
Taslim Sheikh-Fraser, a warehouse associate at GoBolt, a Canadian logistics company, processes a returned item of clothing on Jan 20. Much of what is being handled in this peak return season is last year’s Christmas purchases. Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Jarrett Stewart knows the look and feel of an item that’s been worn and returned. As a senior vice-president at logistics company GoBolt, he’ll tell you that the tag will be just a little bit skewed in a way that looks reattached. Small debris will be trapped in the shoe treads. There’ll be a faint perfume scent (or less agreeable smells). And of course, the muted deodorant stains.
Logistics companies specialize in moving goods between manufacturers and consumers. Mr. Stewart’s team uses a return-management software called Two Boxes to take note of these details in the returns warehouse and turn them into data.
“If you get a return for the same customer and they have all those same attributes, what you’re seeing now is brands are blocking those bad actors,” Mr. Stewart said.
Wardrobing – often pronounced “ward-robbing” – is the practice of buying clothes to wear once or twice before returning them, and while it’s been around for as long as companies have offered returns, the number of shoppers doing it has surged.
In November, returns-management company Optoro, which works with brands such as Gap and IKEA, released a report from a survey of 350 U.S.-based senior retail-management employees, as well as hundreds of shoppers. It found that 69 per cent of shoppers surveyed now admit to wardrobing – a nearly 40-per-cent spike from 2023.
Wardrobing is considered fraud by retailers. The National Retail Federation estimated that returns cost businesses US$890-billion last year, with returns now making up 17 per cent of all merchandise sales.
Sylvia Ng, chief executive officer of Toronto-based return-logistics company ReturnBear, said wardrobing peaks around big event seasons such as prom. “Party dresses, high-end party dresses, where somebody would say, ‘Okay, I’m only going to wear that over Christmas’ – it’s become so prevalent,” she said.
Retailers and reverse-logistics companies are cracking down on the trend with new technology and subdividing shoppers to target excessive returns. But efforts to double down on specific customers can only go so far – the effects will be increasingly felt by consumers across the board, through higher prices, stricter return policies or both.

A warehouse associate at GoBolt, a Canadian logistics company, processes a returned item of clothing. Wardrobing, the practice of buying clothes to wear before returning them, is considered fraud by retailers. Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
While some retailers have the capacity and desire to send returned items back to the store, to resellers or charities, a large portion ends up thrown out. In 2022, 9.5 billion pounds of returns in the U.S. ended up in landfills, according to Optoro.
Charles de Brabant, executive director at McGill’s Bensadoun School of Retail Management, attributes some of the wardrobing trend to a sort of Amazon AMZN-Q -0.04% decrease effect. Companies competing with the retail giant are compelled to deliver products faster and simplify returns, which opens the door to more abuse.
“They’re putting more and more pressure on speed of delivery, on the customer being right,” he said. “It puts pressure on everybody – you ship faster, you have longer return policies.”
The other side of the coin is that consumers have been weathering more economic headwinds. With less disposable income, they may feel compelled to “arbitrate their spending,” said Rod Duclos, a behavioural psychologist and professor at Ivey Business School.
“Whereas one cannot return food one ate, it is possible to return garments,” he said.

GoBolt uses a return-management software called Two Boxes to take note of these details in the returns warehouse and turn them into data, which can be used to identify bad actors. Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Inflationary pressures, combined with disdain for corporations making huge profits in difficult economic times, can make it easier to rationalize wardrobing through a sort of moral disengagement, said Paul Dunn, a business ethics professor at Brock University. “They’re displacing responsibility by blaming the other,” he said.
Anonymous forums such as Reddit RDDT-N +1.51% increase often teem with discussions around the topic, with many users sharing tips on how to successfully buy and return items while others debate the moral dilemma posed by the practice.
For example, users in an Amazon Prime subreddit thread titled “Is it okay to return used items?” boast of wardrobing. Justifications of the practice range from Amazon being a multibillion-dollar company to the fact that it’s possible to try on an item when shopping in-person, but not online.
Aside from clothes, the items people mention easily buying, using and returning frequently include tools such as wrenches and drills from Home Depot.
The environmental impact of returns is staggering. Optoro found that returns contribute to about 24 million tonnes of CO2 emissions each year. Transportation, shipping, packaging and landfill waste are what largely contribute to this.
Though retailers are trying to target individual repeat wardrobers instead of punishing all consumers at once and losing some in the process, it’s demanding more ingenuity.
Software such as Two Boxes helps retailers understand individual consumer behaviour and determine consumer loyalty and trustworthiness based on return patterns, Mr. Stewart said. It also makes it easier to blacklist those who abuse return policies. The software is used by both logistics companies and retailers.
Meanwhile, ReturnBear offers companies a network of in-person hubs to process and verify returns immediately in Canada instead of transporting them over long distances. “It’s also much harder for you to hand over an item that’s been worn, if there’s any damages, over to somebody and look them in the eye with it, than it is to mail it back,” Ms. Ng said. Her company sees some retailers with return fraud making up to 50 per cent of their sales.

Jarrett Stewart, VP, commercial services, at GoBolt, a logistics company stands among boxes of returned items, almost all containing clothing. Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Though technology helps target shoppers who abuse returns, there’s only so much companies can do on an individual level. Recently, retailers such as H&M started deducting mail-in return fees for all online purchases in Canada while Zara added a shipping fee in 2022 for any purchase amount, citing “sustainability” reasons. Other brands shrank their return windows for all customers.
Roughly 41 per cent of the 200 retailers surveyed by another logistics company, Narvar, were charging for returns in 2022, compared with 33 per cent the previous year. The company’s vice-president of customer strategy, David Morin, told The Wall Street Journal in December that the number of retailers on its platform that charge return shipping fees spiked 20 per cent last year.
Sweden-based fashion retailer Boozt AB made headlines in 2023 after it blocked 42,000 customers from buying on its website for returning too many of their purchases.
Brands are also turning to making returns a reward. Ms. Ng said companies creating loyalty programs with free returns for VIP customers will become more prevalent. She said examples include SKIMS in the U.S., H&M and Nike NKE-N +0.62% increase.
“The more sophisticated, larger retailers are segmenting their base,” Ms. Ng said. But many other retailers will roll back conveniences for all customers.
Mariya Postelnyak
Consumer Affairs Reporter
The Globe and Mail, January 28, 2025