直面退货退款滥用：2025年电商退换货洞察报告

Industry insights and how to limitreturn abuse in 2025 Table of contents Preface3 01Challenges for retail risk leaders4 02Be in the know: Abuse propagated in the dark web 03Risky product categories 8 04Strategies to expand the customer view 10 05Introducing the Appriss Retail partnership 12 Preface Across diverse retail categories, Riskified captures andanalyzes data related to millions of customer identities andretail orders processed across our vast merchant network. Incorporating exclusive research and intelligence gatheredfrom the dark web and other fraud forums, this analysisprovides crucial insights into patterns and trends impactingretailer profitability. This briefing focuses on policy abuse and, specifically, returnsfraud and abuse – areas of growing concern and cost forglobal retailers. 01Challengesfor retailrisk leaders Balancing returns and abusive behavior In addition to the$48 billionproblem of payment fraud, retailersworldwide are increasingly investing in efforts to mitigate returnspolicy abuse, in which a full spectrum of bad actors – from dark webscammers to regular consumers themselves – knowingly exploit ormanipulate a merchant’s terms and conditions for personal gain. The abuse involves behaviors such as returning clothing as if it wereunworn to get a full refund ("wardrobing"), keeping a product until thelast day of a return window to then return/repurchase it at a lowerprice point (“pricing arbitrage”), or purchasing items to show off onTikTok or Instagram before returning them ("haul culture"). Abusivepurchasers may also falsely claim “item not received” (INR) or “did notarrive" (DNA). A report by the National Retail Federation (NRF) expected returns in2024 to amount to 17% of all merchandise sales, totaling $890 billionin returned goods. Return and refund abuse compounds that cost andcomplicates merchants’ efforts to acquire and retain good customersby offering generous policies. Diligent verification or returns inspection processes areresource-intensive, especially at high volumes, and falselyflagging a legitimate return can harm the customerexperience and relationship. exploitation. As a result, even the most customer-centeredretailers are having to adapt. In 2024,Target, updated its returns policy language toaddress fraud explicitly while a prominent outdoors retaileradjustedits longstanding and famously generous returnswindow policy to address serial abusers (0.02% of their 24million cooperative members). Customer-friendly return policiesand issuing refunds at thepoint of scan improve the customer experience but invite Direct, fraudulent, and abusive Maintaining consistencyacross channels According to Appriss Retail and Deloitte’s “2024 ConsumerReturns in the Retail Industry”report, Buy Online ReturnIn-store (BORIS) and Buy Online Return Online (BORO)combined accounted for over 52% of all return dollars thisyear. Customers anticipate a smooth retail experience no matterhow they choose to shop. This means they expect consistentpolicies, service standards, and quality of experience. While retailers typically have access to a wealth of datagenerated by online behavior, they face data gaps whentransactions occur in-store. This disconnect limits their abilityto make informed, data-driven decisions at the point ofpurchase, making it harder to distinguish between genuinecustomers and serial abusers, and leaves them susceptible toexploitation of policy inconsistencies. Data fragmentationcomplicates merchant efforts to delight customers withpolicies that drive purchases, convenience, and loyaltywithout the risk of taking a significant financial hit. 02Be in theknow: Abusepropagated inthe dark web The propagation of policy abuse Riskified analysis shows that returns and refund fraudsters and serialabusers are increasingly strategic and collaborative, continuallyrefining, adapting, and sharing tactics to exploit policy and operationalloopholes and obscure their behaviors better. Thriving communities exist on the dark web and across forums likeReddit and Telegram where participants share guidance andfraud-as-a-service schemes. Among the most common and costly MOs in retail policy abuse: ●Social engineering:Often over service chat, the actor coerces aretailer to issue an instant return refund for illegitimate reasons,for example ●False item not received (INR) claims:Customers falsely claimingthey never received a package in order to get a full refund ●Sealed/empty box method:Returning an empty box orremoving the product from the box, replacing it with something ofequal weight, and resealing the box with as few signs of tamperingas possible ●Bricking electronics:Removing valuable parts and then returningthe worthless item for a refund ●Wardrobing:Buying an item, wearing it, then returningit as new Pockets of risk in retail Riskified senior data analyst Adi Dick-Charnilas analyzed a year ofinternal transactional data and found that within the broader ret