Real Life UX: Returning Items to Amazon Makes Me Smile
blog.jasonshah.org
blog.jasonshah.org
Once, I've had a package stolen from my doorstep, and they replaced it free of charge (fortunately it was just $5 guitar strings).
Last year, I bought a camera with a 18-35mm lens ($500) a week or so before leaving for vacation. It arrives 2 days later (thanks prime), but unfortunately Amazon Warehouse had shipped me the bundle with a 15mm lens. I contact their support right away— they propose that I return the camera and they send me the original 18-35mm bundle, but I tell the lady that I'm leaving in 3 days and would like to have the camera for my vacation. She talks with her supervisor, and 2 days later I get the 18-35mm lens in the mail (~$200 value) and they tell me I can keep the 15mm lens.
I spend a couple of hundred dollars at Amazon each month (research books are expensive), which is probably why I got such a great treatment— but I was pretty blown away.
Your point about the service level relating to your customer history is a good one, though - I've spent upwards of $50,000 with Amazon in the last 3 or 4 years, so the real test would be how they'd react to a new customer in the same situation.
Consumers usually pay FedEx for insurance when we need a package but I bet Amazon self insures, given their size. Either way, money is set aside to cover situations like this.
Well, duh. You should have selected Amazon Zoom instead of Amazon Prime.
And people wonder why there's global warming.
@jason_shah There are worse things to be than a pain in the ass customer, so please don't think of this as an insult to your character.
That being said, I honestly didn't think all that much of the broader economic and environmental impact of my consumer behavior in this case and appreciate the comments reminding me of it. Thanks.
While Amazon isn't quite so blatant about that "feature", their incredibly awesome customer support, zero-hassle returns encourage this kind of behavior...effectively making it a feature.
And to be honest, it's an awesome feature.
Amazon and most online retailers (at least the good ones) fully realize that they're going to have high return rates and account for customers doing exactly what Jason did (my wife does it regularly). This is a cost of doing business. You're competing against brick and mortar stores where people can go in and touch and see the actual product before they walk out with it. Would Amazon prefer it didn't happen? Sure, but Macy's and Barnes and Noble would prefer not to have to pay rent and hire retail employees too.
If anyone knows this balance, its Amazon.
Please consider using a brick and mortar store to physically compare products first. Amazon has a nice mobile app that lets you purchase an item very quickly by just scanning the barcode (using the mobile's camera).
Obviously not a big deal as a one-off, but if this is a consistent shopping habit I would really hope you reconsider it.
Obviously not a big deal as a one-off, but if this is a consistent shopping habit I would really hope you reconsider it.
I don't really see the point in artificially trying to keep business models afloat that can't compete. If anything, it's harmful to the free market. It might warm your heart a bit, but the overall benefit to society is to cast your vote (your $) for the most efficient business method.
My only concern was that the advice artificially keeps a business model afloat (Amazon) that relies on the existence of brick-and-mortor stores. Its like people using the local hardware store for advice then buying all the parts at Wal-Mart.
That's not really how pricing works. A retailer sets the price that maximizes their revenue, not based on their costs. If jason_shah stopped doing that it'd probably just mean a (very small) increase in their profit margin.
If everyone shopped at Amazon this way, they wouldn't be able to sell their goods as cheaply as they do.
That wouldn't be very smart off them. I think it's more probable that they would just limit the conditions of returns.
How do their operating costs not factor into their revenue? Are you saying that when gas prices go up, retailers just absorb the extra shipping costs and don't pass it on to consumers? I was always taught that's not the case. Genuinely curious as I only took ECON101.
But consider Kindle vs paperback prices on Amazon for the same book. If costs were the most important thing in setting prices, the former would never be more expensive than the latter; but we see it often is, because demand sets the price, not cost.
Your advice might actually raise the cost of that item. (Return) Shipping is but one variable in the huge equation that is an Amazon sale. Only Amazon knows for sure.
Shipping usually aims to hit anywhere from 10 - 90% payload, greatly increasing the efficiency by which carbon is used.
I did some rough back-of-the-envelope calculations a while back that showed driving to the grocery store used roughly as much carbon as shipping everything you were buying from New Zealand.
It's the scarcest resource of all of this.
also, packaging. both the process and the materials.
and again, packaging should not be underestimated either.
However browsing items for a particular category on their site is not so easy.
When you go to a specific item, you should be able to see what categories it's stored in, and then browse those categories directly (like breadcrumbs). But that's impossible on Amazon.
They seem to have the ability though - if you pick a part that is not for your particular car, it will show you what categories it's in. They should make that option for all items.
"Look for Similar Items by Category"
right near the bottom - I guess I never make it that far down the page!
If a significant amount of people keep doing this, Amazon will have to raise the price for all of us.
All the retailers I've worked with (both brick & mortar and internet-only) see returns as a small cost of doing business. An easy returns process makes customers happy and keeps down credit card chargebacks. If you are selling on the internet, handling a small percentage of returns is considerably cheaper than having a retail presence.
You can look at Zappos (now owned by Amazon) for having an amazing liberal return policy. you have 365 days to return things and they pay for the return shipping. It's all to give you a safe feeling and buy multiple items.
In most cases large retailers force their vendors to cover the costs of returned merchandise that they can't resell (due to opened packaging etc).
One of the main reasons I'll buy from Amazon is that the transaction carries zero risk for me. If there is any problem whatsoever I know it's going to be resolved to my benefit.
Yes, and this can increase costs to the consumer. Cost is cost. It has to be born by someone in the chain and it's pushed on to the consumer if possible (granted in the competitive retail space it's harder to make consumers absorb costs).
No, I suspect that Amazon's prices already account for the estimated number and cost of returns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Protection_%28Distance...
It's a pretty powerful consumer right - I'm guessing one reason it doesn't get abused is that the process of returning items has a small cost involved, even if that's just walking to the post office or waiting for a courier to pick a package up.
Their goal isn't to look pretty, it's to sell stuff. There have been many times when i've been looking at something on amazon, clicked the one-click purchase button, and then hours later realized i wasn't really sure i wanted to buy it, Amazon just makes it far too easy to give them my money.
Amazon likes to give me similar hardware when I search for a part, cluttering up the results with things I don't want. If I search for a 7850 GPU, I don't want results for a 6950, 7950, 6870, 7770, 7870, Intel 3570K CPU, GTX 670, Intel 2500K CPU, GTX 480, 6850, GTX 560 Ti, and GTX 560. That was all just on the first page of search results.
Granted, you do want similar products in other cases, but the same kind of failure applies elsewhere.
Another annoying thing is the duplicate items as separate listings. Sometimes I will go and look for something like a Water Filter replacement and find 3 or 4 different listings for the product with multiple sellers under each.
Using Amazon to find a specific product is an unpleasant experience. Thankfully once you find the product you are looking for everything else is great.
I think I was caught in a little bit of Silicon Valley myopic thinking since their site isn't shiny and that's what is mistakenly considered as interchangeable with good UI design these days. That being said, Amazon.com the site does still need to improve UX in a couple key areas. Compared to more contemporary e-commerce sites, the ability to compare items and make sense of ratings (i.e. the flaws of the 5 star rating system) is where they need to make the most improvement IMHO.
It may have been an overstatement to say "their site leaves much to be desired" in all fairness.
I hate that I need to log in 3 times within the space of 5 minutes as I hit different parts of the site that apparently are considered more and more sensitive.
I hate the way they keep on misleadingly suggesting that items might be eligible for free shipping when they aren't (every possible signal from the user profile to ip geo-location should be indicating that I'm the wrong country for that).
I despise the way they keep on defaulting me back to paying in the wrong currency with their rip-off "amazon currency converter" with worse exchange rates than my credit card.
I can't believe that in this day and age they aren't able to synchronize anything except the most rudimentary profile data across their different domains. So the US site will keep on recommending a DVD I've already bought off the UK site, and the UK one will nag me about rating a book that I've already rated on the US one.
That's just a few things off the top off my head, not some long held grudge list.
It's not even just having good customer service/returns, ensuring the best customer service even permeated through our code.
Try returning custom car parts or, really, anything close to $1k USD which essentially mandates shipping insurance.
That said, I love-love the instant UPS-label "pick-up at your office or home" return workflow for the majority of stuff I buy from them.
The item is here in two days (Primed) and if I need the rare return, it's, at most, about 5 minutes worth of my time & attention. It's such a total win over the typical retail process for non-bespoke items.
Amazon lacks in the following areas (covered in another post):
1. The price filter doesn't really work.
2. Sorting doesn't work unless you choose a category (many items are miscategorised or match multiple categories)
3. Backwards shipping policy "What the heck, let's order it for tomorrow" on an ordered item often doesn't work because it's too late.
4. The ratings system gives too much weight to lightly-reviewed items.
5. Often the dispatch date for an order is shown on the checkout page, the expected delivery date would be better. Amazon AA batteries? 5 week delivery. Ouch.
Returning goods bought by mail order or online is the most basic service sellers have to implement. Refund if the product is not open and is returned at most seven days after purchase is guaranteed by law. If it is open a reason such as "does not fit" should be enough to be refunded.
Or is it the fact that the customer was refunded before amazon received the parcel? I am not impressed as my bank account is debited once a month, which means I usually still have my money when I send an item back to the seller!
It was already like that when I was buying things (especially clothing) through mail order twenty years ago. Or is it only in my country?