Is It Ever Too Late to Return a Purchase?

At the end of October I bought the perfect white button-down blouse.   I carefully hung it in my closet with the tags still on it and stashed the receipt in a safe place.  And then it got cold outside and I started wearing turtleneck sweaters regularly, so the blouse stayed on its hanger.  Fast forward to March.  Since I bought the blouse I have lost a bit of weight and the blouse no longer fits.  It’s way too big.  A nice problem to have, but I was feeling awful about the $35 I spent on the perfect blouse that I never wore.

I started wondering how much money Clothes Mentor (my favorite place to get rid of clothes I no longer want in exchange for cash or for store credit) would give me for the blouse.  But I thought it might be worth asking at the store where I bought the blouse if I could possibly still return it.

As it turns out, despite the fact that I had purchased the blouse five months earlier, the store was still selling that particular blouse and was willing to offer me store credit since the tags were still on it and I still had the receipt.  So that store credit very quickly turned into the skirt for the new suit I needed (since the perfect black suit I bought last fall is now too big for me as well).

The lessons I took away from this experience:

  • Keep receipts until you are absolutely certain you are keeping something.
  • Don’t take the tags off a new piece of clothing until you are really going to wear it.
  • Don’t be afraid to ask if you can return something.  Even if you bought it a really long time ago.

Did you ever buy something and then never use it?  You just may be surprised at your ability to return it!

 

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