Enumerated Reasons
This post was originally published on August 09, 2007. It has been heavily edited from its original form.
I recently purchased some clothes from the Gap online store. The packing slip had the usual RMA form attached, with the following table of “return reason codes”:
| 12 Too long | 17 Too large | 22 Too short |
| 27 Too small | 30 Defective | 33 Returning a gift |
| 35 Didn’t like item | 36 Item not as pictured | 40 Wrong item shipped |
| 41 Arrived late | 50 Other |
Numerical non sequitur
It struck me that the numbers were not sequential or following any reasonable pattern. Why can’t “Too long” be 01 and “Other” be 11?
The simple answer is that there’s more information encoded in the digits than you might expect at first glance. For instance, both shipping-related problems, “arrived late” and “wrong item shipped,” begin with 4. What do the other high-order digits mean?
| 1x | Sizing problems - too big |
| 2x | Sizing problems - too small |
| 3x | Quality / satisfaction problems |
| 4x | Shipping problems |
| 5x | Other |
Low-Order Unknowns
Note that for 1x and 2x, a low-order digit of 2 indicates that the issue is with length, whereas 7 indicates overall size. Are there other patterns to the low-order digits? Why skip from 30 to 33 to 35?
Update: Someone pointed out that there might be more codes that were not included on my packing slip because they were unrelated to the items in my order (e.g., “shoe is too wide”). Gap customer service dispelled this theory, though, providing me with the same list as above.