La Redoute review requests: how to automate the ask

Automate review requests on La Redoute.

La Redoute is a French fashion and home institution turned digital, running its marketplace on Mirakl. Fashion is the category where automated review requests go wrong most often, for one specific reason: returns are structural rather than exceptional, and a request that ignores them will actively damage your rating.

In fashion, exclusion logic matters more than timing

Everywhere else on this site the interesting question is when to ask. In fashion the interesting question is whom not to ask.

Return rates in online fashion routinely run at a third of orders and can go higher on certain categories. That is not a failure — it is how the category works, because buyers order two sizes intending to send one back. It does mean that a naive automation asking every buyer for a review is, a third of the time, asking someone who has just sent your product back.

The review you get from that buyer is not about your service. It is about the item that did not fit. And it lands on your listing.

Any automation worth running in fashion excludes orders with an open return, a refund or a complaint before it sends anything. Merita does that as a default rather than as an option, and in this category it is most of the value.

Partial returns are the case that catches people out

The harder version: a buyer orders three items, keeps one and returns two. The order is not cancelled, it is not fully refunded, and a simple rule sees a delivered order with a happy ending.

The buyer's actual experience was that two of three things were wrong. Ask them for a review of the order and you will not enjoy it. Handling the partial case properly is the difference between an automation that helps and one that quietly costs you a star.

Sizing is what fashion reviews are actually for

Read any fashion review section and the pattern is immediate: buyers are not reviewing quality nearly as much as they are reviewing fit. Runs small. Sleeves long. True to size if you are between two.

That is the most commercially valuable information on the page, because it is the thing that stops the next buyer ordering the wrong size and returning it. Reviews in fashion do not just win you sales, they lower your return rate — which in a category with structural returns is worth more than the sales.

What Merita does

We wait for delivery, exclude anything with a return, refund or complaint attached including partial returns, and send one message in French through La Redoute's own buyer messaging asking for an honest review. Nothing offered in return, one message per order.

What Merita does on La Redoute

We watch your La Redoute orders for the moment each one is actually delivered, then send one polite message through the marketplace’s own buyer messaging asking the buyer for an honest review. Nothing is offered in return and nothing is incentivised, so the ask stays inside the marketplace’s rules. Orders with a complaint or an open return are skipped automatically. On our live client this took the rate of review collection from roughly 1 in 100 delivered orders to about 5.2 in 100 — a 5.2× lift.

La Redoute — common questions

Won't asking for reviews in fashion just produce negative ones from returns?

It will if the automation is naive. Return rates in online fashion often run near a third of orders, so any system that asks every buyer will regularly ask someone who just sent the item back. Merita excludes orders with an open return, a refund or a complaint before sending — including partial returns, where a buyer kept one item and returned the rest.

What is a partial return and why does it matter for review requests?

It is an order where the buyer keeps some items and sends others back — ordering two sizes and returning one is the classic case. The order looks completed to a simple rule, but the buyer's actual experience was that part of it was wrong, so asking them for a review of that order tends to produce a poor one.

How do reviews reduce returns on La Redoute?

Fashion reviews are mostly about fit rather than quality — buyers write that an item runs small or that the sleeves are long. That information stops the next buyer ordering the wrong size, which lowers your return rate. In a category where returns are structural, that saving is often worth more than the extra sales the reviews bring.

Also searched as: laredoute.fr, La Redoute Marketplace, laredoute.it, La Redoute Partner.