Many Happy Returns A Few Tips Will Help You Return Gifts For What You Really Want

you. Yeah, you. The one sitting by your Christmas tree, surrounded by opened boxes and spent wrapping paper.

Sure, you loved the pashmina shawl from Aunt Marcy. But what about those cow-shaped oven mitts, the As-Seen-On-TV veggie slicer, the two-sizes-too-small khakis?

Yes, you could re-wrap those misfit gifts and give them to an unsuspecting victim, uh, friend, next Christmas. But you know that would be tacky.

Very, very tacky.

So you will hop in your car today, tomorrow or next week and take the gifts back to the store. Just make sure it’s the one the presents came from.

“We have a lot of customers that try to return stuff that’s not from our store,” says Cassandra Coy, assistant manager at the Rave clothing store at Northtown Mall. “They just get confused.”

Turns out, about 6 percent of all merchandise purchased at stores will be returned, according to a Shop.org/Boston Consulting Group study. The number climbs to nearly 10 percent for catalog items, the study says.

So, at least your misery will be in good company.

“It just gets really crazy,” says Bethaney McCabe, who works in the catalog department at J.C. Penney in Coeur d’Alene. “People can just crack you up being so funny, and there are others who can make you cry.”

There’s the woman who returned a sleeping bag her grandson didn’t like to Eddie Bauer at River Park Square.

Too bad she bought it for him a quarter century earlier.

“She held onto it for 25 years,” manager Nancy Britton says. “You know how grandmas are; they always stock up.”

She eventually got store credit for the return. But it took days to figure out how much the bag would be worth in today’s dollars.

“It was kind of an ordeal,” Britton admits.

Then there’s the young woman who picked out an outfit and accessories at The Bon Marche in the Valley to wear on a blind date.

The merchandise came back the next day.

“She said, `I didn’t have a good time, so I’m returning these,”’ saleswoman Rachel Lyonnais recalls. “I couldn’t believe that one myself.”

Shoe store salespeople have return stories that would make Miss Manners cry.

“We have stuff people get from rummage sales and return,” says Stephanie Attard, assistant manager at Payless ShoeSource at NorthTown Mall. “We have people who return (shoes) after their dog has chewed on them.”

Think twice the next time you try to convince the folks at Payless that you’ve had those ill-fitting sneakers only a few weeks. Their computers know you’re fibbing, and a salesperson will call you on it.

“Then they get kind of embarrassed,” Attard says.

And don’t even consider making returns your steady source of income. Attard calls those folks “frequent fliers,” and they’ll eventually lose their return privileges.

Often, returners aren’t uncouth. Sometimes, their expected needs just don’t match up with their purchases.

The Home Depot on Newport Highway saw a flurry of generators returned after Y2K failed to yield any disasters, manager Perry Mechem says.

Just last week, a woman braved icy roads to return her air conditioner to J.C. Penney Co. in Coeur d’Alene. The snow berms must’ve convinced her she didn’t need it.

REI recently got back six fringed, neon-green jog bras ordered over the sporting goods store’s Web site.

“She obviously did not like the styling of them,” customer service specialist Jefferson Hunt says.

Whatever you find yourself returning, remember that things could be worse.

You could be the elderly gentleman who ordered a sweater for his wife through the Penney’s catalog. She opened it up, and it turned out to be a maternity bra and panty set.

“He was laughing and good-natured about it,” McCabe says. “His wife didn’t think it was a very funny joke.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: RETURNING GIFTS Some tips

Here are some tips for having many happy returns, courtesy of local salespeople and the Washington D.C.-based National Retail Federation:

Most importantly, keep all receipts. They are the holy grail of hassle-free returns.

Ask for gift receipts if the store doesn’t offer them automatically.

Know the store’s return policy. Pay particular attention if the gift was bought online; can it be returned to a brick-and-mortar store?

Keep your cool.

Keep all original packaging, tags and parts.

Make sure you return the gift to the store where it was purchased.

Return the items as soon as possible after the holidays. That’s when stores have extra hours and added help.