Cameras and secret trackers reveal where Amazon returns end up

NB: don't assume that there's no downside to any given retailer unilaterally disclosing their return rates, because returns are a measurable factor in marginal cost & revenue assessment and partially describe both the elasticity of demand and overall customer sentiment. Every retailer of scale would be interested in obtaining the return statistics (especially segmented) of their competitors; and, as the tone of the article illustrates, there are any number of hacks poised to scribble out mendacious venom on the basis of such data, so no corporate PR lackey worth their communications degree will willingly start that conversation.

Absolutely.

> and would only benefit them to say so.

Not nearly as obvious. It might have some PR benefits (this week, until later when public opinion shifts), but it also provides information about their business that they may prefer to not share (off the top of my head, it probably leaks something about defect rates and their quality controls).

Recently I had received a dented cooktop and since it was functional and my family isn't too much interested in aesthetics, Amazon offered 30% refund to keep it.

I think I am doing my part to prevent these products from ending up in landfill.

Amazon also honours refund and return request, but not all time I request it.

It's still better than offline shop experience where I've to deal with a real person making weird faces which I find hard to interpret.

I expect Amazon likely outsources a lot of returns handling, so they may not have that data.

Amazon is welcome to sell these returns instead of throwing them away that’s not the issue. The problem was that they sell something as new when it’s been opened and used. I think no one would have an issue with it if the returned items were sold as such for a discount.

CBC is definitely a mixed bag. Marketplace is amongst their worst.

* Showerhead that came without box, and clearly used. It still had a lot of water inside!

* Underwear from a brand that sells items inside a sealed bag and discards returns came used, without bag (yuck!)

* A module of Samsung RAM had visible wear signs and didn't work

* Cycling glasses came without box and several missing items

The underwear thing upset me so much I emailed Jeff Bezos. After lots of emails forwarded around, nothing happened.

It's sad because they used to be good. But the number of returned and counterfeit items sold as new is mindboggling.

Last year I bought two Levis jeans at the same time. One the exact same model, color and size as the one I was wearing which was worn out, the other a different color (figured I could use having two pairs of jeans). None fit me correctly. The model I had already was too big, the other too small. Sent both of them back and made the effort to go to a brick and mortar store where I could try them. Turns out the sizes had changed or something. I ended up with a different cut, as the model I had was either too tight on the legs or too wide at the waist...

That and the anti-pattern of using Amazon as a quasi-tool-rental outlet where they buy something for a project, use it, and then return it after the project is done. The 'borrowing' aspect was also an issue at Fry's in the Bay Area where test equipment that they sold would have been used already.

Of the two I think the 'borrowing' pattern to be pretty unscrupulous. I see the buy a bunch and return the ones you won't use/wear/eat what ever is more along the lines of the store fitting room approach.

Now, IMO, ordering clothes (and shoes, or anything you're supposed to wear and where fit is important - at least important for a substantial demographic) through online shopping just doesn't seem to make as much sense as other things.

I personally rarely buy online unless I'm talking about staples like shirt and tees that I've tried from certain brands and know how it fits (so don't need returning).

As with other things... this huge shift to online ordering may make from efficiency perspective only when you ignore externalities and subsidies.

I hope we go back to shopping malls for clothing and fitted purchases.

I always felt bad about returns, but my SO worked retail in school and assured me this is how it's designed to be and how every big shopper does it.

And I don't blame returners. There used to be a website that listed variance in sizes from major clothing brands and fashion lines, and it can be huge. If I like a cut of jeans or slacks, I have to try on several, and they without fail will not fit the same.

It's simply not possible to be sure about a shoe size sight unseen. Even within the same brand of shoe, fit varies. I have to assume a very high returns rate is totally expected by online shoe retailers (and for that matter offline ones).

In shops, you can try them on. Online, I think it's unavoidable that people try them on at home and send more than half of their clothes purchases back.

Standardisation in the clothing business seems incredibly unlikely. And even when the size is technically correct, it can still be too uncomfortable. You just never know until you try it on.

If you want a truly universal sizing standard that will always guarantee correct sizes, it's going to have to be a lot more detailed than just one or two numbers. It would be a data dump nobody can remember. It might be interesting to have an online service that would remember such detailed sizing info for you and could produce clothes on demand with perfect fit.

They futz with sizing because it's a part of their marketing. Fashion targeting older/ fatter people will have smaller sizing to flatter the customers.

I think buying clothes that don't fit just because you want to say it's a particular size is far more a part of female culture (in my social circles in the UK): womens' clothes are in "sizes", men's clothes are in measurements (inches/cms).

I don't think the industry, nor many of the customers for female fashion want accurate measurement-based sizing.

Neither do men's attire. Even sizes that are meant to be standard (like the British/Italian/EU systems for shirt, jacket and pants sizing) aren't.

I don't buy anything from sellers that don't explicitly give the dimensions in centimetres anymore (which has become standard practice).

Amazon's retail business has poor profitability.

I can't even begin to comprehend how desperate they must be to look good and fit in.

Ok, yeah, so buying something and finding a creative way to hide the tag so you can wear it to a single event and then return it is common enough that it's a decades-old TV/movie trope, but... buying something just to take a selfie for Instagram and then return it? What has the world come to...

I have the same problem with my 200cm and slim posture. I have a handful of brands I can order blindly, but jeans in particular are a chore to get the right fit. I strongly prefer brick and mortar shops, but size availability varies.

People used to think that returned goods would just be freshened up and sold again — just like clothing you try on in a brick and mortar store — but the reality of the system is slowly getting understood thanks to investigative journalism worldwide.

A Dutch television program in this category concluded that returned clothes that are in good condition are often bound for for markets in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, where there is a demand for brand goods below or at the price of lower quality Chinese imports. Some brands don't want this because of brand dilution and fear of their products hitting the black market, so those items are simply destroyed instead.

Suggested solutions include charging a fee for returns, but that will have to be mandatory because people will just shop where the returns are free if left optional.

Personally I would like to see high street shops offer the option of trying on clothing ordered online at their shop for free (or others even if a good business model can be found), and have them handle the returns instead of this grossly unsustainable system we have now. By eliminating the risk of people abusing the system, the need to remove those items from the chain is diminished significantly; just like regular clothes shopping, but with the benefit of a much larger catalogue.

Compared to me: I have placed 197 Amazon orders since 2013, and have had 13 returns so far.

And there are the Samyang/Rokinon camera lenses as well -- you need to usually buy 3-4, test them out and keep the sharpest copy. Quality control issues on the manufacturer's side but it's a good deal if you're willing to deal with it.

Some sellers just suck at packaging. There are numerous products that are too easy to damage just by opening the packaging -- I received one item completely wrapped in 8 layers of bubble wrap followed by an entire coating of packing tape over 100% of it. It was nearly impossible to cut open without cutting into wires because you really don't know where the wires are under all that packaging.

It's way scarier the stuff they send directly to landfill. I know someone that works in chemical waste disposal and they had a deal with Walmart to take care of it all (I'm pretty sure they still do). She was taking back some pretty nice stuff that could easily be sold pretty easily.

I suspect that cost is a much better approximation of resource consumption than what feels wasteful, especially because it forces you to factor human time as a resource, which many environmental activists like to treat as infinite and free.

The environmental impact is big! I hope this is being considered in their Climate Pledge.

Of course, in the Vietnam War, the corporations back in the US who were making huge profits in supplying the war weren't at all worried about equipment being wasted overseas and not returned. And so we're back at the US military industrial complex and all of its unethical madness, famously satirised by Heller in Catch-22.

Most likely because a person has to carefully inspect and repackage it (expensive and the volume is large) and it's a separate inventory category that has to be managed and have separate storage space allocated for it (another expense) and, on top of all that, it doesn't bring in as much money as a new item. And if there was some problem or damage that wasn't caught by the inspection, it's yet another return.

The difficulty of managing customer returned items is common to all retailers and has been known for a while, e.g.:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/10/growing-online-sales-means-m...

https://money.cnn.com/2017/12/26/news/retail-returns-landfil...

Can't do that with e.g. counterfeits though, or with products that may be dangerous.

And not everything is resellable in practice. To resell something you need to 1. determine what you have (not just the product but also the state it is in), 2. have someone who wants it, 3. that person needs to be willing to accept the risk of getting a used/substandard product (higher risk of it arriving broken), 4. you have to find that person, 5. you have to get the product to that person, 6. you have to manage the whole overhead of the process (additional shipping, sorting, testing, ...).

Each of these steps is associated with costs, both financial and environmental (the latter will skyrocket as soon as you start e.g. attributing some of the environmental footprint of the people whose labor you spend on these tasks to those tasks).

It's very unlikely that Amazon wouldn't optimize something so obvious.

Once the returns are generated, there's probably not much of a better way to deal with it. However, if you ban returns, online shopping becomes less attractive - people will use retail stores again. Which also toss stuff that doesn't sell, use a lot more real estate, air conditioning, and again, human labor. There's a reason online is often cheaper, and it may well be "cheaper" (better) for the environment too, despite the waste.

It's all about directing (our extremely limited) focus on issues with a higher priority. Food insecurity (even in North America) is a significantly bigger problem than Amazon returns.

With these returned items, the seller just loses money and has a lower income than if they could resell them.

Their tax goes down because of returns, but that's just normal income tax because their income goes down.

If they didn't donate the goods, just threw them away, they would pay exactly the same tax. So there is no tax benefit gained from donating.

Amazon is very customer-centric company. Given the huge pain this kind of system could cause for customers is my guess why they haven't rolled-out any attempts at a solution to the general public.

It's a fascinating problem to me. I've been buying/selling on eBay for 10 years. I also sell on Facebook marketplace for hard-to-ship items. I've learned that if you buy and sell used, you can essentially rent certain things for very cheap, which is a problem set and solution that has a lot in common with amazon's product return problem.

Giving money--even indirectly--to poor people makes economic sense because they'll spend it on goods and services that keep other people employed.

Punishing the poor out of some moral imperative is economically destructive.