If new clothes ordered digitally don’t fit, Rebecca Thomas will either return them to a store or toss them in a donation box.
“I’m just putting brand new items with tags still on in a giveaway pile,” said Thomas, a Dartmouth, N.S., resident in her late 30s. “I will not go to Canada Post.”
Returning online orders can be a hassle: Interpreting return policies, wading through cardboard boxes and plastic pouches, finding packing tape and a printer — with ink — to print off return labels and then trekking to the post office.
Even orders that can be returned at stores are increasingly met with shorter return windows. Shoppers in Canada are also sometimes charged fees to return unwanted items, or provided with store credit rather than a refund.