often. reporter: this person shops almost entirely online and was recently hit with return fees after ordering multiple pairs of pants. i haven t been able to find a pair of pants that actually fits me. i needed to try on a lot of things. and for certain stores, i did have to eat that $5 cost. reporter: a fee some experts say shoppers should get used to, with shipping costs up and retailers dealing with excess inventory this year. and all those returns add up. according to the national retail federation, $102 billion worth of online orders were returned in 2020. that number more than doubled to 218 billion last year. about 40% of our merchants are charging for refunds. and that s nearly doubled in the last 12 months. reporter: jonathan is the ceo of loop, a company helng more than 1,500 retailers save on return costs. > this is actually a big problem for retailers. when you start to stack these
costs preshipping on the outbound orderer, maybe a customer acquisition cost of 50 bucks and you re out almost twice the cost of the return. reporter: and with as many as 50,000 brick and mortar stores projected to close over the next five years, the trend towards return fees isn t going away any time soon. i think return fees just help us see a little bit behind that curtain by making us pause and think about our purchasing decisions and whether we are being wasteful or not. reporter: turning a page in how we buy and return. nancy chen, cbs news, new york. next up on the cbs weekend news, an out-of-this-world gift, showing the universe as never before.