Her view of the privileges enjoyed by her & my generation is one which I share, but I am not sure that M&S returns was one of these indulgences, even if it was abused by some. In my view it was a shrewd marketing ploy which has now outlived its usefulness – the real exploiters are her children & my grandchildren who, because they are so strapped for cash, need to ‘borrow’ garments from a store.
It seems strange now to think that it was not until the late 1980s that M&S allowed you to try before you buy, at least if you were a woman after women’s clothes.
There were no changing rooms in their stores. In the early days, with standard sizing, limited ranges & glee at anything not utility or on the ration, women would be happy to try the clothes on at home & return them only if there were a real problem.
One of the real problems which might arise seems strange now – the colour was not quite right, not what you thought it had been under the artificial lights of the store. I wonder if shops stopped allowing you to take clothes to the door so that “you could see what they looked like in daylight” because this itself became a popular shoplifters ploy, or because artificial lighting improved so as to eliminate the difference?
Sometime in the 1950s the fact that you could return goods to any Marks & Spencers store (not just the one where they were bought), no questions asked, without a receipt, came to be seen as a very good reason for giving M&S sweaters as Christmas presents – even to men.
The new range of highest quality lambswool – plain v- round- or polo-necked – in a range of attractive colours, were highly desirable, but it would have been considered unacceptable to ask the donor to provide a receipt. The donor would equally have thought it an unforgivable faux pas to include the receipt in the gift-wrapped parcel. At a stroke M&S removed these sources of awkwardness; you could happily wait until you got back home & change the gift for one of the correct size (or get rid of it all together) at your local store & the donor need never even know!
Men proved to be reluctant to buy a suit before they had even tried it on, as M&S found when they started to move into this market, so they had to provide changing rooms – but only for men. This proved unsustainable in an age of Sex Discrimination law, despite dire warnings of the price rises which would inevitably follow, if they had to give up valuable floorspace when you had plenty of that at home.
Unfortunately time has proved the truth of the old saying – give them an inch & they’ll take a mile. People took advantage of M&S’ generous former returns policy, so now the party is over; it is not just left over food people will have to learn to make good use of once again.
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