What happens to all the stuff we return?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
I used to have a pretty intense phobia about returning things, and 90% of the time I'd opt to just eat the cost rather than doing so.
When we had our first child, we bought this automatic rocker/chair thing. I got it out of the box and put it together -- it had these locking joints where like a spring pin would pop into internal slot, such that once put together it was impossible to disassemble.
Once I'd finished, I put our daughter in it, and when turned on, one part rubbed against part of the structure, making an annoying clicking sound. My wife, half mad from lack of sleep, took one look/listen and told me to get it out of the house. (In much more colorful language).
Just then, our daughter, who was still in the chair, who was wearing diapers a size too small because we'd run out of her normal size, pooped. We quickly got her out but there was a quarter size stain on the fabric. We cleaned that as best we could, but it was still visible.
I collected the pieces, which no longer fit in the box because you couldn't fully take it apart, put as much in the box as I could, and took it back to the store. As I stood in line for the return with this overstuffed box with various rods & parts sticking out all askew, I kept replaying horror scenarios in my mind. Like the clerk taking it out of the box and shouting in front of everyone "YOU CAN'T RETURN THIS, YOU MONSTER, IT HAS POOP ON IT!"
The clerk barely glanced at the box. I'm no longer afraid of returning things.
Every first-world item made should have a 2nd/3rd world plan for it.
When your comfy butt is done with thing - you should be able/required to hand-down iten to next party, and you should be happy paying the premieum to use the item freshly new, as well as be happy that you cared for it such that the next person still gets an appreciated object.
THE LAST THING we need is for a primary buyer of [THING] to think the *next step* to their use is trash/landfill.
If you disagree with me, hand me the hammer that you have in the garage from your great grandfather and maybe then he can knock some sense into to.
I agree that’s part of the problem, but even if that weren’t an issue you’d still have the (IMO) much bigger problem of most consumers preferring whatever product is cheapest.
Wht saddens me, and I seem to see lit. nobodoy talking about is our glamourisizing 3d plastics printing of billions of arbitrary objects - and where these plastics will end up in the ecos...
3d printers (I have an ender3) should be urged to have a recycling platform.
Personally - I want a 3d recycling machine which will shred HDPE, melt it to pellets and make a filiment extrusion for the 3d printer.
We should have the 3d printing community building recycling stations from 3d filiment and object fails etc... and try to close the loop as much as possible.
(lookng at you cosplayers of microplastic contamination for internet points)
The issue is that it costs more than a 3D printer, and often times the filament is not as good later, so you end up spending time and energy recycling when it would be less time and energy to create new filament.
It would probably be better to put that time and money into insulating your house and growing flowers for local birds and bees.
Why work to prevent any waste when we can just hire more people to generate more wasteful things?
I presume you mean "inequitable" as in "unfair", and that's just life: life is unfair.
And as peoples have very different ideas of what is "fair", we should be very careful using _force_ to try and make things "fair".
> You rely on an impoverished underclass to prevent your waste, while harming their ability to change the situation.
As a practical matter, letting poorer nations develop their own manufacturing and become wealthier is almost always better for everyone. A rising tide lifts all boats.
The problem is that developed nations like the US have argued it's "unfair" for poorer nations to ban imports of second-hand clothes while getting certain preferential treatment to export new clothes to the US. For example, Rwanda banned imports of second-hand clothes and so their manufacturers face higher taxes (than other "developing" nations in Africa) when exporting clothes to the US, which puts Rwandan businesses at a disadvantage.
What's the "equitable" solution there? Who decides what is "equitable"? What if peoples disagree?
Instead, an appeal to self-interest should tell us that letting Rwanda and other poorer nations engage in _some_ economic protectionism against developed nations is likely to work out better for the developed nations.
Eu too. My local, we get 30 days for an items bought online, so I tell the shops 'thanks for letting me look, I'll get it online just for the better returns policy'.
Then you have the right to return if you find any defects within 14/30 days.
In "Europe" (I'm super generalizing here), to return a product, it has to be in pristine condition, you have to the original receipt and even then they will go over it like you are smuggling drugs into the country. In US, nobody cares. This is built into the business model. You pay higher prices due to returns, but then you buy more stuff because you don't worry about returns.
When I first moved to the US, I was extremely careful with money (didn't have any). So every purchase was carefully planned and I worried about it long after it was done. Then I made a mistake and bought pair of shoes. They were uncomfortable. I felt like an idiot. But I already wore them, so now I am stuck. I told my colleague about it and he looked perplexed.
After bunch of back and forth he decided to teach me a lesson. He took me a to a grocery store. Bought a can of corn. We walked out, he opened the can, dumped half of it in a trash can. We walked back to the return counter. My heart was pumping so hard I was losing sight at moments. He put it down on the counter and said: I would like to be refunded. I thought the clerk is going to smack him silly and me with him. But he didn't even flinch. Gave him few coins and we were on the way.
This was 18 years ago. I since very well adjusted to the system, maybe a little bit too well.
As you pointed out, students pay a lot of money for their education in US. Shouldn’t they have a say in it? If that’s not good for the society, maybe it shouldn’t be sold as a product in the first place.
So while for me American students seem entitled, they'd see it as standing up for themselves.
In Europe, where education is state subsidized, students are not customers, it's their responsibility to study well, as it is they who are being paid. "I'm a paying customer so you better give me good grades" just doesn't fly in that case.
US: “we require transcripts sent directly from the university”
Euro university: “no, we don’t have a portal for students to request transcripts and mail them to any address they request. It’s the student’s responsibility to keep a copy of their own transcripts each year.
[9 calls/emails later] If you reallyyyyyy need us to do something for you, fiiiiiine, you can pickup a copy at this office (except during summer). If you’re overseas, send a friend to pick it up, what’s the problem? What do you mean nobody but us can touch it and you can’t just send it to them yourself?
Why are you being so difficult about this? This is way more than anybody else ever requires from us”
Getting the university to mail something in my name to somewhere, for my own purposes seems nonsense from my European view. Like what do they have to do with a third party?
Of course they will certify and stamp any documents that state objective facts about my studies (during opening hours, after waiting through a long queue). And probably if you explain the things and it sounds important like you git accepted at
That said, things do differ between countries. In Hungary most universities switched from physical booklets where the profs had to physically sign each grade they gave, to an online system about 15 years ago. So no need to collect copies physically now.
In Germany, universities vary in their practices but you can at least print out a proof of enrollment yourself which includes a verification code that third parties can check.
But I think it's possible to get such things done in the end but it will need a lot of explanations and appearing in person.
They’re a business and it’s a useful service.
I believe yes, usually. You pay a small fee, like $25, for the service, of course. With some schools you may have to do it over the phone and/or mail a cheque.
The official transcript would be needed for further study like grad school, or for transferring credit if you transfer schools. I've personally never had a company ask to verify my degree or grades, though I suppose if I was a new grad from a prestigious school applying to a big-name firm, they might check. (I think there is a commercial service most schools use for this, which confirms basic things like graduation date and degree.)
The rules are because the school assumes that if it didn't come directly from the other school, that you could have altered it. Although I've also heard of schools providing sealed, tamper-evident, embossed envelopes to the students, and as long as you don't open that inner envelope it would be accepted as authentic by the other school. They refer to these as "official transcript" and the kind that are unsealed are called "unofficial transcript."
> print out a proof of enrollment yourself which includes a verification code that third parties can check.
This would be the "modern" way of doing such a thing, assuming you have at least say, 2000-era technology, but the way they have it set up is a custom that started probably 50+ years ago and to my knowledge no colleges have yet gotten together to establish a standard, so that they would be able to accept them from each other and verify them.
Also for applying for professional licenses. Some government fields that pay more if you have a Masters or whatever may want verification, especially if you're one of the non-locals.
"The customer is always right" is more true in America than Europe.
But I actually have no idea what you’re saying. Have you heard the phrase “the customer is always right?” Im saying that attitude is more strongly held in the US.
To be more concrete than just Europe, if you take Germany, things tend to be more rigid and set in stone. But it's also changing with more experience interacting with American companies through globalization. And Eastern Europe is way worse than Western Europe which itself is behind the US. In the East you as a customer are made to feel small and the customer reps just want to get rid of you. It's probably a holdover from communism where stores and everything was state-owned so there was no profit motive to be nicer. It has lasting impact even down the generations, though more travel and foreign experiences are starting to change that too.
Pros and cons I guess, but im not even trying to say one is better than the other. Just that the dynamic is real.
For decades, spendthrift universities - including public universities[1] - have been selling their students into debt servitude, drastically expanding administrative payroll and exorbitant construction projects while simultaneously shifting teaching duties onto poorly paid adjuncts.
It would be nice if students could change the system, but they seem to have little say in the matter since university degrees are required for most jobs. Grad students are unionizing at least, but this is unlikely to decrease tuition, or costs for undergraduates.
Sounds about like the experience of trying to return anything to a Marshall's store in the US. I tried it once. I was attempting to return a defective water bottle (the seal on the top leaked). They say it has to be in the original packaging and unused. Well, how in the actual fuck am I supposed to determine if the seal is defective or not without "using" it?
SMH
I know that I tend to shop at stores that aren't going to challenge me when I need to return things.
No amount of arguing would get him to stop so she gave up and drove the hour or so into NYC and went into Macy's expecting to be extremely embarrassed at trying to get a beat up old suitcase fixed. Instead, they basically got the white glove treatment. Macy's couldn't fix the lock, but replaced the 40-year-old suitcase with something that was similar, treated them to lunch at the store restaurant, the manager took a photo with her Dad, etc. He, of course, was thrilled to death by all the attention.
They were a pretty well-off family, so I expect that it was probably an expensive piece of luggage when new, but even so I was amazed by the story.
Now for some stuff and in case bootleg ones exist, you better buy the bootleg part for it's going to be much cheaper.
Or eBay, parts from crashed cars (you often see a photo of the "donor", crashed, car). Had the "roof console" going cuckoo before I got the extended manufacturer warranty so it was on me (and they wouldn't sell me the warranty unless I fixed it)... Turns out the roof console depends on which extra the car has (like "homelink" to open your garage door or not, the color of the interior, etc.). So it's a part that has to be made specifically for your car: Porsche quoted me something like 765 EUR for the part + one hour of work + VAT (something silly like 1100 EUR altogether). I found a nearly identical part on eBay for... 48 EUR and installed it myself in literally 5 minutes. 48 EUR vs 1100 EUR.
Also some people on forums are very good at finding which company is manufacturing that one very identical part for Porsche, but without the Porsche logo on it: gonna be way cheaper too and it's literally the same part. One example would be a Porsche battery charger which is just a CTEK charger with the CTEK logo replace by a Porsche one and sold 2x the price (not the best example as better example would be actual car parts but you get the idea).
I am not against returns, of course. But abusing these systems annoys and saddens me.
Do you?
I remember when I was a cash-strapped student in France ordering photo gear from the US (Adorama or B&H) because the price + international shipping + customs + vat (the last two being applied on top of the shipping) + UPS's fees for handling customs was cheaper than buying from Europe.
You know what the kicker was? It was a tripod made in Italy.
It said "made in Italy" on it, not just an Italian brand manufactured in China. This was generally true for "regular" photo equipment (made in Japan), too.
I haven't checked the prices recently, though.
Recent example buying a Ubiquiti UniFi Lite 8-Port switch from B&H shipped to NZ, all fee's accounted for is $138NZD (82USD) cheaper then buying it local.
Someone is making bank somewhere in the supply chain.
People often say, well you live on an island in the middle of nowhere, that's the price you pay. But that doesn't check out if a company in the US can ship a single (not on sale, at RRP) item for way less. How can a wholesalers in NZ, who bulk ships it's here at wholesale rate, and cheap (bulk) shipping rate, then end up with a price so much higher at retail.
That switch is probably a relatively niche item when compared to some generic TP-Link switch, and AU & NZ are basically the only countries to use the Type I plug. That means the production run for that switch is tiny - it's probably not even a full days run, which means the economy of sale is reduced.
On top of that, the middle man is probably distributing a tiny amount of these to each store, so they can't just pull out pallets from the shipping container and put them on a truck, individual items probably need to be pulled out and re-packaged. All this adds cost.
This was a tripod, basically 3 sticks hinged together. I could've lived without the warranty.
But IME if they ship it to Europe, then it will come with an "international warranty", so I think the manufacturer is supposed to honor the warranty here, too. My tripod and head had that warranty, but I never needed to use it. I also bought another item from there, a bit more "electronical", probably a lens, but I can't quite remember. It also came with an international warranty card.
There are many items which they won't ship, though, mostly cameras.
It’s quite an adjustment. It feels like companies here are the complete opposite: you should feel lucky they’re allowing you to give them your money. Not happy with it? Fuck right off. We made a mistake? Too bad so sad.
I feel like there should be a middle ground between return everything and return nothing, but I am regularly appalled at the contempt with which companies in Europe treat their customers.
And before you tell me I’m wrong: this is a generalization, I’m sure $anecdote will prove me wrong, my point still stands.
Since then I've come to see the return window as an extended purchase decision. My stock of items sitting around is a local cache of things I might need, rather than having to delay a project for another shipping time or waste time running to the store and getting gouged. I'll even do things like buy a tool because it's on sale at a good price, then decide a few months later whether I really need it or not. Recently I've even been toying with the idea of skipping digging through piles of box store sheet goods - order some quantity much larger than what I need, have them load onto my trailer, go through at home at my own pace, and then bring back the rejects/unneeded and they can unload.
It's not how I'm wired - when I make decisions I generally want them to be settled. But I'm paying for that overhead anyway, and there's no honor on retailers' part - stocking busted up goods to begin with, playing games with sale prices and coupons, terrible packing jobs, etc. So whatever, they chose the rules and I just play them according to my own incentives.
I still can't fathom how the overall system adds up though. Intellectually I get it that if only 10% of items are returned and trashed, prices only need to go up 10% to compensate. But I don't understand how there aren't many more returns since that is the optimal strategy for taking advantage of sales/bundles/competition/etc. I can only think that most people are much more reluctant to have "spent money" outstanding in the short term, regardless of getting it back down the line.
On one particular trip, I returned some kind of complicated saw or jig or something because it was broken in a spot that I didn't see until after I brought it home. (It also had obvious signs of use, so I wasn't the first "owner" of it either.) After the return, I walked around the store to get some other items and then came back to the tool isle to get a replacement and was non-plussed to see that the exact item I returned 15 minutes ago had already been put back on the shelf, without a discount sticker or anything.
Then again maybe they're still doing it with tools bought in store and then returned there. These days when I buy tools at HD they're generally ship to home. And when I return stuff in the store, they're often a different SKU so they get an RTV (return to vendor) tag rather than the store reselling them. Which given the return pallets I've seen for sale elsewhere (ie this article), I wonder if it isn't a euphemism for dispose of, even if the box is unopened.
I've also got to wonder about this from the angle of the financial arrangements. Part of me always wonders if all that inventory is even owned by Home Depot, or if the contractual arrangements make it closer to a consignment relationship where stuff that is declared as unsaleable (for whatever reason) is eaten by the vendor.
My understanding, which may not be the best, from a few years of working retail.
Most items for sale are actually owned by the big box company (retailer), but anything returned as defective is typically trashed and the big box company gets a credit from the manufacturer on their next purchase. So basically the manufacturer eats the cost, but it's also contingent on the retailer still buying their products.
I think return to vendors are shipped at the vendor's expense, so vendors tend to ship to nearby surplus processors for the most part.
Another Costco employee told me that they go by the 51% rule: if you have 51% of an item, they’ll take it back, even if it’s the bones and packaging from a two-month-old rotisserie chicken that you say you didn’t like.
Your money sure as hell didn't fall apart after a few months of their receiving it. Except maybe if you paid in BTC.
She said they had a few girls and older women who knew this and would return stuff all the time. She asked her manager if they could blacklist them because it was obvious they were abusing the return policy.
The manager's response? "Its above my pay grade. I'll keep returning their stuff until someone at corporate tells me otherwise."
It's certainly not what I would have done but he said they took it all back, no questions asked.
I would have told them to pound sand. It is basically other Costco shoppers paying for fraudulent returns.
The return period is now one year.
Outer bag was pristine. Upon getting it home I opened it up to find the inner two bags had various scuff marks and baggage claim tags still attached.
Fair play, previous Costco customer. But I had expected a more thorough check of the product before the store returned it to the shelf for resale. It wasn't even marked as previously returned or preowned!
It was still perfectly fine, they complained not at all.
The next day, there it is on the clearance aisle for $10 off. I felt bad.
A completely un-opened non-food item goes on the shelf, an opened item goes into clearance, and most everything else is auctioned or trashed. If you say it was broken, it goes into trash but I daresay they ding the manufacturer.
We ordered a custom glass shower door from Lowes because we were remodeling.
During the process, we found we were happy with a curtain (which we did not have before, we were replacing an existing door).
So, we asked Lowes if they would take it back, and they did.
A custom sized, $1500 door -- and they took it back. We were really surprised and grateful for it, to be sure. No idea what the aftermarket is for random sized shower doors.
In my most recent return, it was a cheap item, but the incorrect size, and they told me to keep, discard, or donate it and refunded my money.
An example of one of these retail return consumer reporting agencies:
I worked for Nordstrom for a few years and one stat about returns that I heard was absolutely wild. Apparently something like 80% of all dresses sold got returned.
A lot of this was because people would buy an expensive dress for a single event and only want to wear it once, but people would also order a few sizes and just return the ones that didn't fit.
We worked on a few different things to make the latter process a little better for the consumer and cheaper for the business. A fun solution was allowing you to set up a reservation for a dressing room at a local store. You would choose a bunch of items and then "reserve" them to try on. Once you made the reservation someone in the store would go pick the items in various sizes and get them ready for you. When you arrived at the store, a dressing room with your name was ready and (if I remember correctly) you could just walk out with the items you wanted and leave the rest.
I'm not sure this experience ever made it outside of a few stores in the Seattle area.
Please do return it, k thanks.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/14/1193726286/smash-and-grab-mob...
This experience involved basically no interaction with a store employee. The Nordstrom app would alert the store that the customer was approaching and their dressing room would be readied. After that the customer only interacted with salespeople if they wanted to.
Nordstrom also had a pretty cool personal shopping system that I'm not sure still exists. Apparently stylists and customers can have fairly close relationships and it was pretty common to exchange numbers so a stylist could alert the customer of new items they might like. You could link your Nordstrom account to your phone number and stylists could send you items and you could simply reply with a yes or no to buy them.
This was done using a custom texting app on the stylist's end. This gave Nordstrom some more visibility into their customer's shopping habits and prevented the stylist from having to give out their personal phone number.
I'm sure you're probably well aware of this, but for those younger than 30 who might not have relevant experience, this was standard practice among commissioned sales staff at all department stores until roughly the turn of the millennium (that was roughly the end of the line for most stores even offering commission, so the concept of a professional salesperson quickly died in favor of cashiers who have no stake in the transactions). I had such a job as a teen, at a store which would be considered very middle-class. This was 2001. Being a dork, I read all the handbooks and manuals, and they explained all about prospecting -- how to keep a book of all my customers, to keep track of all their important dates and things. It suggested sending them letters telling them about new items they might like, gift ideas, etc.
Today that store is still operating, but zero employees have any incentive to even provide any form of customer service, let alone build relationships with customers. Nordstrom is thankfully much closer to how things were, but it's sad to me that now you have to be pretty loaded to afford to shop somewhere that offers customer service.
That said, I do agree with the general idea that serial returners should bear some of the additional costs (just not via punishment). I can’t recall the retailer, but I remember buying something from a brand that had the option of “free returns,” which, if selected, would add a small percentage onto the overall price. If you didn’t select it, returns would be even higher out-of-pocket. I think the idea was that not everyone who selected the option would actually return items, but having the option was a premium lots of folks would pay for.
My only concern with a system like this would be when you get an item that truly is defective/broken, are you expected to pay a return fee in those cases?
there's a reason retail is often described as a race to the bottom
Not to be that guy, but I do think there’s an element of privilege in shopping any other way. I’d gladly pay a bit more for the comfort of not participating in the throwaway culture we’re building, but how many people can really say that? I have time and money that a lot of people simply don’t have.
But I do think there are a lot of people in my situation and would do something similar. We might not bring down the amazons of the world, but a place for us can still exist.
Yeah, but Zappos just sprays some of that stuff they use for the rental shoes at bowling alleys, which as we all know makes the shoes pristine, in like-new condition. All shoe retailers use this eldritch magick, created by the great Druid Alchemists that built Stonehenge, so that's not a fair comparison.
Jet also had a very neat logistics-driven feature where if you bought more things that came from the same warehouse they passed some of that savings onto you. So once you had in your cart, say, a box of paper towels, you might save $1.50 off of a box of crackers that they knew they could throw into the same box.
Marc Lore is clever and I was sad to see Jet.com go (though not sad for him since I think it was another great exit)
It's impossible that all that money could be thrown away by companies without it being dirt cheap to produce the products. And it couldn't be dirt cheap to produce them without exploiting cheap labor and the environment. And it's impossible to sustain without tricking consumers into buying more than they need, and tricking investors that their sales numbers equal their value as a company.
Consumers are the fuel for a machine that pollutes and exploits, and churns out great wealth for a select few. Between 10 and 40 percent of the consumer economy has to be exploitative in order to sustain the return rate. Madness.
You can definitely get a good deal there on expensive items, but you have to be careful because more often than not things were returned because they were broke. You just pay extra to allow for returns.
Was able to get a seemingly new iMac, couch, semi-automatic coffee machine, and lawn equipment.
The local auction company near me too gets some wild weird bids that I see. Seems like there's an endless amount of people willing to take chance.
If you had a group of discount buyers shopping for chips, and split it in two groups …
- Group A sees a bag of chips marked down from $5 to $3
- Group B sees the same bag of chips for $3 as "retail price"
… you can expect to see more chip sales coming from Group A. Heck, you'd expect A to beat B even if the discounted price was _higher_ than the retail price.
Now throw "limited time offer" or "first 50 people" in to the mix and watch them fly off the shelves …
If, however, you don't like to shop, and you do it solely to acquire things, you probably don't like sales.
Very clearly, Ron Johnson was in the latter category, while JC Penney shoppers were in the former.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/j-c-penney-apologize...
Force, you ask? Yes, basically. The prices will be like $9.79, or "Buy 2, get 3 free". So you can buy 1 for basically $10, or 2 for $20, or 3 for $30, or 4 for $40, or 5 for $20.
Recently cheese was $1.99 but "only if you buy 3." If you buy 2 they were $3.49 each. At least soda keeps a long time, but it's irritating to have to stock up on perishables or have to pay double.
They also killed their Big and Tall clothing line (The Foundry) last year which was my go-to for plain shirts in tall sizes.
Prices can vary so much in 6 months/1 yesr that they truly think they offer a low enough price.
I was assuming it was from resellers, but maybe it's just the idea of getting a "deal"
It’s interesting what eBay has done to the used market in general. Before the internet, it was a rule of thumb that something second hand (from e.g. local classified ads) would be no more than 50% of the retail price.
I think that eBay drove prices up by opening the market nationally (and internationally), so that people who _really_ wanted anything could find it - and the large discount previously necessary to guarantee sale in a small, local, pool was no longer necessary.
I wonder if there have been studies down on this.
We got two of the highest-end Toto bidet toilet seats for 60% off retail, still sealed in the packaging. Baby-related items were also pretty heavily discounted and still good.
It is taking a chance, but the chances seem to be pretty good. So far the worst we've seen is a baby swing that needed a little elbow grease to solve a minor assembly issue. It was something like 80% off retail.
We moved away from their closest warehouse so we haven't bought a lot recently, but IMO anything that reduces waste and implicitly reduces the cost of returns to retailers (by increasing the price these auctioneers pay for the goods) is good.
> selling for awfully close to and sometimes more than the equivalent new. It made no sense ... but it was happening.
I buy a bunch of stuff on craigslist, where I know I won't be able to return. However I negotiate as much as 80% off the brand new price. Until I get similar discounts I would never bother with an online store that won't let me return.
The best part is that they don't even operate in Slovakia
Like they don't have a local site, or they don't even ship there?
Where I am, I'm forced to use UK or DE amazon, despite there being a center here (and a whole lot of AWS/employees).
Because a quick Google search reveals that Amazon absolutely does have a fulfillment center in Slovakia, but I can't find any reference whatsoever to burning anything.
It's a pretty bold claim so I'm curious where you got it.
Here you go, it used to be on youtube but was deleted for some reasons: https://amp.dw.com/en/so-long-superstores/video-65225396
At 35min you learn about a returned box of coffee pods that travels about 2000km through France, Germany, czech republic and end up in Slovakia in a garbage processing plant. The product was unopened and had an expiration date 2 years in the future, it's just cheaper for them to dispose of it than verify its status and restock it
I don't blame the consumers - businesses have deliberately trained them to act this way. But something simple, like regulation requiring all returns to cost like 5% or something, would drastically cut down on these returns which have a large environmental cost.
What I was saying is that if you do really care about something (say, the environment), it doesn't mean that you just go live in a cave in the middle of the woods, but that you should focus your efforts on reducing your environmental impact in ways that actually work (and, more importantly, industry and governmental leaders should focus efforts on things that have the biggest impact). That is, if you care about the environment, but you're someone that also orders a ton of product with the intention to return most of them, it's probably a lot easier, and will have a lot bigger impact, if you just stop that behavior, than if you, say, get rid of your car and only force yourself to walk and bike everywhere.
The lady at the customer service counter couldn't care less what was the issue with the phone, just that the charger and cable were included. Off it went, presumably, to one of their clearance centres, where someone got a half price (or less) smartphone that just turns out to not have a working fingerprint sensor. I wish I could have somehow communicated this - what's wrong with the device and why I returned it - but nobody cared. I then turned around and bought the same phone again, at the same price.
Also, I think ethics arguments fail somewhat when it comes to "harming" one of the largest companies on the planet operating within an exploitive capitalist framework
A year is crazy. I assume it was under warranty though, so Moto would have replaced it?
Lived in America. Permanent resident of Japan. Imagine my culture shock.
(Full disclosure/explanation: I was more shocked by the return culture, than the no-return culture here. More used to carefully choosing & keeping the item until it falls apart entirely. We are also very particular about non-burnables & e-waste. I am S Asian but with more ties to Japan & hence settled here. My culture shocks are a whole different story & worthy of a book chapter. American return culture, tipping & fanaticism for football/baseball team is unique.)
> “ ‘I’ll sell you a computer for the same price as the one you have now—a nice, expensive computer. But it will be twice as durable, and it will weigh half as much, and its battery will last twice as long, and it will have twice the processing power and twice the memory.’ ” The only condition, he said, would be that returns would not be allowed, for any reason.
> “This was Georgia Tech’s sustainability center, so these were super-smart engineering hippies,” he said. “There were probably forty or fifty people, all M.B.A.s.” Hogan assumed that they would all jump at the deal. But no hands went up—not one.
> “I was blown away,” he said. “It’s just astounding how embedded returns are in our behavior. When I finished my talk, I said, ‘Thank you all. I definitely picked the right industry.’ ”
To me that could also mean that these people didn't see the value in the better computer he was selling. They already have a computer that works and costs them $0 to keep. Maybe though, since the audience was MBAs, they'd expect to be able to sell their current computers for that exact price?
As consumers the only reasonable recourse we've been given is a return policy. As it is, I've been burned way too many times on "deals", to the point that even if there's a return policy, I'm skeptical. Returning things is a hassle at best, and I often have to pay for shipping. Even if the return policy is "we'll give you a complete refund and you don't have to ship it back" now I have to dispose of this thing I don't want, which might be unwieldy (ever tried to take something to the dump on public transit?) or contain toxic materials.
No thanks. A company that won't stand behind its product is not a company I want to do business with.
For certain products, I'd be satisfied with that.
So we all subsidise high returners, which is annoying
/s probably
Yeah that person should be banned from online shops. Genuine returns? Sure. But buying just to try out? Come on.
Clothing retailers don't, either. They make way more money from someone who buys 50 dresses a year and returns 45 of them, than from you agonizing over a single shirt purchase.
* Doesn't hold up line.
* Retailers encourage/enjoy behaviour because it means more sales as people aren't worried to return stuff they don't like.
'Buying online' = sending a purchase order
= entering a contract to buy the item
= if you receive the item and it is as advertised then the contract is complete.
Do you not think online retailers factor this into their analysis?
Online shopping for clothes is a bad idea because, as a rule, you can't try stuff before buying. The solution would be to have physical stores - it would be good for your neighborhood, reduces waste, can be quick, etc.
However, it turns out that customers would rather not leave the comfort of their computers to go to the nearest shopping mall, so instead we'll send the stuff to them with free returns to make up for the fact that this is not an efficient method of buying clothes. We generate a ridiculous amount of garbage out of perfectly good items, we burn a whole lot of fossil fuels sending them back and forth, we destroy the neighborhood economy, and we lose a lot of money and time in the process. All of that to make a bad idea seem good.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Not saying you're entirely wrong, but it's interesting to see how quickly the "new thing" becomes the "old thing" that's getting disrupted.
Now I think that's the bad idea and the solution is shopping online.
Returns of course need to be handled better in order to prevent waste.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
In any case the return ratio is priced in and we're very likely paying higher prices for new items to account for these returns.
https://www.insider.com/new-york-city-store-sells-overstock-...
It was pretty cool because the people who run it are pretty smart. Every day they change the locations of items so people can't monopolize certain items and it forces people to actually dig to find stuff.
I've also seen several online places who will sell you Amazon returns by the pallet. You can choose a broad, general category like "electronics" and most of the time you have no idea what you're getting since they wrap all the stuff up.
There's Youtube channels of people who buy this stuff, bring it to their warehouse, then unpack it and sort it and then they sell most of it on CL, Ebay or other marketplaces.
The secondary market for a lot of this stuff is still very active.
[22] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/amazon-shoe-...
Not sure how they deal with this now.
1 -https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/amazon-dirt-scam-22-year-...
You buy 12 dresses and return 11? So sorry, you're still paying for 6 of them. I buy all of my clothes online and - aside from a blatant defect - have never returned anything. It's just not necessary, as long as the retailer is honest with their sizing.
No returns on holiday goods after the holiday. No returns on used generators after a storm. Etc.
Seriously, just stop. It's not like you're going to lose worthwhile customers.
They are arbitraging morality. Providing a financial incentive to be shitty and dishonest.
Consider some reflection on this statement
There's a reason every popular retailer offers hassle free returns.
The only way it could possibly work is if this place you propose were much cheaper, but returns don't cost enough to the company to possibly make up for the lost revenue - alas.
If you aren't happy with the practice then shop at a site that explicitly bans this and quit your preaching. It's not mine or anyone else's job to ensure that a corporation's profits are maximized. You are free to take any moral stance you want, just don't impose it on everyone else.
At the end of the day customers are the ones that pay for that, if they are happy, it's fine of course.
In consumer products there is no real connection between costs and prices, what happens is that for a given item the final consumer price is set to whatever it is considered affordable by a large enough amount of people in the targeted niche.
Then how much it costs is secundary, it is the price that is fixed.
The difference between the costs and the price is the company's margin, one company may be clever and have 30% margins, another one may be less clever and have 5% or -10% (and will soon close) but the price remains fixed.
The 1/2/4 another member posted about is only a quick approximation, the 4 is fixed the 1 is irrelevant (to the retailer) the 2 is what may vary, if it becomes (say) 2.5 because of the return policy, the retailer will eat the reduced margin until, little by little, the price can be raised to 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, etc.
The inverse (reducing final price because the 2 became 1.5) never happens.
Competition may lower the price for a number of reasons (reduced margin because increased volumes as an example), but it is still largely independent from costs.
40% return rate would increase cost to the company ~20%, plus operational expenses to process the returns.
I think it's even more complex - consumer confidence in return processes probably makes them more likely to buy something in the first place, which reduces overall cost due to scale. So if you reduced consumer confidence, they would buy fewer items, which probably also harms the business (and raises consumer prices because scale is reduced).
The retailers/brands are the dishonest ones.
Other items, sure. At least in my country there’s a 7 day no questions asked return period for returns on online purchases. Otherwise, unless it’s a defective product, it’s a done deal.
Also even if you return 11 out of 12 dresses, the margins around clothes is so high, the company still makes money. Landed costs for the dress was probably under $10 and probably sold for $100. When I worked for apparel company, we encouraged people to buy multiple products and return the stuff that doesn't fit or didn't like because in the end, we had 70% gross margins and most people are lazy and don't return stuff.
The answer, to me, is that I won't order clothes online.
But if someone is ordering things to simply try them on for size or look, and end up returning it, I do not see how that is abuse. If it is costing the retailer too much, then they should dissuade it by enforcing return fees.
I love online clothes shopping because in store shopping wastes time when they do not have the size I need. So I order 3 sizes, the size I think will fit me, the size above, and the size below. I keep whichever one works best, and return the other 2. I never take any tags and whatnot off, so I hope the retailer can simply inspect the item and put it back in inventory.
But who knows, maybe the labor costs to inspect returns is too high. Either way, if a retailer wants to advertise free returns, that is their business.
Yeah, and if a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its ass when it hops. An otherwise reasonable comment marred by a disconnection from reality.
Three measurements are not enough to describe the shape of anyone's body and you should stop pretending that it is.
The sizing system is broken. We need a new comprehensive standard sizing system.
Garments can still say size X on it, but then include a bunch of other standard encoded measurements.