More than a third of the UK's top 100 fashion retailers now charge for returns. Here's what the data tells us about adoption, pricing, and what's changed since 2023.
In 2023, 23% of the UK's top 100 fashion retailers charged customers for returns. By 2026, that figure has risen to 35%. The increase reflects a broader recalibration across UK fashion e-commerce, where rising fulfillment costs, carrier rate inflation, and increased pressure on margins have pushed retailers to revisit policies that were once considered untouchable.
And the shift has not been limited to budget or mid-market brands. Paid returns are now moving upmarket, into segments where free returns were previously treated as non-negotiable. To make a well-informed decision about return fees, it helps to look at what the market is actually doing, and what the results have been so far.
The growth in paid returns has not been evenly distributed. Mass market and premium retailers led early adoption, and return fees are now firmly established at those price points.
The more notable movement is upmarket. Among affordable luxury brands, the share charging for returns increased from 4% in 2023 to 20% in 2026. Among luxury brands, it moved from 0% to 12% over the same period.
This pattern suggests that as paid returns become normalized in the mainstream market, higher-end segments are beginning to follow. The dynamic is one of gradual adoption rather than a sudden shift: retailers in each segment appear to be watching peer behavior before making changes to their own policies.
When paid returns first gained traction, a common concern was that fees would negatively impact conversion rates, increase cart abandonment, or drive customers toward competitors still offering free returns. Those risks were reasonable to anticipate. In reality, no brand that introduced return fees between 2023 and 2026 has subsequently removed them.
The absence of reversals suggests that, in practice, retailers have found return fees to be commercially sustainable. Fees have not only been maintained — they have also increased over the period, broadly in line with inflation. This points to return fees becoming an embedded part of the operating model rather than a temporary response to cost pressure.
That said, the absence of reversals does not mean the decision is without trade-offs. It means that, on balance, the retailers who have introduced fees appear to have concluded that the financial benefit outweighs the risk.
Return fees in UK fashion retail tend to follow a relatively consistent structure. Most brands charge a flat fee per return, typically deducted from the refund or charged at the point of initiating the return. Fee levels have risen since 2023, broadly tracking inflation.
The specific implementation varies by brand. Boohoo, for example, charges £1.99 per return as a standard flat fee, though Premier members are exempt for one free return per order. This tiered model uses free returns as a retention lever rather than a universal policy.
ASOS takes a different approach entirely. Rather than charging a blanket fee, ASOS monitors return rates over a rolling 12-month window and applies fees only to customers who consistently return 70% or more of their purchases. This targets high-return behavior specifically, rather than applying a fee across the entire customer base.
There's also New Balance that offers free returns as an explicit membership benefit, positioning it as a loyalty incentive rather than a default offering.
These examples illustrate a broader trend, where return fees are no longer a binary choice between free and paid. Retailers are building more nuanced structures — behavior-based triggers, membership exemptions, tiered pricing by return method like drop-off and home collection — that allow them to recover cost while managing the customer experience more precisely.
The data suggests that paid returns tend to be most straightforward to implement in segments where they are already common. In mass market and premium retail, charging for returns is now the norm rather than the exception. Introducing a fee in these segments carries less competitive risk, because customer expectations have already shifted.
For affordable luxury and luxury brands, the decision is more nuanced. Return fees are gaining traction in these segments, and adoption is still relatively low. Brands considering fees at these price points will want to weigh the margin benefit against the service expectations associated with their positioning.
There are also practical considerations around return behavior. Fashion ecommerce return rates typically range from 25% to 40%, driven largely by fit uncertainty, sizing inconsistency, and the inherent limitations of buying clothing online. Return fees do not change the underlying reasons customers return items. They can, however, contribute to recovering the cost of processing those returns.
Retailers with high return volumes relative to their order value may find that even a modest fee materially improves contribution per order. Conversely, brands with lower return rates or higher average order values may find the financial impact less significant, and may prefer to use free returns as a competitive differentiator — or, like New Balance, as a loyalty mechanism.
The ASOS model also points to a middle path — targeting fees at the highest-return customers rather than applying them universally. This approach preserves the free-return experience for the majority of shoppers while recovering cost from the segment that drives the most return volume.
The question of whether to charge for returns isn't theoretical anymore. More than a third of the UK's leading fashion retailers already do, adoption is moving upmarket, and no brand has reversed the decision.
The data points toward return fees being a commercially sustainable lever for managing fulfillment costs, particularly in an environment where carrier rates and processing costs continue to rise. The right approach depends on segment positioning, return volumes, average order values, and the broader delivery and returns proposition — and increasingly, on how precisely a brand can structure its fee policy to balance cost recovery with customer experience.
For retailers that have not yet revisited their returns policy, the 2026 benchmark data provides a clear picture of where the market stands and where opportunity may remain.
This article draws on findings from Return Economics 2026, a joint publication by Ingrid Returns, Harper, and Limesharp, which benchmarks returns policies across the UK's top 100 fashion retailers.
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