Retailer deductions are a different problem in every category
Why the category matters
Retailer deductions are not the same problem in every category. The retailer sets the channel you file through and the window you have, but the category you sell decides something more fundamental: which document settles the argument. A shortage in apparel is answered from a signed bill of lading, a condition claim in food and beverage from a temperature record, a vendor accuracy claim in electronics accessories from an item setup record, and a damage claim in juvenile products from the exception field on a delivery receipt. Each page below states what actually drives deductions in that category and where its deciding documents live.
What drives deductions in each category
Roy disputes across many more categories than the ones listed here. A category gets a page when we can say something true and specific about how its deductions differ, and not before. A page that was apparel guidance with the nouns swapped would be worse than no page at all.
The category changes the evidence. The retailer changes everything else.
Whatever you sell, the mechanics of a dispute are constant. The authoritative reason for a charge lives in the retailer's own notice rather than in the generic code your ERP shows against it. The dispute window runs from the deduction date, so a claim that is correct but late is worth nothing. Each retailer accepts filings in its own format through its own channel, and filing through the wrong one means the dispute is never seen.
What the category changes is which document you have to reach before any of that matters. That is why these pages are organised around evidence rather than around claim types, and why the retailer intelligence library is the companion to them: it carries the sourced channel, evidence bar and reason-code taxonomy for each retailer, while the deduction code library carries the meaning and disputability of an individual reason code.
The distinctive thing about each category
Why the same garment is compliant at one retailer and deductible at the next
Nothing about the garment changes between them. The rules it is judged against change completely.
Where the evidence sits: Your own shipping and invoicing records, chiefly the carrier signed bill of lading read against the purchase order and the invoice.
Why the toy calendar decides the deduction
A carton counted as one piece against an invoice billed in individual games reads as a shortage even when nothing is missing.
Where the evidence sits: The purchase order's delivery window and the carton level pack specification, more often than the bill of lading.
Why the decisive document is often not a shipping document
A shipment can be complete, on time, correctly priced and still deducted for how much life was left in it.
Where the evidence sits: Temperature records, code dates and deal sheets, alongside rather than inside the shipping file.
Why freight, not counting, drives the deduction book
It is not the signature on the delivery receipt, but the exception field on it.
Where the evidence sits: The exception field on the delivery receipt, and the routing instruction that governed the load.
Why the item file, not the warehouse, is where the money is lost
Nothing was missing. The data was wrong, and a data error cannot be answered from the shipping file.
Where the evidence sits: The item setup record and the price agreement, more often than anything in the shipping file.
Read: Retailer chargebacks in consumer electronics accessories
Why the season closes the argument before the window does
A shipment arriving after the set is not merely late. It is arriving into a store with no room for it.
Where the evidence sits: The purchase order's delivery window and the routing instruction, with end of season allowances settled commercially.
Your category is a starting point, not an answer
These pages describe where the money usually goes in a category. An assessment tells you where yours actually went, from your own deduction history.