E-Commerce Refund Rates by Category in Germany — 2025
Results as of
Review Full Year 2025: Fashion orders are refunded 7× more often than electronics in Germany
Info
- Sample size
- n = 68,966
- Data date
- Full Year 2025
- Segment
- All segments
- Platform
- Market
- Germany
Analysis
Fashion leads Germany's 2025 e-commerce refund landscape with a 5.9% order-level refund rate — roughly one returned order in every seventeen — while electronics sits at just 0.8%, the lowest of any measured category. The gap reflects a structural difference in how Germans shop for apparel versus tech: fit uncertainty and deliberate 'bracketing' (ordering multiple sizes to return the extras) are deeply embedded in fashion purchasing behaviour, with industry estimates placing Germany's overall fashion return rate among the highest in Europe. Zalando's January 2025 decision to cut its return window from 100 days to 30 days was a direct response to this dynamic, though the company noted that over 90% of German customers already returned within 30 days. At 1.3%–1.8%, grocery, beauty, and marketplace categories sit firmly in the middle, each shaped by distinct post-purchase mechanics. For brands and logistics operators, the category gap is the single most powerful lever in reverse-logistics cost modelling.
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Methodology
Refund rates are measured at the order level across German online shoppers throughout 2025. An order is counted as refunded if any item within that order triggered a refund, return, or cancellation notification. Retailers are grouped into five categories — Fashion (e.g. Zalando, ABOUT YOU, H&M, ASOS, SHEIN), Marketplaces (e.g. Amazon, Temu, eBay, TikTok Shop), Electronics (e.g. MediaMarkt, Saturn, Apple, Cyberport), Grocery & Food (e.g. REWE, EDEKA, flaschenpost, HelloFresh), and Beauty & Drug (e.g. Douglas, dm, Rossmann, Flaconi) — based on editorial merchant mapping. Only categories with at least 50 tracked orders are shown.