Many Happy Returns

For millions of Americans, Christmas still goes on merrily for the full, traditional twelve days afterward. This is the season to return all the unwanted, ill-chosen, mismatching, wrong-size gifts, either for exchange, cash or credit. As a result, for the past two weeks stores have been almost as crowded as they were in the weeks preceding Christmas --although the January "white sales" are only beginning.

Thanks to returns, the selection of negligees on sales counters in Manhattan last week was even better than the week before Christmas. And St. Louis merchants, keeping tab on the exchanges, have concluded that most husbands think their wives are slenderer than they really are while mothers assume their daughters are too fat. Teenagers, of course, decide that the clothes their parents picked for them are fresh from the Dark Ages. Mod shops like "Man at Ease" in Chicago report a lively post-holiday business in gear bought with cash derived in part from the returns at Marshall Field and Carson, Pirie Scott.

Swelling the Inventory. To combat the perennial returnee, department stores have developed a variety of ploys. One Philadelphia matron who tried to bring back a sexy nightgown that her husband had given her was told in detail by an artful clerk of the care her husband had taken in selecting it. "After all," cooed the clerk, "isn't it better for you to have it than some other woman?" The lady kept the gown.

What really drives the stores to distraction is the customer who tries to return a gift bought from a competitor or at a reduced price in a discount house. Merchandisers tell the tale of one buyer whose pre-Christmas inventory totaled six toasters; the week after New Year's it had swelled to twelve. One New York City housewife has raised the technique to a high art. Each year her husband receives a gift box of Faberge perfumes from the manufacturer. The lady returns it, bottle by bottle, to all the stores where she has charge accounts, thus accumulating $75 worth of credits.

Baths to Brassware. The trick would not work everywhere. Manhattan's Bergdorf Goodman, for instance, marks its perfume flacons with a secret symbol that can be seen only at a certain angle through the glass. More and more department stores now paste on special labels or stickers to identify their wares, although to keep a good customer happy they may still sometimes tactfully accept goods obviously bought at another store if they are of a type that the store already stocks.

Gift returns do not end with the after-Christmas rush; birthdays, anniversaries and weddings make it a year-round problem. One answer is the West Los Angeles Gift Exchange, dreamed up by Ted and Shirley Margulis. The Margulises have set up a trade center where everyone can swap what they got but don't want for what they do. They will accept practically anything, including Indian brassware and whirlpool baths (but not adults' clothing or initialed gifts). They check prices against a list of 150,000 items carried by local stores, give the customer a credit slip (subtracting a 20% service charge), then let him make his own selection from other returns.

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