Amazon, Walmart Tell Consumers to Skip Returns of Unwanted Items | Hacker News Reader

Amazon, Walmart Tell Consumers to Skip Returns of Unwanted Items

wsj.com

41 pointsdaegloe23 comments

I'm all for making sensibly reasonable choices that eliminate pointless costs.

But somehow I also suspect that we're being incrementally led down a path of things shipped to us at lightning speed, that we didn't actually want or need, that raise the costs of everything else we buy, and contribute to the incredible amount of junk we have piling up in landfills, unrecyclable even though we're led to think they are.

I guess it also tells you how cheaply and at a profit things are being manufactured compared to what you pay for them, that they can absorb this kind of overhead.

It has more to do with the fact that logistics is crazy expensive at the moment because we don’t have the capacity to do most shopping online, ship COVID vaccines, and process returns.

By absorbing it they just pass it along to the consumer.

Unfortunately this will make a lot of people more sloppy shoppers and the next step will be to limit the percentage of purchased goods that can be returned which will play right into the hands of the junk manufacturers.

I ordered a small table from Wayfair that was defective. After submitting a report and a photo of the defect, they told me that it'd be refunded, and that I did not have to return it.

Walmart and Amazon have cash to burn to afford this. But let's not forget that VC-backed companies like Wayfair can eat costs like this as well.

Even without the VC money, what would they want with a defective table?

It's not so much an eaten cost as a sunk cost. The table is defective. You didn't describe the cost or the defect, but unless we're talking about a $5,000 dining table with a buffable scratch, there's likely little profit in hauling it back and refurbishing it.

That leaves them open to a certain amount of fraud, and that's a cost they'll have to eat. But as with self-checkout lanes becoming popular, I think a lot of places are discovering that most people aren't out to commit widespread fraud, at least not at a scale that costs more than they save from more onerous means.

They just have to root out the serial offenders -- and I suspect that if you have a second return with Wayfair, it will be more scrutinized.

Bought a brand new OLED off of Amazon. Arrived and set it up. A week later the picture goes out. I register the TV with manufacturer and open a ticket for repair. Meanwhile since it’s the holidays I see what Amazon offers for support.

I chat with someone who helps me out. They are arranging a freight pickup courier to return the TV. I tell the agent I threw the box out to the TV. They said well without the box to ship it back I’d have to get one and it’s costly. So the agent refunded me the OLED TV with my word I’d e-waste the TV. Not even a week old. So I’m still waiting to see if the manufacturer will warranty repair the TV.

I’m wondering if I got lucky because of Covid or the holidays?

Everyone is doing this. It seems crazy. I bought $300 of new comforters from Ikea but they turned out to not be what the family wanted... Ikea refunded me over the phone and told me to donate them. I also bought a $1,300 bed 3 weeks ago that really did not work for me - same instructions, to donate it and they would refund me without any proof of the donation. This seems ripe for scammers, sadly.

Edit, to add: I was expressly told by both companies that they were being über-lenient on returns due to Covid...

Both of your items are of extreme margin kind, It cost them almost nothing to refund you. The real scam was charging those prices in the first place.

Set it aside, in a few years the replacement part that fails will come out. Or as more units fail, it will be a valuable parts donor.

> For inexpensive items or large ones that would incur hefty shipping fees, it is often cheaper to refund the purchase price and let customers keep the products.

I know many online shops which have done this for years, including amazon. It's just a no-brainer to let the customer keep a broken comb instead of making them return it. Shipping costs, people who receive the package cost, opening and inspecting the packaging costs and just processing that return costs a lot. Almost everybody has access to a phone with a very decent camera, that's enough to prove a product was broken on arrival.

Back in the day, I was selling bikinis.

We shipped them from Hong Kong directly to US customers which cost a mindbogglingly low $9 for the DHL shipping fees and the warehouse, and packaging, and all manual labor.

But to get a single return from somewhere in the US back to our centralized returns collection address (inside the US) would regularly cost $30+.

Average rate was 1.7x bikinis more ordered than kept, so in the end, we sold them at 2x manufacturing price + 1x ads price + 2x stripe fees. In case you're wondering, the ads were our biggest cost factor...

I bought a mattress off of Amazon a few months back. I like it but my wife hated it. So I went to return it and Amazon said I could keep it. Put it in a guest bedroom, whatever I wanted. Refunded me the $400. I’m laying on it right now and sometimes feel guilty, but my wife is sleeping on our old queen sized bed so I guess I don’t feel that guilty, since eventually I’ll still need to get a mattress she likes.

Apparently mattresses can't be reused/resold (at least in Canada) so mattress companies usually either pick up the mattress and donate it[0], or tell customers to keep them

[0] https://answers.endy.com/hc/en-ca/articles/360004784591--How...

Bed bugs are an awful scourge that you don’t want under and circumstances. I was an exterminator a lifetime ago and dreaded when I’d see those telltale track marks of blood.

This is the hell I have come to live and be trapped in partially as a result of the pandemic. Those things are pure evil manifest.

I believe that Goodwill will not accept mattresses or pillows, at least in Washington, DC.

Meanwhile in eBay, at least for the overseas sellers, you’ll have far better luck claiming non-receipt than broken. If broken, you’ll be asked to send it back, and I can’t ship stuff across the street for their cost to ship air around the world.

By "overseas," don't you really mean "China?" I've seen some hefty shipping fees from other countries. China is almost always "free" shipping.

I’ve never filed an eBay return claim where I had to pay for return shipping. The site just gives you a label to print out and it’s shipped at the seller’s expense.

I think it works that way for domestic tracked shipping, but not international untracked. But maybe things have changed. eBay flip flops a lot.

This explains the return I tried to make last week!

I bought a dip bar attachment for power racks so I could dip after my bench presses at the gym. These were $65. I also bought $15 barbell clamps.

Unfortunately, the dip bar attachments were too narrow for the power racks I was using. So I decided to return everything at once.

I was able to return the dip bars but when I tried to return the clamps, Amazon told me to keep the item despite refunding my money.

It was so weird.

I can't even get Amazon to deliver/resend/refund items that never got to me grumble. I've had multiple orders lost for a month plus now and they're like "blah blah covid, please wait".

Or then I accepted an invite to Halo Band and it died on me 2 and a half months in, just stopped charging... not only did the support agent tell me to try using my phone charger (the Halo uses a proprietary connector...) to charge it, he then insisted I needed to buy a replacement power adapter and try that before they'd do anything. For a beta product that was (is?) invite only. Eventually I got Amazon to send me a new device, which came in a plastic baggy wit no bubble wrap dropped into one of their soft mailers with a refurb sticker on it...

I'm going to need them to get all of their departments on the same page.

Maybe a better idea is to ask the customer to destroy the product on video so that faking dissatisfaction with the product is discouraged.

Yes, this creates waste, but it would help to realign incentives between buyers and sellers.

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