Shoppers deal with complex variety of return policies

Major retailers like Best Buy and Amazon are offering liberal return policies, in those cases allowing customers to send back unwanted gifts bought in the two months before Christmas until Jan. 15th and 31st respectively. However, with some stores, it can get a lot more complicated. Macy's general 180 day-from-purchase policy does not apply to many exceptional items which must be returned anywhere from 3 to 120 days. Target imposes different rules by category and brand: 30 days for many consumer electronics, for example, vs. 15 days for Apple products.