Markets face massive returns of New Year’s products after the holidays

According to Timur Urinbaev, director of operations at the Reful warehouse company, in 2023-2024 the share of Christmas tree returns by sellers and customers of the company increased from 10% to 30%. Most returns are for artificial Christmas trees from China, each branch of which is packaged separately. These products are difficult to package and resell, so it is better to throw them in the trash than to store them until the next New Year season, Urinbaev noted.

The number of returns of used New Year’s products has increased by 1.5 and 2 times, said Artem Bobtsov, director of the network of collection points. Order pick-up points face a heavy burden due to the need to check whether merchandise is damaged or replaced; Otherwise, the point faces a fine equal to the cost of the goods, Bobtsov noted.

“Return operations are also cheaper: for the issuance of a product, the point receives 40 rubles, and for the return, 10 rubles,” added the businessman. At the same time, markets practically do not take measures to combat “consumer extremism”, since their main goal is to increase sales, Bobtsov emphasized.

The founder of the “Marketplace Partners” club, Ilya Bukharin, expressed hope that the platforms will revise the return rules to make them stricter for buyers when “marketplace growth slows down.”