Returns are costly, so costly in fact, that Walmart suggests in some cases sellers might wish to let buyers keep an unwanted item instead of requiring them to return it. In describing the various returns services it offers to marketplace sellers, Walmart Marketplace also offered advice about its “Keep It” options:
Keep It and Partial Keep It rules
Sometimes it’s more cost-effective to let customers keep an item and process a refund than it is to pay a return shipping fee.
With Keep It, you’ll offer a full refund for non-resalable or cost-prohibitive items (for example, a $10 item that costs $8 to reverse-ship and $2 to inspect and restock).
Partial Keep It allows you to offer a partial refund, which acts like a discount for an item that’s slightly different than described or has light cosmetic damage.
The Keep It and Partial Keep It programs are heavily vetted through our fraud prevention AI models.
The advice highlights how expensive it is for sellers to deal with returns, including the return-shipping and post-return handling costs. And that doesn’t even take into account returns fraud – the fact the customer may return a damaged item, an empty box, or a “brick in a box.”
Walmart Marketplace’s mid-December post explained how sellers could let it handle their returns – even if they don’t use Walmart’s WFS fulfillment service: “You can also choose to fulfill orders on your own but leverage Walmart for returns. This program is ideal if you don’t want returned items sent back to you and don’t require specialty return services.”
With WFS and with Returns with Walmart, buyers can return items by mail or at one of its locations – “Around 90% of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a Walmart store,” it noted.
Anil Nair, Walmart’s Vice President of Seller Fulfilled Solutions and Local Marketplace, presented the options for sellers in the following video on YouTube:
