One of the many reasons why Sephora has so many loyal customers is their relatively lenient return policy. I mean, it's practically a life saver.
So earlier this week, when the Wall Street Journal reported that the makeup chain is using a service that tracks spending behaviors and can lead to a ban on returning products, many diehard Sephora shoppers were shocked.
Many of Sephora's Beauty Insider members have used the return policy to make sure they were truly happy with their purchase, and even when customers brought their receipts to complete a return some have received warning emails about their shopping habits.
Sephora addressed its use of TRE in a statement to Racked, and explained that TRE isn't meant to prohibit all returns, but to monitor for people who abuse the system.
"We make every effort to accommodate returns, but a small fraction of customers take advantage of our policy, in many cases returning more than twice as much merchandise as they purchase. This limits product selection and unfairly impacts other clients. When we identify excessive return patterns, we notify those customers that we may limit future returns or exchanges if no proof of purchase is provided."
This all might seem alarming, but honestly, it's not worth stressing about too much if you keep your receipts.
Basically, if you want to stay in Sephora's good graces, always keep your receipts, and maybe cut back on how often you return products. Sure, returns are inevitable, especially with makeup, but constantly returning products without a receipt can land you in Sephora return purgatory, and no one wants that.
So be a good little shopper and hold onto those receipts, y'all, because while TRE was designed to flag people committing fraudulent returns, if you keep making frequent returns, you might just get banned, too.
