Why not just sell discounted "non-returnable" versions of products, the same as you can buy discounted non-refundable airline tickets?
America's "everything is returnable" culture is a bit odd, obviously intended to encourage mindless consumption, but comes at a cost... You are paying extra for everything since the cost of return losses is built into the price - you are paying "return insurance" whether you need it or not.
They do. It's called a final sale. Clothing retailers do this frequently. Some are more strict on this than others. Bonobos, for example, often advertises as final but will accept returns (YMMV basis).
What I'm curious about is sizing. Buy three pairs of the same size pants from Banana Republic and you'll get three pairs that fit differently. Their deviation is sometimes extreme. Same with Levis and others. You would think, in an online shopping world, that this would be the lowest of hanging fruit. I can't believe the cost of QA is greater than the costs of returns and reputational harm. Shopping online for clothes is just madness, and it's common to buy multiple items of the same size (or next size S and M) just to be able to return the ones that don't fit. Sometimes you may fit in S and an M from the same brand. Just different SKU/factory/batch. It's a total crapshoot.
BTW, Mr. Porter has a fantastic return process. They include the return label and invoice in the box. Some of their stuff is expensive, but I'm much more comfortable trying their products out because it's so easy to return.
Some high end tailored clothes even sells you the entire bolt of cloth in case you want to match it later, because everything the same the bolts will vary slightly over time.
This is also why so much clothes now is stretchy.
S/M/L often requires simply guessing
Until recently, where I have been trying to order a pair of Teva sandals (I live far away from standard stores for purchasing brand name items, and often don't do it except for shoes, beds, office chairs, etc), and I got the size that compared to 28 CM. Too big. Go down a size. Still too big. 25 CM in Teva is officially 28 CM everywhere else. Why the inconsistency?
I used to wear a 36 or 38 waist pants. I've managed to get that down to a 30, but I'm back up to a 32. I've also been buying Levi's jeans with some elastic in them, so maybe I've gone back up more, but I'm willing to lie to myself and say I'm still a 32.
However, I did also recently chat to a acquihire of Zalando who are building a Computer Vision-based app to scan (near-naked) photographs of customers to provide a 3D model to approximate fit of clothes.
Which does seem the fix to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place, but companies are more willing to through elaborate tech at it than just fix the original issue (cf. carbon capture). Very very frustrating.
I don't see how allowing consumers to get first-hand experience with a product before being forced to stick with it causes their consumption to be "mindless". It allows them to make choices that are more informed.
Surely you don't think stores have these policies for your benefit - to allow you to be a more informed consumer?! They have these policies because it results in them selling more stuff, because they are lowering the level of commitment needed for consumers to buy.
> It encourages mindless consumption because it lowers the level of commitment needed. Not sure if you really want it, or should be buying it?
How is having more information about a product from first-hand experience somehow more mindless than buying a thing sight unseen?
> return it if you change your mind.
Yes, exactly. You can use your mind to decide if you want the product. That's the opposite of mindless.
> Surely you don't think stores have these policies for your benefit - to allow you to be a more informed consumer?!
I know this might seem totally crazy to you but, yes, in most transactions both the buyer and seller end up satisfied. That's why people buy and sell things. When I sell a thing, it's worth less to me than it is to the buyer. When I buy a thing, it's worth more to me than it is to the seller.
Obviously, buyers and sellers are trying to get the best preferential deal for themselves, but it is not a zero-sum game. You are currently surrounded by products most of which you probably purchased. Surely you don't believe you got actively fucked over on every single one of those do you?
> They have these policies because it results in them selling more stuff, because they are lowering the level of commitment needed for consumers to buy.
Yes. And to the degree that having things can benefit anyone's life, that is good for consumers too. Sure, we could also just not buy stuff. Sit on a bare patch of dirt. But sometimes stuff makes our life better.
I bought a synthesizer recently. It's really hard to predict if a musical instrument will gel with you, since it's complex, interactive, and the sounds that resonate with someone are deeply personal. Also, they're often quite expensive. Sometimes you can try one in a store, but even that doesn't always help since it can be difficult to really explore the sounds in a crowded shop.
I was OK with ordering it online because I knew if it didn't work for me, I could return it. The alternative would have been not buying it. It was too expensive to commit to being stuck with it without any first-hand experience. And, sure, I could definitely get by without it. It's not like I need it to live. But in this case, it turns out that I like it. It's enriched my life to have it, and I wouldn't if the store didn't allow returns. I benefitted from that policy.
No, I'm really not. These are my actual opinions.
> Yes, exactly. You can use your mind to decide if you want the product. That's the opposite of mindless.
So who's trying overly hard to support their POV now ? ;-)
> I bought a synthesizer recently
For sure there's consumer benefit to the "everything is returnable" norm, especially in cases like this where it's hard to know if something matches your needs without actually trying it. No doubt it also sometimes works the other way and folk are encouraged to buy stuff they don't need, then never end up returning it so just waste their money.
Of course retail is a generally a win-win, but that doesn't mean the retailer doesn't have their own best interests at heart. They use the "everything is returnable" policy because at end of the day it generates them more profit. They wouldn't be extending you this "try before you buy" benefit if it was actually costing them more than not doing so (unless competitive pressure forced them to).
I understand that "mindless consumption" is not how most people would be happy to describe their shopping behavior, nor is it a good description of everyone, but nonetheless it's hard to come up with a more broadly accurate and concise description of why stores do this to increase sales. Even in your synth case (where try-before-you-buy is plenty justifiable) it essentially fits ... you made the purchase because the store removed any worries you had about whether it was the right decision or not.
No, I still have all of those worries. I still have to pay for the thing after all, so the consequences are entirely the same. The only difference is how much information I have at the point that I have to make that decision.
If I can return it, then I have first-hand experience before I decide to commit to the purchase. If I can't return it, I have to commit with less knowledge.
Hardly. If you can return it you get your money back, else not, so the financial consequences of able-to-return or not are 100% different.
> I was OK with ordering it online because I knew if it didn't work for me, I could return it. The alternative would have been not buying it. It was too expensive to commit to being stuck with it without any first-hand experience.
Yeah, exactly.
The whole point of the warranty is that the company is claiming the product will work for x days. If you start letting people sell things without a warranty they'll make products that last 0 days but advertise well.
I'm talking about the fact that in America you can return pretty much anything, without having any reason. Don't want that party dress after you've worn it to the party? Return it! Don't want the big screen TV after your Super Bowl party? Return it! Can't profit from your stockpile of covid-shortage toilet paper? Return that too!
Except that Costco comes incredibly close to that. I've seen them accept returns for things I would never have imagined anyone accepting.
Maybe good publicity, I suppose.
Because the feeling of security the return policy gives customers makes it much more likely that they'll buy something. Most of the time, people buy things because they want them, so they won't return them even if they can.
From a customer's perspective, having the return option is preferable to not having the return option. From a store's perspective, 150 customers buying the product and 5 of them returning it is likely preferable to 100 customers buying the product and 0 returning it.
Additionally, forcing people to make an additional decision (whether to buy return insurance) is a great way to cause analysis paralysis and sell 50 instead of 150.
I think part of it is also that retail mark-ups are typically huge, so the loss on a few returns, even if thrown in the trash, vs the extra profit on a few more sales, skews heavily towards encouraging the extra sales.
Still, as someone who never returns non-defective stuff, it'd be nice not to have to subsidize those that do!
Not sure how this is unique to America. EU countries have much stronger "return" laws and consumer protection laws that theoretically encourage even more of what you're implying.
But there is no EU consumer right to simply return an item because you've decided you don't like it, or no longer want it, which are open to abuse.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...
> If you bought a product or a service online ... you also have the right to cancel and return your order within 14 days, for any reason and without a justification.
I do remember the cringe factor in hearing that my mother had once convinced (against normal policy) a UK retailer to take back some clothing item she had simply changed her mind on! It'd be like ordering a steak at a restaurant then sending it back because "I changed my mind - I'd like the chicken".
As others have noted, there's a difference between consumer protection laws supporting return of faulty goods, and this ability to return stuff because you no longer want it (and may have even used it!).
Online retailers often do just that. You may see a retailer have a section called "final sale" or "last call" for discounted, non-returnable merchandise. Others simply offload the merchandise onto EBay.
I have bought things that way, but often I have regretted it. In general it is hard to evaluate online goods before purchase, and if something ends up on "final sale" it probably wasn't selling well to begin with for a good reason.
I've heard this before but it always confuses me. Stores always charge the amount such that (price per widget)*(expected number of widgets sold) is maximized.
Put another way - If stores somehow managed to eliminated returns with no other side effects, would you expect the price to drop?
I don't believe that the world operates under such a system, but in theory it works that way.
Retail is a near perfect example of multiple sellers competing for multiple buyers resulting in razor thin profit margins, which means the buyers are getting what they want at the lowest prices possible.
Retail business do not earn 2-4% profit margins because they want to, they earn them because their customers will go to the store next door if they try to take 5%+.
The point is competition does cause each other to up their offerings and/or lower prices to maintain market share.
Have you seen Home Depot's and Lowe's profit margins? Consistently 5-9% for decades. Kroger, Walmart, and target all earn 1-3%. They hardly ever earn 4% nowadays. Perhaps after all of the cashiers and stockers are automated or made redundant. They are all heavily investing in automation, delivery, pickup, and supply chain tech.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/HD/home-depot/prof...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/LOW/lowes/profit-m...
The logistics of selling the things Home Depot and Lowes sells is much harder to replicate than Target/Walmart/grocery retail, so the profit margins need to get bigger before a competitor will want to invest in the market due to the higher risks.
The error is in neglecting the stores’ competitors selling the widget for a lower price, and customers opting to buy from said competitors.
Who's doing the best job in maximizing profit - the gas station selling lots of gas at $2/gal, or the one across the road selling far less at $2.50/gal? (I don't know, but surely one is doing better than the other!).
In other countries where "no reason" returns are not the norm, are stores missing out on profit they could be making by adopting this policy and adjusting prices accordingly, or is it the American stores that have it wrong?
If all stores in unison dropped no-reason returns then there's be no competitive reason to drop prices, but if only one or a few did it then presumably they'd have to (else why pay same price for less flexibility). More to the point, they might WANT to drop prices as a result of this reduced cost-of-goods since that'd be a way to attract more customers, as non-stop "10% off" sales attest.