Many happy returns

Steve Moyer/Daily Mail-- Shoppers carry out return transactions at a local store a few days after Christmas. Retailers say the practice of purchasing gift cards has led to shorter return lines.

After Christmas can mean long lines and frazzled nerves for recipients of gifts that they wish to return. This year the lines seem to be shorter and the waiting less, hopefully meaning fewer frazzled nerves.

At a large retail department store on the east side of Nevada there were only a few people at the customer service desk and they seemed to have someone helping them. At Radio Shack manager Larry Carter said he had only a few returns, and they were minor.

"I've just had two or three returns and a couple of exchanges," Carter said. "The returns were for little things like the small piece of rubber that keeps the rotor on this remote-controlled helicopter. You're always going to have exchanges when someone doesn't get what they really want, you can't control that. All in all this has been the best after Christmas I ever had."

Carter said that the electronics chain had invested heavily in getting their brand back into the consumer electronics market in a big way.

"Radio Shack just spent more than $10 billion getting all their own brands," Carter said.

Other retail stores around Nevada seemed to be busy with shoppers purchasing more items, not returning them. Steve Knowles, owner of the local Sears store said that is typical for their store.

"We typically don't have a lot of returns," Knowles said. "We don't sell clothes and when someone gets a tool, even if it isn't exactly what they wanted it is still useful."

Knowles said that the season started off well after Thanksgiving but slowed later, the effect of winter storms, before picking up again.

"Things were about normal. Credit card sales were higher than normal this year," Knowles said. "We started out strong after Thanksgiving but it slowed up when the weather got bad. With the damages and extra expenses it slowed up but then we're coming out about normal and we still have some time to go before the season ends. A lot of it is people using the gift cards they received, they want to get the deep discounts before the sales end. It's good for us because a lot of the time they spend more than is on the card so that helps."

Knowles said Sears customers had outdone themselves with the food donation barrel this year, provided each year as an annual service project of Sears stores.

"The customers really came through on the food donation barrel," Knowles said. "We collected three times as much as we did last year and we are still going."

Knowles said that the donated food will be taken to Community Outreach for distribution.