A lot of clothes sold at places like ebay are “New without tags” designer stuff but the label near the collars are cut-- or marked with red. I’ve heard it is to prevent returns to the store.
Ok, like everything else, I don’t get it. First, who is actually cutting the lables? The store people or the ebay seller? Why would the store people cut their own lables, and why would the ebay seller, since it makes the item look worse and lowers the value? I dont see any person who would be getting a benefit from this label cutting.
Are there any other reasons to cut the label? Would hordes of people otherwise be guying Gucci tops and immediately taking them to tthe boutique and demanding a FULL REFUND despite no receipt? Why don’t the stores just have a receipt-required return policy?
At all of the discount malls I’ve been to, the name brand or designer stuff that is sold as factory seconds or blemished all have either cut tags or inked tags.
This prevents buying the item at a discount and then returning it to an unsuspecting retailer. I could buy a button down oxford polo brand shirt at the mall, and a same shirt at the discount place, and return the discounted shirt back to the mall for a full refund. IT’s a lot of leg work, but I wouldn’t put it past any aspiring scam artist.
If the manufacturers are selling the items as close outs, they’ll mark or remove the labels.
Remaindered books usually are marked in some way, too. For instance, I have several books which have a felt tip marker strip across the pages at the bottom, you can see this stripe when you pick up the book and look at the bottom. Remaindered LPs were called “cut outs” because a notch was cut into the cardboard sleeve. I’ve got a copy of the Beatles first LP, from VeeJay Records, which has this notch, and I picked it up for something like a tenth of the price that records were selling for at the time, because of the notch.
It’s also to keep retailers such as second-hand shops and discount stores from buying the stuff in bulk on e-bay and trying to sell it as new and discounted. It’s to alert those possible customers that the merchandise/clothing they’re buying is not “fresh.” It might be technically unworn, but it’s not “new.”
But doesn’t cutting the tag mean you’ve just removed the only indication that the product is actually from that company? How easy would it be to make knockoffs and then cut their tags off and claim they were some expensive brand?