Ask Retail NZ: Your Retailing Questions Answered
In collaboration with the fantastic Retail NZ advice team, we set out to answer those burning questions our customers have about their retail businesses. Check out some of the questions retailers have sent us so far below*.
Have a question for the Retail NZ advice team? Their services are usually exclusive to Retail NZ members! Get in quick and submit your question here.
I sell secondhand recycled clothing and I have a No Returns sign. A customer wants to return a clothing item, saying that it was worn once and now there are faults. Do I legally have to accept a returned item and refund the item to the customer?
Even if you sell secondhand goods, the customer has the right to buy goods “of acceptable quality” under the Consumer Guarantees Act. If faults were evident and pointed out to them when purchasing, you don’t need to provide a change-of-mind refund. BUT, if the customer wasn’t aware of the faults beforehand, and the faults appeared after being worn once, then you’d be best to offer a refund. Under the law, you’re not allowed a blanket policy of “No Refunds” due to the Consumer Guarantees Act, but Retail NZ have a sign for this situation, which is offered to their members.
I am trying to compare the total NZ retail spend for Nov - Dec 2017 and Feb - March 2018. Would you be able to tell me where I can find this information?
The best place to find information about total retail sales is the Statistics NZ Retail Trade Survey – you can find all the information from the latest release for the March 2018 quarter here.
If you really need to be able to break the spend down by month you could use the Electronic Card Transactions data here. The issue obviously is it only covers electronic cards (credit, debit and prepay), however electronic cards for retail are consistently around 70 per cent of retail sales.
I am interested in using Afterpay or similar for my hairdressing business. Do I set this up with EFTPOS or our bank?
Merchants can apply to offer Afterpay directly with Afterpay online here - https://www.afterpay.com/en-NZ/for-retailers
Our business currently has a basic EFTPOS terminal. What would be the extra cost of adding the Google Pay facility?
If you accept Contactless (PayWave/PayPass) payments on your EFTPOS terminal, then you can accept payments from Google Pay. Talk to your acquiring bank about getting contactless payments enabled on your EFTPOS terminal.
I am needing an EFTPOS machine to use at markets. Is it possible to hire one short term?
Yes! We offer terminals on a short-term lease for periods from one day up to a few months. All we need is 10 days notice. Call 0800 EFTPOS (option 1) to talk to someone from the Eftpos NZ team about a short-term solution, or apply online here.
*Questions and answers have been edited to preserve the anonymity of the submitter.
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Editors note: blog content updated on April 22, 2020
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