Bracketing is a margin problem, not a logistics problem

Bracketing starts innocently. A shopper is between sizes, orders two or three, keeps one, and returns the rest. Fit uncertainty in apparel makes this rational for the customer and expensive for the brand.

Most teams treat bracketing as a shipping and restocking cost. It is actually a margin problem. Every bracketed order ties up inventory that cannot be sold while it sits in a hallway, delays resale, and quietly inflates your return rate.

The customers who bracket once in a while are not the issue. The issue is the segment that brackets every order, in every category, all year. That behavior is knowable from your own order data, and it is concentrated in a small group.

Scoring return requests by customer history lets you treat these groups differently: free and easy returns for honest shoppers, and warnings or paid return shipping for habitual bracketeers. Same policy on paper, very different economics.