I have a friend who runs a UPS Store and she says like clockwork she gets a ton of elaborate, expensive Halloween costumes returned on November 1st and sure enough this year was no different. People buy them a few day before, use them and then return them.
This seems dishonest to me (and not a little wasteful). If want a fun costume on the cheap, rent one. What do think? Is it fine and frugal or a little bit sketchy?
It is unethical and kind of a dirtbag move.
But as far as rental, good luck, very hard to find in most areas outside of cities. I’m surprised to see there is one in my county. That is 1 store in the entire county and I expected 0.
I wonder if some of these returns are rentals? There are some online rental places. Are they all going back to Amazon?
Do retailers even accept returns of Halloween costumes after the holiday? Googling, Spirit Halloween stores don’t.
I say it’s unethical even if allowed by the seller.
Some years ago my sister worked at REI, who had a policy that they would accept returns of any item for any reason. She said people would come in with a handful of well-worn socks and underwear that they had bought 3 years earlier and asked to return them, and she was required to accept them.
“Marge, we’re not talking about a toothbrush here!”
They are indeed Amazon returns.
Amazon will have to change its return policy on some items eventually. But hard to prove “wrong size” I guess. So if it isn’t stained or damaged, it will probably pretty much continue. Amazon has baked all this into its profit margin overhead costs.
I live near the “Jersey Shore”, almost all electronic sellers had to make a high restock fee on items as many summer rental people thought nothing of buying an item for a week or two use and returning it when they were heading home. There are a lot of less than ethical people in the world.
“I’m not returning it one day after Halloween, I’m returning it 364 days before Halloween!”
We’ve done this general topic a few times before.
Lotta folks think it’s 100% ok to “borrow” goods from retailers w generous return policies.
Then, as @What_Exit says, eventually the retailers tire of being chumps and the honest folks get screwed again.
Humanity is why humans can’t have nice things.
See: Costco
Googling, REI allows returns up to a year for REI members, and ninety days for non-members. So they’ve apparently tightened the rules. I believe LL Bean did as well.
I don’t think that people realize that a whole bunch of policies cost money and the sellers/service providers that have those policies build it into their price. Or maybe they just don’t care. I say that because I constantly see people complaining that a store/provider doesn’t have a particular policy that I never would have expected them to have.
I don’t really understand why people think they should get a “price adjustment” if the price goes down after they have already bought it. Sure, you can return it and maybe re-purchase it at the lower price - unless it’s a situation like the one where I first heard of it. I received a circular for K-Mart or some similar store for a sale starting on Saturday. I arrived right after opening, couldn’t find the item I wanted and was told they were sold out and next time, I should show up as soon as I got the circular because people buy them before the sale.Returning and repurchase won’t work if you have to wait around for however long it takes for your return to go back onto the sales floor. Another one I see is people who have paid for some sort of travel expense who think they should get the benefit of the price going down after the date when they can no longer cancel and rebook.
There’s a reason stores now charge “restocking fees” and I’m pretty sure it because these unofficial “rentals” made returns more common.
I think it’s more like
When behaving ethically is seen as simply chumpism, ordinary folks will be driven to behave not only passively unethically, but as the ethos takes over, actively unethically, just in order to not be the biggest, last chump left standing holding everyone else’s bag.
My bunch haunts trifts, fleas and Goodwill for costume fodder.
The Lil’wrekker does Cosplay so she has a trunk full of stuff.
Day after Halloween sales are her favorite.
It’s stupid to pay full price for the crappily made stuff anyway.
I have a nice lab coat, mainly as it was cheaper than a crappy costume one.
My daughter has a growing collection of stuff made and repurposed from thrifts and sales. She ends up being the go to for her friend group for their costumes for Renaissance Fairs and Comic Con type events. She learned to use a sewing machine pretty much to make costume pieces.
Yeah I’d say it’s unethical. Even if it’s Amazon (which I assume it is?) it’s not the Amazon mega corporation you are stiffing (yeah I don’t think Bezos will be sleeping on street because your 45 dollar sexy zombie costume was returned), AFAIK it’s the small business that sells through Amazon that has to eat the return.
Also, the returned Halloween costume is almost certainly going to be thrown out, so why would Amazon even ask that it be returned, even if they’re willing to issue the refund? I’ve heard of them just telling the customer to dispose of the merchandise and that’s what they could do here.
They do tell people to dispose of the item sometimes - but not always. My son had a problem with an order last week - one of the items was apparently misdelivered since the photo was not of his door. He tried to report that he never received it , but something seems to have gone wrong, and who/whatever he was communicating with though he wanted to return it and I got the following email
We’ve accepted your return request. To see details about your replacement order, click Check return & refund status.
Please send the original item by Nov 26, 2025*.
Some is disposed, a lot is boxed off for resale. I haven’t looked into the program, but there are Youtubers that do pallet size unboxings of their Amazon returns the bought.
Also, apparently if you do the returns too often, you go into a different status where returns are not just accepted. Thankfully I don’t know the details on this.
God I’d love to do that. But I need more littles like a new hole in my head.
(I realize they do it for resale)