[Infowarrior] - Best Buy Swipes Driver's License: No Returns For 90 Days

[Richard Forno]

courant.com/business/custom/consumer/hc-bottom-line-best-buy-returns-20120409,0,5063368.column

Courant.com

After Best Buy Swipes His Driver's License: No Returns For 90 Days

Kevin Hunt - The Bottom Line

The Bottom Line

4:31 PM EDT, April 9, 2012

Peter Peel of Middletown thought he had all the twists and turns he needed for at least a day when he bought "The French Connection" Blu-ray disc from Best Buy in early March.

Unfortunately, the disc proved defective so, three days later, he brought it back to the Best Buy in Newington. That's when he got the surprise ending.

Despite having the receipt, Peel was also asked for his driver's license. (Unlike the "French Connection, however, no one asked if he had ever picked his feet in Poughkeepsie.) After an employee swiped the license, Peel was told the movie-disc return would be accepted but the store would not authorize any other returns or exchanges for 90 days.

"I was told that I could not return or exchange any other items, even with a valid receipt," he says, "because of some third-party return activity company. How can this be legal when a consumer clearly has a valid receipt?"

It's not only legal, but many other retailers are using The Retail Equation, a California company that verifies return authorizations by tracking consumers' return-exchange behavior at participating stores. It checks the purchase price and whether the consumer had a receipt.

Throw in the driver's-license scanning and it strikes a lot of consumers like Peel as invasive, even creepy.

"Our system is compliant with all state and federal laws regarding the security and privacy of the information," says Best Buy spokeswoman Kelly Groehler, "and provides far greater security than more traditional retail return practices, such as collecting consumer information on hard-copy return slips or saving consumer information on paper logs."

Best Buy adopted the program more than a year ago to reduce fraudulent returns: the big-screen television bought the Friday before the Super Bowl and returned the day after or the video camera purchased before graduation weekend and quickly returned.

Best Buy, already beaten down by consumers who use its stores as a showroom before ordering more cheaply online, also must deal with fraudulent receipts, returns of stolen merchandise for cash and price switching. The retailer can't afford to bleed any more money: The company Forbes earlier this year said is moving toward bankruptcy recently announced it would close 50 stores and lay off 400 workers in the United States. And Tuesday, CEO Brian Dunn resigned.

The Retail Equation says its Verify-2 software identifies the 1 percent of consumers whose behavior can be identified as return fraud or abuse. The company, whose software is in 20,000 stores throughout the country, says return fraud ranges from $14.3 billion to $18.4 billion each year.

"Verify-2 enables retailers to rely on objective, verifiable data," says spokeswoman Lisa Mendenhall, "to determine whether a return is valid rather than relying on subjective observations and guesswork by sales clerks. This objectivity ensures that only those with highly suspect return-and-exchange behavior are affected. The vast majority — approximately 99 percent — of returns are accepted."

Peel said he had several returns after Christmas, then a few other returns and exchanges — all with a receipt. That, apparently, was enough to put him on The Retail Equation's most-wanted list and Best Buy's no-returns-or-exchanges-for-90-days list.

The Retail Equation says its consumer profiles use frequency of returns, dollar amounts, whether  a return-receipt was involved and purchase history. It does not use information on age, race, gender, nationality, marital status or whether the consumer is a Yankees or Red Sox fan.

If a sales clerk scans your original sales receipt or swipes your driver's license (a government-issued ID, like a passport, is also accepted) then you're probably shopping at an affiliate of The Retail Equation.

What are your rights? If you've been denied a return or exchange or have been put on a 90-day hold, you can request an activity report from The Retail Equation by sending an email to returnactivityreport at theretailequation.com with both your name and phone number. A Retail Equation representative will call, not write, asking for a return transaction ID and the last four digits of the customer's ID (driver's license or passport) number.

And if it's a little too invasive or too creepy, you can always shop elsewhere.


---
Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.