Urban Outfitters

• Order item.
• Receive someone else’s order. The receipt in the box even has their name and address, even though the mailing label itself has our address.
• Call and ask what to do. Told to just return the item, and they’ll handle it.
• Ship the item back using the return mailing label that came with the order.
• Never get the refund. Two months later, call and ask what’s going on.
• Informed that according to the tracking number on the return label, we never returned the item.
• Explain that we never actually got the item. Surmise that the other people — the ones who got our order by mistake — were probably the ones who didn’t actually return it, since they were the ones who had our return label.
• Continue to be informed that we never returned the item.
• Try to explain that if we did in fact not return the (mistaken) item, shouldn’t we be charged for that instead? Not the item we never actually received in the first place?
• Receive no answer.
• 15-20 phone calls, emails, tweets, private messages on Twitter, more emails later, and we keep getting told the same thing: we never returned the item.
• Finally threaten to dispute the charge with our credit card company.
• Told they will forward our case to the returns department, and they will contact us within five days. Wonder aloud why it took this long for our case to be forwarded to the returns department.
• Explain we’re not going to wait five more days, as it’s already been over two months. Dispute the charge with our credit card company.
• Never hear back from anyone, returns department or otherwise.
• Two weeks later, receive notification of requested refund.
• Length of entire process: approximately three months. Refund received.

Amazon

• Order item. Decide to return it.
• Request return on three items from two separate orders.
• Notice that the return shipping address is the same for all three orders. Figure we’ll save Amazon the return shipping cost and put them all in the same box. Make sure to leave all three return authorization slips in the box.
• Only get refunded for one item.
• Contact customer service. Explain situation.
• Customer service explains that because they were two separate orders, they should have been returned separately. But they understand and grant us the refund, anyway.
• Length of entire process: less than 10 minutes. Refund received.

Guess who we will and won’t be shopping with again in the future?