Royal Mail has revealed the areas in the UK where customers have returned the most amount of items from online orders from purchases made during lockdown.
The group saw a 25% increase in returns traffic against last year, as consumers “reflected on some of their hastier purchases”.
St Albans was the area with the highest amount of returns. This was followed by Watford, Kingston-upon-Thames, Ilford and South West London.
Edinburgh saw the highest amount of returns in Scotland, while Cardiff topped the number of returns in Wales.
It comes as many retailers extended return periods during lockdown, giving consumers more time to make a decision on their purchases.
The findings were based on analysis of Tracked Returns 48 items accepted into the Royal Mail network in an average week between 29 June 2020 and 2 August 2020.
During lockdown, it found that 53% of UK adults felt that receiving parcels had “become more important”, while 36% said receiving a parcel was the highlight of their day.
Nick Landon, chief commercial officer at Royal Mail said: “Having analysed our returns data across our national network of delivery offices, St Albans has emerged as the UK’s returns hotspot.
“With ecommerce playing an important role in keeping the UK connected during such unprecedented times, online returns form an even more important part of the online shopping experience for both consumers and retailers.”
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