Dive Brief:
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PayPal is offering its customers a free holiday return service through the end of January, the company said Tuesday.
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For eligible purchases made through PayPal Oct. 12 through Jan. 31, PayPal will reimburse return shipping charges for up to four packages. Customers have 14 days to file for reimbursement and must have proof of return.
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The service has already been available in 40 other countries, including Australia, France, Italy, and Spain, having debuted in France nearly a year ago.
Dive Insight:
This is a significant level of buyer protection that could send more online shoppers to use PayPal’s e-commerce payment services. The payments company doesn’t say how much free returns have cost the company so far — it’s been available in some other countries for months already — and it’s hard to know if the significant cost of return shipping is worth it.
But it could be that some if not most shoppers like the protection and piece of mind more than anything. PayPal is saying that it’s launching the service in the U.S. and elsewhere now because the holiday shopping season has been starting early in recent years. That’s true, but that doesn’t mean that the return shipping season is that early.
With Hannukah later this year, many returns will likely be bulked up in December and January, and many customers may not even make the return window.
Still, with free returns increasingly a necessity, especially for e-commerce retailers that can’t accept them in stores, the PayPal perk could be a boon to retailers as well as to customers.
“PayPal champions shoppers and sellers,” said Joanna Lambert, PayPal VP of consumer product and engineering, in a blog post. “We know that pricey return shipping fees discourage more than half of online shoppers from making repeat purchases and 48 percent of American shoppers say free return shipping is a must before they’ll buy.”