UNITED STATES—If there is one thing that I truly hate doing it is making returns. Why? They can sometimes be time consuming, and you feel guilty about having to return something that you purchased. I don’t do returns all that often, but sometimes you purchase something, and your mind just changes on the item. In most cases, if it’s clothing, it doesn’t fit or look as appealing as you expected it to be.

I recently purchased some items for Xmas and realized unfortunately, I got the wrong size. So, I had to make an extra trip to the mall to return about five to six things. In addition, I had to hunt down those receipts because you cannot just return items without receipts nowadays. However, I have seen a TON of people attempt to do this and it is beyond baffling, but it happens more often than you can imagine.

However, for my outing, I was pleasantly surprised, how quick and easy it was to complete. One, I decided to get up early and not waste any time and get moving ASAP to get to the mall right before it opens. I actually timed myself because I wanted to see how long it would take me to complete my returns. I was stunned because all my returns were done within 20 minutes, and I had to visit at least four to five stores. I guess because I was the early bird I got things done without much stress at all.

Surprisingly, the return process was so easy. They scanned the receipt and depending on how the purchase was made, it was credited back to my credit card, debit card or I received cash. I was surprised at one retailer the funds were returned back to my credit card ASAP. Usually with a credit card it might take two to three business days before you see those funds placed back into your bank account or your credit card.

With that said, I try never, and I mean never, to make a return when I know a store is going to be excessively busy. Why? It just becomes way too much of a hassle to wait in line, and unfortunately, I don’t have the patience that I once used to have America. It just is not there for me anymore unfortunately and there tends to be two different lines at retailers. One to handle returns or pickup orders, the other to handle actual purchases.

You might be surprised at how many people are retuning goods on any given day. A lot of them tend to be the result of online purchases. Hence the reason, I don’t purchase many things online. Why? What something looks like on a computer screen is NOT the same as what you see in person. This is in particular true about clothing. Colors, style and fit are best determined with you actually seeing the item LIVE and sometimes trying it on.

Those models online do not do any justice to those items, you have to really touch and try things on to see how it adapts and fits to your body type. Sometimes it’s flattering, other times not so much. With that said, don’t be that person who constantly purchases items ONLY to return them.

There are retailers out there who don’t allow that. I know Best Buy for one, if you do so many returns in a given year, they ban you from making purchases in the store. Yes, sounds crazy, but the retailers do have to pay those fees whenever returns are made, especially when a credit card is made, which is why there has been such a crackdown on people returning without receipts and doing excessive amounts of returns.

The issue with returns is that whether you like to or not, they have to be done. If you have multiple returns, try to do them all at once, instead of making multiple trips when you don’t have to.