The share of retailers with an item-level return rate of at most 10% reached 66.7%, while the share reporting rising return rates grew from 14.7% to 18.7%. In fashion, 67.5% of retailers have return rates above 20%, whereas in consumer electronics no surveyed retailer exceeds that level. Retailers cite customer satisfaction and loyalty (76.2%) and customer expectations and competition (64.3%) as the main reasons for absorbing return costs.

Return transport is named most often as the main cost driver (70.6%), while inspection and refurbishment fell from 63.1% to 52.9%. Processing costs per returned item are up to €5 for about a third of retailers and above €10 for around one fifth, and more than a quarter could not quantify them at all. The findings point to a shift from treating returns as a general cost issue toward root-cause analysis and differentiated control, which matters for retailers weighing free returns as a competitive standard against rising unit costs. The survey is based on responses from 108 online retailers in summer 2026, mostly headquartered in Germany, about a quarter with annual turnover above €1 billion.

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