Returning a Pair of Beat Up Boots 15 Years Later? No Problem!
There’s a fine line between exploiting a store’s lifetime satisfaction guarantee and taking it literally
The recent “Getting Your Money’s Worth” episode of This American Life tells the story of a principal in Maine named Derek who feels guilty about returning a pair of L.L. Bean ski boots after he’s worn them happily for over a decade — but not so guilty that he can stop himself. After all, the official L.L. Bean “no questions asked” Return Policy, which is one of our country’s most generous, says he’s allowed.
Indeed, he walks in with his worn-out, loved-through ski boots which date back to 1992, and walks out with a replacement pair, brand-new, and free.
Did you catch the most ridiculous detail in that transcript? The boots were originally a gift. In 1992, someone gave this guy L.L. Bean ski boots and he managed to parlay that one set of free footwear into two sets of free footwear to last him over 20 years and perhaps forever. Well done, sir. It’s like a fairy tale, the capitalist version of “the Velveteen Rabbit.”
So Derek took full, even untoward-seeming, advantage of a return policy; but did L.L. Bean feel taken advantage of? Apparently not. As we learn, the store prides itself on its “guarantee.” Employees are taught not to judge, not even a little bit, when anyone brings packages to the Returns Desk. Writer Sara Corbett, who hosts this story, can attest to that, having spent time at the Returns Desk bearing witness.
there were plenty that seemed, to me, questionable, if not outright crazy, on par with [returning] a half-eaten cookie. Like a woman who showed up with a huge load of used twin-sized bedding — seriously used bedding, I should say — because she’d upgraded to a queen bed. Is “dissatisfaction” the right word for this?
Or the people who brought back a living room chair because they’d done a bad job strapping the chair to their car. So when it fell off and broke in the middle of a highway, they were upset. Or maybe they’d call it dissatisfied.
They got store credit. They all did. Every one of these customers got store credit.
And what happens to the material that gets returned, the used bedding, 40-year-old shirts, ski boots and half-eaten cookies that can’t go back into circulation? It gets sold to employees at deep discount. One employee, Cindy, has outfitted her home with customers’ returns.
This, Sara points out, seems to indicate that some customers view their purchase as more like a rental, one they can, if they like, keep indefinitely.
I’d love to pretend I’m better than this — and okay, I am better than finding somebody else’s donated coat in a thrift store and getting a $360 coat in exchange for it from HQ— but one time I did something similar. In the year 2000, I got a pair of Doc Marten boots from the Nordstrom’s at Montgomery Mall in suburban Maryland in advance of a four-month trek through Poland, the Czech Republic, Israel, and then back to Europe for some wide-eyed touring around the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Those boots returned to the US encrusted with the dirt of Auschwitz and the dust of the Negev and smelling faintly of pot; they came back broken in, for sure, if not entirely broken. But I had bought them in the wrong size and so every step in them had become a punishment.
Nordstrom’s has a great return policy, someone told me. Try bringing them back to the store. See what happens.
Doubtful but willing to try, I brought my dirty, dusty, world-weary, wrong-size boots back to Montgomery Mall and the clerk just smiled at me and got a replacement pair off of the rack. Shiny. New. Right-sized. Free.
My trade did not put Nordstrom out of business. And despite all that activity at its Return Desk, some of which seems transparently exploitative, L.L. Bean is thriving too: the billion-dollar business recently celebrated its 100th birthday, and it’s still growing.
As it happens, Time.com made a list last year of the top 10 return policies in the nation and slots 1 and 2 are occupied by Nordstrom and L.L. Bean. Other great places to shop, apparently, include JC Penney, Costco, and “Broad City” favorite Bed Bath & Beyond. Just be aware: when you arrive at the great Returns Desk up in the sky, you may be asked to account for your behavior here on Earth.
h/t to Rachel Sugar for making sure I listened to & wrote about this episode!
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