I think, without a receipt, they charge the lowest price the item has been in return window. It must have been priced at $2.50 at some Macy's in the past 30 days, or however long their window is.

I can see why the writer feels cheated, but the policy seems reasonable. Why allow people to stock up on sale items in order to bring them back later to get full price?

When I shop at Macy's they put a return bar code sticker on there so that they can look up the transaction if you don't have the receipt. I believe that if you return without said sticker you get the lowest selling price for that item.

It's a pretty common policy, but it is odd that the outfit was still available for $19.98. Normally, $2.50 would be some super clearance price and you wouldn't see it in store anymore and certainly not for it's regular price. As an aside, why didn't she just exchange it for the right size if they still had them? They'll swap them item for item with no receipt and won't charge the difference or anything. That is, if size was truly the only issue.

I have to side with Macys on this .If they gave every no reciept returner full price they'd be out of business in no time .Look at it this way if it was a gift you got 2.50 for nothing .

The only thing left to do is ask the giver for the reciept .

so we should have UPC codes for every item being sold, and a unique serial code accompanying each item?

im with the $2.50 in the past 30 days.... OP should find her receipt(... blaming OP?..... nah...)

it would seem that "at some point" this outfit was sold for $2.50
and that is what they are referring to.

so from the mgrs POV: if you bought it at $2.50 "sometime" in the past, and you do NOT have a receipt, there is no way you are going to make money on this.

I bought a flashlight for $4.99 at MENARDS and when I got it home, it was missing a piece inside, so I brought it back, but I did not have the receipt.
They would not give me a refund, or store credit because....
"We give these away free"

!!!! really?
Really. The clerk showed me the current flyer/ad and sure enough, there was this flashlight for FREE as part of a promotion involving your Birthday.
Come in the Store, prove it is your Birthday, get a free flashlight!

*facepalm*

they did allow me to EXCHANGE it for a new flashlight however.

moral: always have a receipt.

I have to side with Macys on this .If they gave every no reciept returner full price they'd be out of business in no time

On the contrary; they'd have excellent word of mouth advertising for the cost of, at most, a couple of days receipts a year (probably much less, much much less). For instance we've shopped at several grocery stores where if they ring up the wrong price you get the item free, and we shopped at those stores regularly partly because of that friendly policy. They made tons of money from us because of it; if your claim were true they'd be "out of business in no time". The reverse is true.

Now if they were talking about a regular sale price I might agree with you that they shouldn't be expected to do that, but as has been pointed out, the idea that they had a sale price of $2.50 on a $19.95 item they still carry in stock is ludicrous. Price drops like that are a super closeout get rid of remaining stock price, and probably not even at the store but at an outlet center (most stores don't want to associate their regular product with super-sale merchandise).

Sorry, I side with Macy*s.

No receipt? You're lucky is they accept the return at all, considering how many scam artists are out there.

Macy*s is blameless and the Benny is a cry baby.

This is a perfectly reasonable policy. Why is this newsworthy?

Even if the $2.50 price isn't anything that item has sold for on sale, maybe they take other offers like coupons they have into account when calculating the max they can offer for non-receipt returns. Maybe some combination of coupons could result in the price coming to 2.50, so that's what they have to offer.

@GayNerd: No reason to call somebody a "cry baby" [sic] for being confused by a confusing policy. If the outfit was currently on sale for $19.98 it is unusual that the return would ring up for a rock-bottom clearance price. It's entirely possible that the manager put the wrong price in and refused to admit that, but there will never be any "blame the store" comments on Consumerist, will there?

The lowest charge price is price it actually costs.

If you were to buy the item on the open market, that's what it would cost, and that's what it cost the little African or Vietnamese boy or girl to sew it and have it shipped.

Macy's markup is 800%.

They are only being fair (besides the markup).
You could have bought it at 2.50 from an overstock place or a direct distributor or one of those convention flea markets and went to a store to defraud it. So for example, you bought it for 2.50 and then went to some store and returned to get a bigger refund than you are entitled.

A receipt verifies that you paid that amount and are unsatisfied, thus full refund. There is no restocking fee, because the markup itself has it factored in.

Best buy, for example, doesn't have such high markup, that's why there is restocking.
Electronics, usually only have a 200-300% markup, at most, so some stores may not afford to restock on that little markup.

Returned electronics have to be sent back to the manufacturer to be processed, which consists of running a diagnostic on the device, making sure all materials are there and repackaging and being put back into the product flow.

Apple, like the "new" iphone's with other people's data were sent back to the factory and repackaged. The only problem is that the data was not wiped. So your new item may actually be used.

The only way a store can do an exchange is a straight swap. For example, I bought a T-shirt, its too small, and I would like 1 size bigger. They have both items in stock and the T-shirt I have still has tags. They usually do this without a receipt. A straight swap, as long as there are no defects and no repackaging required, is acceptable without receipt.

Why not just do an exchange. The OP said "...being that the outfit was the wrong size..." or is that the polite way of saying that the gift you received from your mother for your daughter was ugly ;-)

Many stores do this crap, even everyone's beloved Target, if you don't have a receipt. I used to see some stores state "lowest selling price in the past 90 days" but I think even that is thrown out the window and it is the lowest selling price ever in the history of this product in the store. It bites. I think the stores even pull this crap if you have the gift receipt because you don't know how much the gift giver paid-how are you gonna call shenanigans unless you also have access to the regular receipt? I keep forgetting to buy something and return it with the gift receipt to test my theory though. I have new project.

@invisiblenemies: This isn't a news site. Try [www.cnn.com] if that's what your looking for.

This has been their policy for many years. It makes sense. For all Benny knows, the person who bought it paid only $2.50. Besides, Macy's sometimes has crazy 4 hour sales on a handful of items; they can't let people game the system by buying $1000 worth of jeans for $300, returning them a week later for $1000 store credit, and then buying $1000 worth of men's watches.

Now, I don't like Macy's. When my wife I got married, we registered at Macy's, and they screwed it up royally. Even though people used the registry, we still got seven coffee makers. When we tried to return six, Macy's wanted to give us the lowest selling price -- even though the registry showed how much each person had paid! It took about an hour of polite persistence, and the threat of small claims court, but we did get it straightened out satisfactorily. But I couldn't believe the incompetence and flat out lies we had to deal with in the process.

@MustyBuckets: Exactly. It kind of sucks, but this is almost every store's policy on this type of thing when returning stuff without a receipt. Not just Macy's.

Completely reasonable. Unfortunately too many scammers decided that taking advantage of loose return policies was a good idea. They realized that if they bought items on sale and then returned them after the sale without a reciept they could make a few bucks per item (or more).

It sucks in general, but I am with the stores on this one. The people to blame for bad return policies are abusive customers.

I know Linens and Things did this, and I believe Old Navy does this as well. I don't see a problem with it. Let's say someone went to a store they had these on clearance or online, and got 4 @ $2.50. Then they go w/o a receipt to a store that doesn't have them on sale. For an outlay of $10.00, they will be getting back ~$80.00. No way is this fair to the vendor, and also to other shoppers who have to pay more to make up for this nearly 100.00 loss in sales.

@dorastandpipe: I will doubt they pull it with gift receipts, as getting caught doing something like that would get them fined, and it's not hard to test the store to see if it's doing that.

Macy's policy is prettty clear, no reciept and no proof of purchase, you get the lowest selling price in the last six months. The biggest thing to remember is that sometimes stores get the same thing a year apart. The same outfit could have been on sale last year, sold well, so they ordered more for this year. Same UPC, but because the ones from the year before at sometime went on sale it goes towards the current one in store.

@MustyBuckets:

These policies are very normal. And no one should be suprised by them. If you don't have a receipt, it is unwise for a manufacturer to give you a higher price than what it might have been paid for. They just don't know. I actually have found myself gaining money in a situation like this (person paid 15 dollars, I got 20 back in store credit because this was the lowest price it had been in the last 30 days).

This story isn't worthy of getting upset over.

@alphafemale: Oh burn.

Whatever.

If it was the wrong size and they still had some more on the shelf, why didn't you exhange it for the right size?

@invisiblenemies: LOL

@QrazyQat: As someone who works in retail, if you allow all no-receipt returns at full price you will be scammed like crazy. It would be a nice policy out to have, but there are a LOT of people out there who will just take advantage of you.

@StealthySwede_GitEmSteveDave: I think aside from luxury type stores like Nordstrom, Crate & Barrel, and Pottery Barn, most all retailers do this if you return without a receipt. This happened to my wife and I at a couple different stores when we returned some duplicate wedding gifts that we didn't have gift receipts for. But when we had dupes from Crate & Barrel, they just gave us the current shelf price. I think since they cater to people that are loaded, they have a certain expectation to uphold. Not like stores that cater to us common folk :)

On the one hand, the policy is quite fair. On the other hand, you don't have to be stuck with it. I shop at Macy's all the time; it's got the brands I like, without charging the premium that places like Bloomingdales (also owned by Macy's) and Nordstrom charges, and I can almost always find exactly what I want. Their return policies are also quite reasonable, if you know how to work the system.

First off, Macy's return policy isn't 30 days. It's 6 months, and it's printed on the back of the receipt. The only return policies that are more liberal come from membership warehouses like Costco and Sam's Club, the former of which I've successfully returned something 5 years old once. So previous posters who've mentioned that the store should check the last 30 days and honor the $19.95 price if it hadn't dropped... sorry, but they'd have to go much further back in the system to check it, and I'm not sure they even could. The system keeps track of the lowest price it's *ever* been, which includes their 20% off sales, specific department or item sales, introductory or promotional pricing, etc... and those discounts stack sometimes, boys and girls. So yes, I could see that $19.95 item having sold for $2.50 once.

Second, assuming that this is accurate, and the item *did* at one point sell for $2.50, the store has a reasonable concern: how do we know the customer isn't gaming the system... or that they even bought it here? Well, I'll be one of the first to take offense at a store who assumes I'm a thief. I'll flat-out refuse to show my receipt to a rent-a-cop at the door, unless it's required by the terms of my membership. (Like at Costco, for example.) That said, however, we're not talking about your rights to an item that you own. We're talking about their rights to set policies about, essentially, buying it back from you. That's what a return is, and folks, it's legal for them to state that all sales are final, if they wanted to change their policies in the future. It would have to be chain-wide, of course, so there was no discrimination, or they'd face some legal liability. But some folks seem to think that just because you're a customer, you somehow are "always right". The customer is NOT always right, and although that still means that you must be treated with respect and dignity, it does *not* mean that you must be given whatever you ask for, regardless of the cost or consequences. That final decision is up to the manager. So...

Third, TALK TO THE MANAGER. Macy's is set up as a full-service department store. They have a major commitment to customer service, and when approached in the right way, will usually do whatever they can to make you happy, if they have any indication that you will *remain* a customer. What it really boils down to is this: you'll catch more flies with honey than you will with vinegar. Macy's *can* go against policy to help you, but they don't have to. It's up to you to convince them. How? Well, first, don't just walk up to the counter and whine at them. Even when you're upset, don't "be upset". Upset people are difficult to speak to and work with. They're a hassle, and a normal reaction to that is to want to get them out of there as soon as possible without it costing too much. Remain calm, remain upbeat, and try to find common ground with the store rep before you really even get into the reason you're talking to them. When you're asking them to give you what you want, don't ask them like you're outraged or upset. Ask them as if you're not concerned about it, and just slightly surprised. KEEP A SMILE ON YOUR FACE, and don't take offense at a policy that the store rep didn't make, and is obligated to follow, albeit with some leeway, sometimes. If the rep won't budge, shrug, thank them, and then go find someone elsewhere in the store and ask them if it would be all right to speak with the store manager, so you're not . Then, ideally, walk to where the store manager is, rather than force them to come to you. Why? Because the manager has to balance two different priorities: help the customer, but support his staff as well. Don't put him in a position to decide whether or not he has to sacrifice one for the other. Plus, by walking to them, you demonstrate that you're a reasonable person, not one of those dreaded "the customer is always right" customers.

Explain yourself calmly and rationally, and try to avoid blame or assumtions. "X happened," is much better than "X happened because that jerk thought Y." Let him know that you'd come to pick up a couple of items (which you were, since you were shopping in the baby section), and return something that you'd recently received as a gift. Tell him (or her) that you didn't have the receipt, but the item on the shelf is priced at $19.95, and yet you're being told it once sold for $2.50. My previous statements about sales aside, a calm, reasonable person can often demonstrate that a greatly-reduced price isn't reasonable by "most" people's standards, just from the way the point out the current details of the situation. Now the manager is not just facing a customer who may or may not spend more money; he's faced with a customer who might decide not to buy those other six items in the customer's hand... and all just over less than $20. Don't say any of this; it's implied by the fact that you're carrying around your potential purchases. Odds are that the manager, who wants customers to buy more, who sees no slighted staff present, will just give you want you want.

Failing all of this, find a friend with a Macy's card. Macy's bends over backwards for it's cardmembers most of the time, so long as it's better than just the first tier card. (Macy's has their normal store card, then platinum and elite cards, each based on your spending for the previous year, and you can even get customer service to upgrade you in the same year if you happened to have spent a lot right away.) A Macy's cardholder may succeed where you've failed, because it is obvious to everyone concerned that the Macy's cardholder is a regular customer, and you don't screw around with your regular customers. I've been faced with this exact situation myself, and all it took was a smile and a calm request. Of course, it probably also helped that I was going to immediately buy something else. YMMV.

Of course, you could always go ask the gift-giver for the receipt, but I understand that it might not be terribly politic. Try the above, and remember that EVERYONE can have a bad or off day. Don't take it personally, and just find someone else. Good luck!

Our local Macy's actually puts bar code stickers on the price tags encoded with the sales price, so that even if you don't have a receipt there is still a record of for how much the item was purchased.

Just another point to add, if you live in a market with multiple macy's, go to the one that is the busiest and has the nicest stuff. Returns come off a stores bottom line, a store that is struggling with sales will try to limit the returns to the bare minimum. A store that is much busier won't care that you are retuning a 20 dollar outfit.

Being that the gift outfit was the wrong size, I would have just exchanged it for a different size.

@Hoss: Why would they sell an item for $2.50 and later sell it for $19.95?

@Kajj: What, exactly, is confusing about "you need a receipt to return this"? It sucks for the OP that he misplaced his receipt, but he should know that if that happens, he's gonna get what they feel like giving him. I think it would have been REALLY cool of Macy's to give him the $19.98, but they were in no way obligated.

@Rachacha: No, baby sizes are very weird. Plenty of "newborn" sizes don't fit actual newborns, and by the time Mom's gift arrives your kid may need a "six-month" size.

@invisiblenemies: Agreed. This has happened to me countless times for the last few years. Keep your receipt or you get back the lowest price it's been sold at. I've lost much more than $17, btw.

$2.50 is not necessarily a closeout price; it could have been a loss leader on one of their "one day sales" that they have every day.

@Kajj: Two things:

1) Why the [sic] for "cry baby?" It was not spelled wrong or archaic or incorrectly punctuated, and it was most certainly used in the proper context. A cry baby is someone who goes running to mother every time the littlest thing happens. In this case, Benny came running to Consumerist (and Consumerist took the bait) for a complete and total non-issue.

2) Yes, it is possible that a busy manager decided to screw over one unfortunate customer out of $17.48, but really...does that make any sense? That he would choose such a seemingly ridiculously low number without the ability to back it up? Unlikely, in my book.

3) Not sure what Consumerist you read, but the vast majority of the time, the stores are, in fact blamed and the consumer is thought to be in the right.

Just as Benny could have avoided his problems by saving the receipt (something everyone out of diapers should know), or by asking the gift-giver if he/she still had the receipt, you should have been more careful about what you read, and what you posted. Three-out-of-three wrong is a pretty lousy average.

@QrazyQat: I don't know about that, I know that some retailers will put really steep drops on some products just to get people into the store.

While I agree that it SEEMS rediculous, it's not completely out of the realm of possibility that they did it.

You also have to consider exactly how their POS determines the lowest price. A lot of chains computer systems can bring up the lowest chainwide price, but that's not to say that they couldn't be made to return the lowest price that something was sold for. If it does that chainwide, it could be bringing up hits from stores that in store clearanced said item just to get it out of the store.

And frankly, I've seen some retailers drop their clothing prices by as much as 90% off the normal price to get rid of the stuff only to have it go back up to full price a week later once upper management has deemed that they've reduced their inventories to acceptable levels.

@downwithmonstercable: I don't think anyone is saying that Macy's shouldn't have their policy of refunding an item without a receipt in the amount of its lowest sale. However, I think the issue here is that $2.50 seems arbitrary and Macy's offers no reasonable explanation as to when, where, how, or why it was $2.50.

@microcars: Just out of curiosity, how did you not have a receipt after you *just* bought it, took it home, and then returned to the store? Unless, of course, more time passed between the purchase and return (it's not quite clear, although your post makes it sound it was a matter or minutes/hours).

@rdm: Exactly. If you forget the receipt, why should you expect the store to take it back willingly? Plus, the price on the rack isn't necessarily the "advertised" or "selling" price.

Also, it seems the item was a gift, meaning that Benny didn't pay anything for it in the first place. In theory, he gained more money than he had before...

(Still, it would annoy me too. But I also don't expect the world to bend over backwards for me, either...)

Quick question here for all the Macy's apologists:

If they are entitled to only accept the "lowest recent sale price" for exchanges, then why can I not demand the "lowest recent sale price" for a return?

The fact is, if they can legitimately say "Yes, we are currently selling it for $20 now but it was only 'worth' $2 when it was purchased" then I can legitimately say "You used to sell it for $2, but now it's worth $2, but I am still going to get $20 back."

The very exploitation they decry is completely authorized by the exploitation Macy's visits upon its customers. Here's the easy way out you clowns are missing: Don't fuck your customers and they won't fuck you. Amazing!

@MustyBuckets: Somehow I doubt this was actually sold for $2.50 anywhere.

Although you would think that they would at least allow you to exchange it for the same item of a different size.

@mythago: This happens allot with sales, especially after Christmas. This has been a common policy at any store I have ever worked at. As people have been saying before, it leaves you open to be scammed if you let someone buy something at say 50% off then return it after the sale is over for full price because "you lost the receipt". On a small item like this, sure its not the end of the world, but what about on a TV thats price has changed a few hundred dollars...

I'm sure that many other readers have pointed this out, but this is a very common policy. You're not refunded the item's current selling price - you get the lowest price that item has been sold for (usually in a 30-day period). Otherwise, what's to stop savvy shoppers from picking up dozens of an item while it's on sale and returning it for a huge profit a few days later when the price goes back up?

@Kogenta: It may also have been a buy one get one free (or a few free to make this price difference) or it may have been combined in a package (buy product A get product B free) and worked out to being a value of approx 2.50.

That is pretty standard policy for every store. It typically is lowest price EVER. Since you don't have a receipt, they can't even prove you bought it within 30 days. Otherwise people would buy stuff on sale and return it after the sale without a receipt and make a profit.

@MustyBuckets: You are correct. It's the lowest selling price in 30 days. Chances are, that outfit is clearanced at a different Macy's.