now put up for sale. However, Octopus Energy has continued to send bills totalling £233.76 for an empty property. I paid the first three bills up to January as I know there's a standing charge. I have contacted Octopus many times and they haven't sorted it. But now a letter from a debt collection agency has been posted through the door. B.C., Kent. Sally replies: Octopus Energy apologises and has fixed your billing, and you are now £400 in credit. You were billed using estimate readings from previous usage, which was based on when the flat was let. In March I sold a vintage synthesiser for £500 on an online marketplace and paid a postal firm £39.70 for the delivery and insurance. It was damaged beyond repair when it arrived – the online marketplace has taken back the money from me to refund the buyer – but the delivery company won't pay out as I sent it in a re-used box. B.B., Nottingham. Sally replies: The delivery company remains firm. It says as there was a lack of internal packaging and the box was old, the damaged parcel did not meet its criteria for a payout. Write to Sally Hamilton at Sally Sorts It, Money Mail, 9 Derry Street, London, W8 5HY or email sally@ — include phone number, address and a note addressed to the offending organisation giving them permission to talk to Sally Hamilton. Please do not send original documents as we cannot take responsibility for them. No legal responsibility can be accepted by the Daily Mail for answers given.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Do retailers make it too easy to return items? Why shoppers love lenient policies.
Returns of items are both a fact of life for retailers but also a difficult balance to maintain as they try to keep customers happy while not losing money. For consumers, lenient return policies play a big role in where they choose to buy. But then there is also the dark side of returns, with criminal rings set up to take advantage of those lenient return policies. Returns cost retailers a lot of money: total returns were expected to top $890 billion in 2024, according to a December 2024 report by the National Retail Federation. Retailers estimated that 16.9% of their annual sales in 2024 would be returned. But shoppers also say return policies impact where they shop: 67% of shoppers said a negative return experience would impact whether they would go back to that retailer. In a survey by Forter of 4,000 shoppers in both the United States and the United Kingdom, 68% said they believe retailers make it easy to abuse flexible return policies. In fact, 49% admitted to abusing policies in the last year. Another 29% said they use the policies to avoid paying full price. Thirty percent said they use and return expensive wardrobe items they otherwise couldn't afford and that number spikes to nearly half or 46% for younger consumers. More than half, or 58% also said they open multiple online accounts to take advantage of promotions. Retailers have to navigate how to please customers while not losing money on returns, said Doriel Abrahams, principal technologist for Forter, a software company that helps digital commerce brands block fraud. "Clamping down too hard on policies to curb abuse could turn away good customers," Abrahams said, adding that nearly 1 in 5 consumers in the survey said they've stopped shopping with a brand that initiated more strict return policies. "Ultimately, blanket policies – whether that's charging for all returns or having zero restrictions – are bad for business. The goal is to block abuse, not loyal customers, "Abrahams said. Lauren Beitelspacher, a professor in the marketing division of Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts whose research includes return policies, said she was not surprised that shoppers abuse return policies, but she was surprised that a significant number admitted to it. The numbers are probably even higher than the 49% of people who admitted to taking advantage of lenient policies in the survey, she said. "Returns have always been a problem, but since the pandemic, it's been really bad," said Beitelspacher. Return policies got very generous during the Covid-19 pandemic when shoppers couldn't go to physical stores and online e-commerce began to explode, said Beitelspacher. But with online e-commerce, comes the lack of being able to feel an item or try it on. "So in order for retailers to minimize the consumers' risk they offer that free returns and free shipping and people just went nuts and took advantage of it," she said. Some retailers started quietly dialing back their return policies or charging for return shipping or restocking fees during the holiday season of 2023, but they didn't make a big deal of it so as not to alienate their customers, said Beitelspacher. "Returns are a big cost for online retailers although, arguably, they are part of the price of doing business in the ecommerce space. The problem is that the consumer rarely covers the full cost of returns, so it harms the bottom line," said Neil Saunders, a retail analyst at the research and analytics firm GlobalData. Tighter policies around returns, such as making the consumer pay, helps offset some of the cost but it also deters customers and can harm sales, so there is a balance to be struck, he said. Social media is full of videos of moms who brag that they have taken a years' worth of used kid clothes from the Target Cat & Jack brand back to Target for a refund or exchange for new clothes. But some shoppers say it is up to the Target store manager's discretion. Are the shoppers who are getting refunds or exchanges smart consumers or taking advantage of a lenient Target policy? Target customers can return the Cat & Jack items or any Target branded item for up to a year with the receipt or proof of purchase in the Target app, a Target spokesperson confirmed. This guarantee is in place because of the confidence the retailer has in the quality of what it is offering when guests shop Target's owned brands, the spokesperson said. Some retailers don't even want the returned product back. An Amazon spokesperson said customers are allowed to receive refunds without returning some products as a convenience to customers. That is allowed on a very small number of returns and helps keep prices low for customers, the spokesperson said. Some shoppers have shared on social media that Walmart in some cases also allows consumers to return an item and keep it. The retailer would not specifically address that claim when asked, pointing to its return policy, which does not have any details about keeping a returned item. A Walmart spokesperson added that she didn't have anything to add on its return policy, but pointed to the retailer's return policy, which says on most items shoppers have 90 days to return. However, in an online guide for its Marketplace or online site, which includes sales from third-party sellers, Walmart offers tips on how those resellers can implement a "keep it rule," allowing customers to keep the returned item. Love 'em or hate 'em?: What's in store for the future of self checkouts? How retailers are pulling back. Beitelspacher, the marketing professor, said retailers will allow customers to return an item on the theory that "the delight that you might feel might make you more of a lifetime customer." The cost of that item to gain the lifetime customer would be more than the cost of absorbing the cost for you to ship the item back, she said. But Beitelspacher also pointed out that Amazon's lenient return policies, while it may help shoppers have better feelings about Amazon, can hurt the many third-party sellers on the platform, who are actually taking the return hit. There's a big difference between a shopper who takes advantage of a retailer's lenient return policy and criminals making a business of bilking retailers through returns – and consumers who participate. Some shoppers purposely buy an item and "wardrobe" it, or wear it with the tags on and then return it, which is arguably gaming the system, said Eyal Elazar, head of market intelligence at Riskified, a company that helps e-commerce companies detect and prevent bad behavior. But criminal rings also exist to defraud retailers and some consumers are participating in this fraud, he said. Real shoppers are using cyber criminals to handle the return process for them, but with a twist, said Elazar. The criminals scam the retailers using methods such as disappearing ink on return labels, which shows proof that some package was scanned in and on its way back to the retailer. When that package doesn't arrive, the criminal can put pressure on the retailer to still give the refund. The customer gets to keep the item and some of the refund while the criminal also gets a cut, he said. The criminals love this method since they don't have to put out any investment to buy stolen credit cards or stolen inventory and are still earning money from the fraudulent returns, Elazar said. This new return fraud really ramped up after the Covid-19 pandemic when people stopped needing to sign for deliveries and when retailers were trying to figure out ways to make consumers happy with the increase in e-commerce and returns, he said. Betty Lin-Fisher is a consumer reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at blinfisher@ or follow her on X, Facebook or Instagram @blinfisher and @ on Bluesky. Sign up for our free The Daily Money newsletter, which will include consumer news on Fridays, here. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Don't like an item? Why shoppers love lenient return policies Sign in to access your portfolio
CNET
27-05-2025
- Business
- CNET
Did You Get a Surprise Amazon Refund? Many Buyers Are: Here's Why
Did you get a random refund from Amazon recently? You aren't alone. Several customers have reported they received a variety of amounts of money from products they ordered months or even years ago, with one customer on LinkedIn saying he received a refund of $1,800 for a smart TV bought seven years ago. Others made similar comments about products bought long ago. According to Bloomberg, it all ties back to an internal review Amazon did, possibly in response to a 2023 lawsuit. That suit claimed Amazon had quietly reversed legit return-related refunds for some shoppers. Now, it looks like Amazon's making good -- and if you've ever had a return go sideways, you might see a little money show up, too. A representative for Amazon told CNET that only a small number of customers would be affected. "Following a recent internal review, we identified a very small subset of returns where we issued a refund without the payment completing, or where we could not verify that the correct item had been sent back to us so no refund was issued," an Amazon representative said. "There is no action required from customers to receive the refunds, and we have fixed the payment issue." In its latest earnings call, Amazon reported a one-time expense of $1 billion connected to expenses like refunds, returns and tariffs that the company had not yet sent out. These earmarked funds could be responsible for the sudden updates that shoppers are now seeing regarding purchases as far back as 2018. Read more: I've Been Tracking Tariff Price Impacts Every Day and Here's What I've Found So Far If you receive an email about a surprise refund from Amazon orders, it may be related to these changes Amazon has made behind the scenes. You may still want to confirm it's not fraud by logging into your Amazon account or making a quick service call, especially if it's a larger amount like a payment for a TV. Scammers may be taking advantage of this news, too, so be wary of any notification that asks you for financial information, which Amazon should already have.
Globe and Mail
26-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
3 Stocks That Could Be Like Buying Berkshire Hathaway In the 1980s
Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) has produced amazing returns for long-term investors under Warren Buffett's leadership. However, at a more than $1 trillion valuation, its ability to consistently generate outsize returns from here is somewhat limited. To put Berkshire's success into perspective, if you had invested $10,000 in Berkshire Hathaway 40 years ago in 1985, you would have nearly $4.1 million today. And that's if you had bought shares two decades after Warren Buffett took the reins and started building the company into what it is today. Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More » BRK.A data by YCharts Of course, Berkshire's long-term track record will be tough to match. But there are a few companies that have some of the right components in place to grow into a much larger value-creation machine like Berkshire, and here are three in particular that are worth a closer look right now. The obvious choice The most obvious "early Berkshire Hathaway" is specialty insurance company Markel (NYSE: MKL), which is roughly 2% of Berkshire's size by market cap and uses a similar business model. At the core is Markel's insurance business, and its focus on specialty insurance gives it the potential for superior profitability. There's also Markel Ventures, which acquires entire operating businesses, and because of the company's relatively small size, it doesn't need to make billion-dollar acquisitions to potentially move the needle. After all, Buffett has said many times that his biggest obstacle to finding great and meaningful targets is Berkshire's massive size. Then there is Markel's third focus, which is a portfolio of publicly traded stocks, the top holding in which happens to be Berkshire Hathaway. So all three parts of the business are similar in nature to how Berkshire is structured. Markel's recent results have been strong, and there's a solid case to be made that the stock is undervalued. Over the past five years, Markel's intrinsic value has grown by nearly 130% but the stock is up by less than half of that amount. Management is in the process of a strategic review to optimize the business, so now could be a great time to take a look. A very early stage Berkshire Howard Hughes Holdings (NYSE: HHH) has been around for about 15 years, and its core business is developing master-planned communities, or MPCs. These are large-scale developments that are the size of small cities, with examples of Howard Hughes' MPC including The Woodlands near Houston and Summerlin in the Las Vegas area. Recently, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has been pushing to take the company in a different direction. While he has believed in the MPC business for a long time (he owned 37% of the company previously), Ackman recently invested an additional $900 million in Howard Hughes and became the company's executive chairman for the purpose of acquiring entire businesses with the goal of building a "modern-day Berkshire Hathaway." It's unclear exactly what this will look like, and right now all Howard Hughes has is a $900 million war chest, so it's in the very early stages of conglomerate building. However, what we do know is that the current MPC business and its leadership team will remain as-is, and that Ackman has said that an insurance business will likely play a big role in the future plans. To be fair, I bought Howard Hughes stock for the MPC business, long before Ackman's plans were revealed. But this certainly creates some interesting possibilities, and right now retail investors can buy shares for about 35% less than Ackman just did. An outside-the-box choice One that's a little less obvious of a choice is Kinsale Capital Group (NYSE: KNSL), an insurance company that focuses on specialty insurance for smaller clients. And the main reason is that Kinsale has a tremendously profitable insurance business that should give it plenty of capital and operational flexibility to invest in more unique ways as the business grows. Specialty insurance -- that is, special situations and hard-to-assess risks -- is a tough business. But if you're good at it, there is lots of money to be made. Most insurance companies are happy to generate a single-digit profit margin from underwriting and to make the bulk of their money from investment income. But Kinsale is different. The company has a long track record of best-in-class profitability. In fact, in 2024 Kinsale produced a 76.4% combined ratio, which implies an underwriting profit of nearly 24%. For clarification, Kinsale hasn't expressed interest in building a true conglomerate with non-insurance subsidiaries. However, management had said that as the company scales and its investment portfolio grows, the team is comfortable taking on more exposure to equities. And the incredible underwriting margins from the insurance business give it flexibility to not have to completely focus on immediate income from its investments. I completely acknowledge that Kinsale is the least Berkshire-like business on this list. But I also believe that in 10 years, it will have a significantly more Buffett-style approach to its investment strategy. There can be only one Berkshire To be perfectly clear, I don't think there will ever be another Berkshire Hathaway, at least in the sense that one of today's emerging conglomerate will produce 5,500,000% total returns (that's not a typo) over a 60-year period. However, Berkshire Hathaway uses a very replicable method of conglomerate-building, and it can certainly be used to create outsized returns over the years. So while I don't think these three will turn a few thousand dollars into millions of dollars, I think all three are excellent businesses, and I own all three in my own stock portfolio. Should you invest $1,000 in Markel Group right now? Before you buy stock in Markel Group, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Markel Group wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $639,271!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $804,688!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is957% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to167%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of May 19, 2025 Matt Frankel has positions in Berkshire Hathaway, Howard Hughes, Kinsale Capital Group, and Markel Group. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Berkshire Hathaway, Howard Hughes, Kinsale Capital Group, and Markel Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Investors Could Be Concerned With Friedrich Vorwerk Group's (ETR:VH2) Returns On Capital
If we want to find a potential multi-bagger, often there are underlying trends that can provide clues. One common approach is to try and find a company with returns on capital employed (ROCE) that are increasing, in conjunction with a growing amount of capital employed. Ultimately, this demonstrates that it's a business that is reinvesting profits at increasing rates of return. So when we looked at Friedrich Vorwerk Group (ETR:VH2), they do have a high ROCE, but we weren't exactly elated from how returns are trending. Our free stock report includes 1 warning sign investors should be aware of before investing in Friedrich Vorwerk Group. Read for free now. If you haven't worked with ROCE before, it measures the 'return' (pre-tax profit) a company generates from capital employed in its business. The formula for this calculation on Friedrich Vorwerk Group is: Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities) 0.23 = €65m ÷ (€403m - €127m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2025). So, Friedrich Vorwerk Group has an ROCE of 23%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Oil and Gas industry average of 10%. View our latest analysis for Friedrich Vorwerk Group Above you can see how the current ROCE for Friedrich Vorwerk Group compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you're interested, you can view the analysts predictions in our free analyst report for Friedrich Vorwerk Group . When we looked at the ROCE trend at Friedrich Vorwerk Group, we didn't gain much confidence. Historically returns on capital were even higher at 34%, but they have dropped over the last five years. However, given capital employed and revenue have both increased it appears that the business is currently pursuing growth, at the consequence of short term returns. If these investments prove successful, this can bode very well for long term stock performance. On a related note, Friedrich Vorwerk Group has decreased its current liabilities to 31% of total assets. That could partly explain why the ROCE has dropped. Effectively this means their suppliers or short-term creditors are funding less of the business, which reduces some elements of risk. Since the business is basically funding more of its operations with it's own money, you could argue this has made the business less efficient at generating ROCE. While returns have fallen for Friedrich Vorwerk Group in recent times, we're encouraged to see that sales are growing and that the business is reinvesting in its operations. And long term investors must be optimistic going forward because the stock has returned a huge 107% to shareholders in the last three years. So should these growth trends continue, we'd be optimistic on the stock going forward. On a separate note, we've found 1 warning sign for Friedrich Vorwerk Group you'll probably want to know about. If you want to search for more stocks that have been earning high returns, check out this free list of stocks with solid balance sheets that are also earning high returns on equity. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Sign in to access your portfolio
