AMERICAN BELIEF IN HAPPY RETURNS NOT SHARED WORLDWIDE : THAILAND: TRADITIONAL SERVICE REIGNS AT THE MALLS.

Byline: The New York Times

The chestnuts have been roasted, the wrappings torn open, the batteries misplaced. And as Christmas Day follows Christmas Eve, the urge to return unwanted gifts will drive Americans back to the malls today in the holiday's most predictable anticlimax.

Depending on the type of store, 8.6 percent to 12 percent of all goods are returned to U.S. merchants, according to the National Retail Federation - and the busiest days for returns and exchanges come right after Christmas.

Yet while store shelves around the world groan with American-made or -inspired goods that are sold increasingly in American-style malls, the American custom of dumping undesired gifts is a far less universal export.

As these reports from foreign correspondents and reporters for The New York Times make clear, shopping retains its national identity, and returns, for the most part, are an exotic bit of Americana.

You can get your shoulders massaged when you get a haircut. You can get a shower head repaired instead of throwing it away. You can get a sock darned for free. But if you don't want the necktie you got for Christmas, the store that sold it doesn't want it either.

``The whole concept of service is different here from what it is in the States,'' said Kit Young, a musician and longtime resident of Bangkok. ``And there is a really different concept of buying an item.''

Her comments were echoed by shoppers around the region, in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

In all these countries, lifestyles and the mores of the retail trade are changing quickly, as living standards rise and shopping malls proliferate.

``Now it is malls everywhere,'' Sharifah Sani, a travel agent in Malaysia, said. ``The prices are fixed. The saleswomen wear uniforms. No bargaining. Everything is by the rules.''

The big department stores - Central Plaza in Bangkok or Robinson's in Singapore or Shoemart in Manila - are almost indistinguishable from their counterparts in the West. Exchanges, if not refunds, are becoming possible in some cases.

But the old, more personal way of doing business lingers. An editor in Manila remembers her childhood post-Christmas ritual of exchanging the flouncy dresses her father liked to buy her ``for something more practical.''

``He had this shop he always went to that knew him, so I could go and trade in the dresses without having to steal his receipt,'' she said. ``I probably couldn't do that anymore.''

?13- SETH MYDANS

GERMANY: Price cuts and returns are beginning to catch on

Germans are avid shoppers between Christmas and New Year, because most people take the entire week off. Die Zeil, the downtown shopping district in Frankfurt, is typically mobbed as soon as stores reopen Dec. 27.

But the American art of cashing in unwanted Christmas presents - and then buying even more merchandise - has yet to catch on. Most stores do let people exchange products after Christmas, but only the larger department stores, and only some of those will give people their money back.

That is enough in itself to put a damper on any rush after Christmas. But German retailers are only beginning to adopt the practice of rapid-fire discounting to move slow-selling wares off the shelves.

For one thing, it remains illegal for a store to advertise big price reductions.

Just ask Anna Skaggs, co-owner of Hurricane, a small shop that sells blue jeans and other casual clothing. ``I almost got a fine two years ago,'' Skaggs said. Her crime? Putting a sign in her window announcing that some prices had been cut 30 percent.

Traditionally, stores held sales two times a year, for two weeks in January and two weeks in the early summer. These days, German shoppers are assaulted by ``special offers'' at every turn, and retailers do in fact slash prices routinely. But even so, it is still against the law in many places to specifically display both the original price and the sales price on the same tag.

Skaggs, despite her own brush with the authorities, says the German system has certain advantages. ``In the United States, you just mark the goods up by 120 percent and then cut them again, and I think it is really cheating,'' she said.

But the German system does more than just protect consumers from flimflams. It also protects local shopkeepers from bare-knuckled competition, which may be part of the reason why prices in Germany are higher than in many other countries.

?13- EDMUND L. ANDREWS

RUSSIA: Where often is heard a discouraging word

Russian saleswomen can be hardhearted. They can make buying so difficult that most shoppers would rather suffer quietly at home than revisit the scene of the trauma to wrestle for a refund.

``I wouldn't exactly say they're scared,'' Alexander Kharchenko, a lawyer for a Moscow consumer rights group, said of his clients. ``They just don't know their rights.''

Russian stores do take returns, but that may be one of the country's best-kept secrets. The catch is that a receipt is usually required and that is often an elusive bit of coarse paper whose only identifying marks are a spray of seemingly meaningless numbers.

But there are a few merchants who will forgo proof of purchase if the item is obviously from their store, and even some who will give cash back.

Despite this veneer of accommodation, the relatively tiny number of returns speaks to a deeper consumer truth: Russians, despite the service-sector thaw in the past five years, are still cowed by the menacing lady behind the counter.

Though a product's failure might prompt a return, Russians are generally not whiny consumers. Gifts, especially, are never returned. Valentina Kytmanova, commercial director of Russia's biggest toy store, Detsky Mir, remembered two gift returns in the last year.

``In Russia, we have a saying,'' said Olga Kannunikova, a gentle shopper who said she has never disliked a present given her: ``Don't look a gift horse in the teeth.'' On hearing that Americans quote the same proverb, she offered, ``Well, I guess Americans look.''

Russia's savviest buyers, the young and rich, are learning to look, too. On a recent visit to Moscow's upscale Sadko Arcade, several people reported defying another Russian saying: ``You can't make a present of a present.''

``We give stuff we don't want to our friends for their next birthday or New Year's,'' said Irina, 18, a student who would only give her first name. ``But return it? That could never happen here. This is Russia.''

?13- SARAH KOENIG

BRAZIL: Gift returns possible but there is no rush

Just hope it fits. Or that something like it will.

There is no tradition or practice, at big stores or small, of granting refunds in Brazil for any cause. Several consumers who were asked if they knew anybody who had ever received a refund looked down at their shoes, presumably out of politeness. They were still laughing when they picked up their heads.

One pant leg longer than the other? Color unbearable? The best you can expect is a store credit, or possibly an exchange on the spot. While Brazil enacted a consumer rights code in 1990, none of its 119 articles mentions a right to a refund, even if the item is defective.

Perhaps because it is summer here and the beach is such an attraction, most people do not tackle exchanges until well after the Christmas season. Cassia Almeida, the consumer columnist at the daily O Globo, said Dec. 26 was not particularly busy at exchange counters.

Legally, Almeida noted, stores are required only to exchange items that are damaged. Good stores offer an even exchange on items that are not defective, or more rarely, give a store credit that can be used within a limited period of time, usually a month or so.

But there are signs that these customs may be changing. Wal-Mart Stories Inc., which opened two stores in the Sao Paulo area last year, brought along American customer service standards. Though the store requires customers to produce a receipt, it will give refunds - no questions asked.

?13DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

JAPAN: Merchants are polite and exchanges are rare

Japanese department stores are renowned for their service. Young saleswomen line up at the doors when the stores open to bow to customers as they walk in. And every item is wrapped with the attention to detail found in Japanese tea ceremonies and flower-arranging.

But the stores don't always accept returns. And in any event, retailers insist such requests are rare because it is considered an offense to the giver in Japan not to accept a gift.

Dec. 25 is a regular working day in this country, where the predominant religions are Buddhism and Shintoism, but Christmas is celebrated in a secular, commercialized fashion.

Young couples consider Christmas the most romantic time of the year. A proper young man is expected to buy his girlfriend a fancy present and a night on the town. Such extravagance has been toned down in the past few years of economic slump, but there has been a bit of a comeback this year. Christmas gifts are sometimes given to children as well.

Another year-end gift-giving custom in Japan is known as ``seibo,'' in which one gives obligatory presents to business associates, bosses, teachers and the like. Some department stores devote an entire floor to seibo gifts, which are mainly canned or fresh foods and beverages.

Mitsukoshi and Takashimaya, two of Japan's fanciest department stores, will not accept seibo gift returns but will accept returns of other presents on a case-by-case basis.

Both Mitsukoshi and Takashimaya said that returned merchandise can be exchanged for other goods or for a certificate that can be used at the store. Neither gives back cash.

?13- ANDREW POLLACK