The invisible cost of returning a jumper: how returns are drowning online commerce in Spain

The easy “click” of e-commerce hides a million-euro bill that few consumers see.
In Spain, where almost 18% of online purchases end up being returned (and up to 40% in fashion), companies face a structural problem: managing a return costs between 10 and 20 dollars per product, which can represent up to 66% of the value of a low-cost garment.
Far from being a simple logistical nuisance, massive returns are eroding profit margins by up to 30% in digital sales, and are forcing giants like Inditex or Amazon to reconsider whether they can continue to assume the “everything free” model they sold as a hallmark for years.

The practice of “bracketing” — buying several sizes of the same model to try them on at home and returning the ones that don’t fit — has become the biggest headache for fashion retailers. What is convenient for the buyer is an operational disaster for the company: double transport, manual inspection, reconditioning, loss of commercial value and, in the case of fast fashion, the risk that the item has gone out of season before returning to the warehouse.
The result is an unsustainable system where many brands end up losing money even when they manage to resell the product.

Inditex, the Spanish giant behind Zara, was one of the first to put its foot down. In 2023, it began charging €1.95 for returns made by courier, although it still offers free returns if done in a physical store.
The decision is no small matter: behind it lie hundreds of millions of euros in annual logistical costs. And it is not alone. Amazon, which manages millions of returns a day, has gone as far as destroying entire products when the cost of reconditioning exceeds their value, which has already set off all the regulatory and environmental alarms in Europe.

The most striking paradox of this crisis is that it is bringing physical stores back into the spotlight. Many chains are turning their establishments into return points and pickup points for online orders, thereby reducing reverse logistics costs and increasing customer traffic in traditional retail. It is a hybrid model that sounds nostalgic, but responds to a brutal economic reality: the cost of shipping a product twice (there and back) is turning out to be higher than keeping a store open where the customer can try on and decide on the spot.

The message for the Spanish consumer is clear: the reign of free and unlimited returns is coming to an end. More and more retailers are introducing fees, shorter return periods or even restrictions for those who abuse the system. Because the real challenge of e-commerce is no longer selling a product online, but managing what happens when the customer, from the comfort of their sofa, decides they no longer want it. And that cost, until now invisible, is beginning to appear in the fine print of every order.

Every time a customer returns a T-shirt bought online, the transport sector assumes the cost of a return trip that was not planned in the original business.
This phenomenon, known as “reverse logistics”, is saturating courier networks in Spain: carriers must manage flows of goods in the opposite direction, duplicating routes, handling times and van space.
What seemed like a simple free return for the consumer translates into thousands of additional daily journeys, with semi-empty lorries crisscrossing the country to collect packages that were no longer wanted. For delivery companies, each return implies a second collection process, labelling, sorting at hub warehouses and reinjection into the network, all with logistical margins that, in low-cost e-commerce, border on economic unviability.

The problem worsens when the returned product cannot be sold directly again. In many cases, especially in fast fashion or low-value electronics, garments must be moved to reconditioning centres, liquidation warehouses or even recycling or destruction plants.
This generates a third or fourth journey, multiplying the carbon footprint and operating costs for carriers and retailers. Moreover, the pressure of ever-shorter return deadlines forces courier companies to prioritise these collections over other, more profitable deliveries. The result is a transport sector caught between the online consumer’s demand for immediacy and the harsh reality that returning a €10 product can cost more in fuel and labour than was ever paid for it.