We are in that time of year when gifts are being given.
Before the ones under the tree are opened, there’s quite a bit of exchanging of
gifts that takes place at parties, in the office, at school and between
friends. We don’t think about this as much as when the stockings are emptied,
but it’s substantial and certainly not a surprise because after all—it’s the
season of giving.
And in what has become a great American tradition, it is
also the season of returning. This is not a big surprise either. All gifts are
not created equal: there are some that don’t fit, don’t work, you already have,
you don’t want and worst of all—you can’t possibly re-gift.
So you send it
back.
Previous generations had to stand and wait in long lines with
other disappointed people in order to return their unwanted gift. Not this
generation. Included with their gift isn’t a receipt from the store, it’s the pre-paid
return postage label. They just put the gift back in the box and drop it off at
UPS. And UPS has a name for when this returning phenomenon peaks—National Returns
Day. In 2016, it was January 6 when 1 million gifts were returned. Last year,
it was January 5 and 1.3 million with the first full week of the new year seeing
5.8 million packages sent back. This year the peak number was 1.5 and the day
when most things were returned was December 19. That’s right, we have entered
new territory. It seems the gifts being returned
are for the better part not by people receiving
them, but by the people who bought
them.
We now have givers remorse. You buy a gift and then decide
it’s not right so back it goes.
There are a few things in play here. One is that more gifts
are being bought in the five-day period from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday than
ever before, so buyers have plenty of time to reconsider their choices (according
to UPS, 75% of consumers have shipped something back). Another factor is that retailers
have made it easier than ever to send something back (UPS tells us that’s very
important to 79% of consumers). Some of what is bought is self-giving or is
given to others before Christmas. Still, it’s startling that biggest return day
is before Christmas rather than after.
There is somewhere in all of this, aside from the legitimate
reasons for returning merchandise, a picture of us as consumers which isn’t
flattering: we aren’t sure what we really want (either for ourselves or others)
and require a large safety net to protect us from our bad decisions. What looks
good enough to point and click or touch and tap, often turns out to be less
than we expected and not what we want or need. It puts me in mind of the saying,
“People are made to be loved and things are made to be used. Things begin to go
wrong when things are being loved and people are being used.”
Maybe it’s time to change our emphasis from giving things to loving people.
Seasonal
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