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I’ve found that the rise of Apply Pay as a payment mechanism on random sites has been helpful in getting me off of Amazon. Often it’s just as easy to order something direct if they have Apple Pay (or ShopPay, but I have other issues with them) and the same price as Amazon. Plus discoverability is awful on Amazon anyways.

Still don’t get the Whole Foods return ability when not shopping from Amazon, but not punching in my credit card number to random sites has been enough to get me to move 50% of my shopping to retailers direct.

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For me, Amazon cuts delivery times, improves reliability and makes returns 10x easier.

I live in a big city and the last few years especially it's very easy to see the cost of that approach to delivery. Residential streets are clogged with double parked amazon vehicles, I can't go three blocks in the bike lane without having to get into traffic to go around one. If they can't figure out the apartment buzzer in a few seconds they just ring them all, I'm buzzed multiple times a day even if I don't use amazon.

It has made life worse in small but tangible, concrete ways. I don't need it that fast, probably neither do you. You can blame enforcement or the individual drivers or whatever but I think that's a cop out. Amazon demands efficiency of its drivers, this is what efficiency looks like.

I've gotten a lot of free stuff from Amazon. Shipped duplicate products to me? Just keep the other. Food bottle slightly cracked and leaked in transit? Keep it and we'll send another.

I was even able to get another 30% off an already sale price for a Kindle because my old one (>5 years) died, and they couldn't fix it.

Not justifying any particular actions on their part, but their customer service has been above and beyond and other major retailer I've interacted with.

I recall it used to be like that....but I haven't had that level of customer service out of amazon since like, 2017-2018 at the latest.

Amazon earned my business back in the day, but they don't seem very interested in it anymore.

Strange, the cracked bottle example was from only a few months ago.

> Food bottle slightly cracked and leaked in transit? Keep it and we'll send another.

Hah, I have the opposite experience. My shampoo bottle leaked and filled a bubble wrap. Amazon said, "We'll send a replacement, but you need to return this." After discussing it, I went to the UPS Store for the return. UPS, reasonably, refused to accept it.

Had to debate this for far too long with another customer service person before they would agree that "We don't really want a ziploc bag of shampoo back".

Making me drive 20 mins to Whole Foods to deliver some items, and wait in a line where there’s one kiosk, has completely turned me off of Amazon.

This is probably by design, but I don’t return a whole lot.

Mine is 5 minutes away. Two kiosks plus a person is always on site. The most I've ever had to wait for the person is 30 seconds -- all they do is scan the QR code and take the item. So I guess it's YMMV.

Until the person enters something wrong on the screen, and you get emails claiming you will be billed if you don't return the item, and you end up spending a few hours with Kafkaesque customer service, repeatedly, over the course of weeks, interrupting multiple days with time-sucking aggravation.

Unless Mr. Bezos has been putting on a disguise, and secret-shoppering his own company, I have a suspicion he has no idea how much his Leadership Principles have been eroded in the last few years. I don't think metrics will tell you that, when your staff has been conditioned to desperately make their metrics look good. The short-term quantitative metrics will be hit, at least on paper, and everything else will be neglected or outright cannibalized.

Ease of returns is probably the main feature that makes my household have some degree of Amazon preference.

But that's increasingly offset by an inability to find quality products.

I'm always surprised how often I contact Amazon to do a return and they refund my money and tell me to keep the item.

I suspect it's just cheaper for many things.

You not only have to consider the money spent on shipping it back to them at their own cost but also then deciding whether the product is still in good enough condition to be resold or most likely it would just go wholesale directly to a business that sells returns at a cheaper price and they handle that checking / repackaging. That by itself still probably costs money to handle. At Amazon scale, all of that together is a lot of money.

If the amount of profit they made from selling to you is offset by all those costs, why not let the customer keep it and get free goodwill and repeat business?

> makes returns 10x easier.

Makes dumping what would otherwise be useful goods into landfills 10x easier*

They're also 10x more efficient at providing counterfeits

I hear people complain about this but maybe I'm just better at serving fake goods.

I grew up in a place and time where scams were everywhere. I now invest in garage stage startups, and endlessly amused.

You sure need that ease of return when Amazon repeatedly ships the wrong item again and again.

To me, the key feature of Amazon is the fast delivery with Prime. Do other merchants offer fast delivery often enough?

Regarding credit cards, I started using privacy dot com for virtual, merchant-locked cards. It protects against (rare) card details leaks, but, of course, does not give you any points or cashback.

The local Target and Home Depots all offer same day pickup and delivery. For our house, that's taken 90% of the business away from Amazon.

What's ironic is we still make purchases on Amazon that don't require their fast shipping. We're just conditioned to expect it. I'm thinking TVs, books, project supplies, art, etc.

>What's ironic is we still make purchases on Amazon that don't require their fast shipping. We're just conditioned to expect it. I'm thinking TVs, books, project supplies, art, etc.

Realizing this was what made me quit Prime years ago, and eventually drive down my Amazon purchases to just a handful of times a year. For the most part, there's really not much of a difference if I get a book tomorrow vs. four days from now, or if I get it from Amazon or from the nearby Target. But there's a lot of infrastructure built up to satisfy this admittedly frivolous expectation of fast delivery.

Are there cases when rapid delivery is necessary and valuable? Absolutely. Are those cases the norm? Not in my life, by an overwhelming margin.

Exactly. The $35 free shipping threshold actually helped me hold off a few impulse purchases. Thanks Amazon!

> Realizing this was what made me quit Prime years ago

I quit Prime after Amazon replaced "two-day shipping" with "it'll get there when it gets there".

I love that I can click "Get it tomorrow" filters, and see the search results visibly change... and not a single one is actually going to be here tomorrow.

The same is true with two-day Prime. Even if you get to the item, all of a sudden, it's gone.

I think their argument is that it's "Prime" shipping (not two-day), so if their eco-get-it-in-a-week-option is available, that's still a variant of Prime.

For the most part these days, Amazon seems like a fast way to ship goods from Alibaba in the one to two day time frame.

For a lot of other stuff, it feels like they've lost their edge on price and shipping.

Often my main reason for using Amazon is that it reduces the friction associated with buying for more retailers. For example worrying about data breaches, being put on spam email lists, etc.

Do you actually care that much about fast delivery?

My Prime membership ended 3 years ago. These days I just put items in the cart, and place order whenever it reaches $35. If I need an item in a hurry -- which rarely happens -- I go to a store to buy it.

This barely affected me, and I ended up with much fewer impulse purchases.

What's funny though is that the "standard" delivery often takes 5 calendar days. But AliExpress shipments can take as few as 8 calendar days. I ended up spending even less -- well, if the items are manufactured in China, why not just order on AliExpress where you get the same/similar items and pay less.

This is true. DHL asked me to delay my shipping because of Black Friday chaos and it was a bunch of crap that I didn't really need immediately so I delayed it for a week.

Generally when I order something it's because I need it now and I live at the ass end of nowhere, so it's too inconvenient to find a decent store that sells what I need at a decent price (if that exists at all nearby).

I think the biggest issue is just the uncertainty. I've been ordering at other places lately and it's just ... frustrating that I have no idea if it'll take them a day or three days to process before shipping.

> Do you actually care that much about fast delivery?

Yes. Simple as. But a lot of people don't, so it's nice that there's options.

What Prime did for me, which didn't start with but was emphasized by COVID, was that if I needed/wanted many items I could just order them from Amazon with fairly prompt delivery rather than putting them on a shopping list. I'd probably get them quicker than I'd have gotten around to going to the store and probably save at least 30+ minutes into the bargain.

Most of the time, when I order something on Amazon, it's because something broke and I need to fix it, or something is running out, or there's some other time-sensitive need.

I rarely buy big-ticket items, and these can definitely wait.

> well, if the items are manufactured in China, why not just order on AliExpress where you get the same/similar items and pay less.

Yep, I've come to see it as a general rule that, if the item on Amazon is sold under one of those all-caps gibberish brand names, the same exact item is almost always on AliExpress for 30-50% less.

Fantastic experiences doing this, highly recommend discovering on amazon and shifting to bargain sites to actually purchase

Sometimes I'll even browse Amazon for a product I'm about to buy on AliExpress simply because their reviews are much better than Ali's. Someone wanna write a greasemonkey script to replace the AliExpress reviews with Amazon ones when browsing AliExpress? :)

> Do you actually care that much about fast delivery?

I care about knowing when it's going to arrive. I don't necessarily need next day delivery, but if something says 2-3 day delivery that doesn't mean it will arrive in 3 days, it means it will arrive 3 days after it's shipped. Which for some major UK retailers can be 3-5 days. All of a sudden your delivery window is 2-8 days.

Also, much of the stuff I buy off Amazon is the sort of "crap" you make a single trip to the dollar store for - lightbulbs, wood filler, bin liners. They're the sort of things that I kind of need when I need them, or shortly after. My parents are the sort of people who will spend 20 minutes doing a quick round trip to the nearest dollar store/supermarket to get one thing, twice a week. I order it on amazon, and know it'll be there by the weekend for me to do whatever I need to do with it.

Why the incredulity?

Yes, people often care about delivery time.

Most of the time, if I'm buying something, it is because I need it for a project, trip, or event. If I could buy it at a store today I would.

I really wish there was a non-rush way to order with a guaranteed delivery moment.

Usually I'm not in a huge hurry, and I would happily wait a few days extra if it means workers don't have to pee in a bottle during their night shift. However, a "3-5 days" delivery means there's a pretty decent chance I won't be home and have to go to the other side of town to pick it up - and that's incredibly annoying. So I end up choosing next-day delivery and order it when I know I'll be home the next day.

Why can't I just place an order on Monday with a guaranteed delivery on Saturday? Ordering on Friday with a guaranteed delivery on Saturday is already possible, so what's stopping them?

Amazon offered me exactly that during checkout recently: 'no rush delivery', and deducted the price a little as an incentive.

> To me, the key feature of Amazon is the fast delivery with Prime

Most websites won't even give you a realistic shipping time (major brands might but the long-tail of online merchants don't). They might say "2-3 day shipping" but that's how long it takes after they ship it, sometimes it can take up a week before they actually ship it. It means than if I buy from anyone but a massive retailer I am rolling the dice on if I'll get something in 2 days or 2+ weeks. Some things can wait 2 weeks but when I'm moving between my house and my parent's house (I visit often) it's really hard to remember "2 weeks before I move locations I need to start directing packages at the other location". The two locations are 3hrs+ apart so I can't just pop over and pick up something sent to the other place.

I was just looking at buying “The Great American Mail Race”, which is sold directly by USPS. They charge $16.45 for the shipping and don’t even provide the shipping speed! It could be anything from next day to next month- it’s not mentioned. And that’s from USPS’s own website! How does the USPS not think to consider sharing the shipment priority with the customer during checkout? Insanity.

It's really hard to beat Amazon just because of logistics. Amazon tells me if it'll arrive tomorrow or the day after if I order now and I can be 99% sure that it'll be processed today or tomorrow and it'll arrive as expected.

Anybody else? I have no idea how long it'll take them to process my order, how long it takes for it to be processed by DHL/DPD/GLS and how long the actual delivery will take.

+1 - when I order on Amazon, it mostly gets here. Others, I suffer stress & distraction.

Hm, I have an active order right now. I ordered three things simultaneously on December 15 with a stated delivery date of December 20, also called out by the website as "arrives before Christmas".

One of those things shipped the next day and is currently reported to be arriving tomorrow, which happens to match the stated delivery date.

The other two have yet to ship, but their delivery date has slipped to "December 21 - 24".

Realistically, they look unlikely to arrive before Christmas, and Amazon seems to feel no need to honor their contract.

Big day in 4 days. Amazon is currently dealing with hundreds of millions packages. Those not using fulfilment have less but even worse on them.

Update: between my comment above and now, Amazon has marked the other two items shipped, and un-slipped the expected delivery date back to the 20th.

Interestingly, the "shipped" status is matched to a tracking update that says "package left the shipper facility" with no time or location information. All further updates have a location and a timestamp. (Everything is shipped by Amazon.)

What's your control group? Would other online retailers fare better or worse than this? Most of the time, other online retailers are worse in my experience.

Amazon is much worse on shipping than pretty much any other online retailer. The norm is that the retailer tells you when the thing will arrive, and it arrives on time. The norm for Amazon is that they advertise a deadline they don't plan to meet, and when they slip that deadline, they alter the shipping speed displayed on your order.

A long time ago I assumed that Amazon removed shipping speed options from their ordering process because, if you itemize shipping separately from the cost of the good, the customer can demand a refund on shipping when you don't provide what you sold.

My current theory is that it's a side effect of deciding they needed to provide shipping in-house instead of buying it from reliable sources. They replaced shipping they could control with shipping they couldn't control, and so they stopped letting you specify the shipping speed you needed. But for some reason they continued advertising shipping speeds they knew they couldn't provide.

It's the complete opposite for me here in Germany based on recent experience ordering from Amazon and other online retailers. It almost always arrives when Amazon says it will. I literally just received a package from an Amazon courier in an Amazon truck, something that I ordered late yesterday.

It's interesting to me that some people really see fast-delivery as an important feature of e-commerce. In the 20+ years I've been buying stuff online I think maybe less than 5% of the time I have cared about how fast I get something delivered.

Then again I don't have a business that relies on things getting to me fast. I'm just a guy who buys crap online for myself and my family. If I'm getting a book or some electronic doodad it rarely matters to me if I get it tomorrow or in 10 days.

For most Amazon non-business shoppers is getting stuff delivered quickly really an important consideration? I've always assumed that fast shipping, and the importance that Amazon places on it, was at least partly because of their desire for rapid cash flow. That fast shipping was more instituted because of Amazon's accounting needs than because most customers actually needed it. Maybe I'm wrong. It would be nice to hear people's informed opinions on this.

Fast delivery not a daily need for most people, but the dopamine hit is huge, and it makes people buy more stuff. I think an underappreciated factor of amazon's success is how it makes normal people feel like they're the boss, who can slam their fist and get immediate action.

Personally, I feel similarly to you, that most of the time the difference between one day and 1-3 weeks shipping is negligible. However, I think that relies on certain assumptions; I buy most consumable items (food, sponges, soap, etc) in person and almost always have enough to last another month or without buying more. Not everyone does that, some are JITing their daily needs and/or don't have enough free time and energy to make sure everything is always set well in advance (think working single mom, kid needs dress shirt tomorrow for whatever).

Another factor is that, while I travel less than I used to, I do like the schedule deliveries around being at home. Although package theft is not really a factor where I live, I also don't want my mailbox getting overstuffed or a package potentially sitting out in the elements for a week. As a result, I don't lke to order things with an indeterminate delivery if I might have travel coming up. (Which used to be a LOT.)

I think it's less fast shipping, and more reliable shipping.

I ordered a pair of shoes from a major UK high street store earlier this year who advertised 3 day shipping. Fine, I'm going away next weekend. Except, it turns out their guarantee is from dispatch, which is 3-5 days. It was listed in the small print on the order page, but even the order page still had the "Free 3 day shipping" banner on it. Unsurprisingly, they took 5 days to dispatch, and 3 days to deliver. I actually ended up going into the store to buy them, and returning them when I got home.

Amazon, for all it's faults, if they say next day, it's almost certainly going to arrive next day.

Prime delivery is rarely 2 day anymore, and Walmart/HD/Target often match or beat it.

And you still get free shipping over $35 which covers most anything else.

Prime is too heavily tied to video now, which is a $0 value for me.

Depends on where you're at. The vast majority of stuff I buy on Amazon is same or next day.

Prime is almost always next day, occasionally same day delivery for me, FWIW. B&Q (home depot equivalent in the UK) can occasionally be the same as ordering off of aliexpress.

In the UK, the only place that I've found beats Amazon for delivery is Argos. For some utterly insane reason, they do their own delivery logistics from my nearest store and it can only be a fleet of vans sitting waiting for an online order to come in. I've _regularly_ had orders delivered in about 15 minutes from them (which is about how long it takes to drive to the nearest store).

I don't dislike typing in my credit card numbers because I'm worried about the number leaking (This is the US, I hand my card to strangers a half dozen times per week), I dislike it because I have to go find my wallet and fill out a long form. Apple Pay is nice because I can slap one button on the top right of my keyboard.

A password manager can fill out CC details automatically as well.

Except basically none of them store the CVV and so even if I use them, I still have to go get my wallet. And many cannot fill out the varying expiration date fields correctly.

1Password fills out CVV. I sometimes have problems with zip code and state drop downs, or with weird validation that prevents filling. I just copy and paste CVV from 1Password. Better than typing out the number.

There is on browser thought. It doesn’t work on mobile so I usually wait until at computer which is better anyway.

The speed is nice, but for me it's more about the reliability. For example, a few years ago when my router broke I decided to try something else (Newegg I think) and after several weeks it just never arrived and I got a refund. Found the exact same model on Amazon and it arrived two or three days later, without Prime and without issues.

I just don't ever have the problems with Amazon that people complain about online.

For me, the fast shipping is at a point where more reliability would be better than the current speed of delivery. If it's on time, I'd prefer to get a package in two days than have it delivered at 10pm in one. If it's behind the deadline, I'd prefer a more realistic deadline than emails about slipping on the schedule.

Why do you care about providing your credit card number to order something? You're not liable for fraud and most banks will replace the card quickly. In 25 years of having credit cards and using them extensively online I've had them compromised only a few times. It's really not something to worry about.

Convenience. If it works like Google pay (fair bet?), it hands over your payment, billing, and shipping details in one go. It's wildly effective.

"not punching in my credit card number to random sites"

Not sure about OP, but for me it's about convenience. My pet peeve is credit card forms. Do you know what % of websites I've used that have at least minorly broken credit card forms? It's literally 99%.

Random common issues that are annoying but can be fixed:

- autocomplete doesn't work at all

- autocomplete only fills in half the fields

- autocomplete only fills in 1 field at a time

- autocomplete doesn't interact correctly with the rich widgets they provided for date picking or zip code

- autocomplete doesn't play well with js validation, which is only on callbacks for typing. Now I have to go backspace and re-insert the last character of every field so it doesn't think it's blank

- my town name has a ' in it. complete fucking crapshoot on whether sites DEMAND or HATE the '.

Common issues that are complete fucking messes that can't be fixed:

- javascript between fields fights over edits between them and I can't get the form simultaneously filled out correctly

- rendering issues on mobile leaving fields not visible

- autocomplete doesn't work and I've for some reason forgotten my CVV again and don't want to go get my wallet

I could go on and on. It's amazing how hard it is to get this right and how obviously nobody tests the flow where PEOPLE GIVE THEM MONEY which as I understand it is the primary purpose of these places.

> [5 complaints about autocomplete]

Maybe it's just me, but why would you want too have autocomplete for CC forms enabled? Personally, on these very rare consciously chosen occasions where I decide to give my CC number to another entity, I prefer to copy it from my banking site and never save it anywhere, neither locally nor in a cloud.

To flip the question - any modern card provider will 2fa through an app if the payment is suspicious, so why waste your time manually entering them?

It's the same reason I use a password manager, it's convenient and 2fa exists.

Can you name some specific sites where this is an issue for you? I've had nothing but good experiences buying online, in the US at least.

Every single site I've bought from has the same boring and functional checkout experience, whether it's Stripe Checkout, Google Wallet, or Shopify. They're practically all the same, and they all work fine.

Sounds like the real problem is autocomplete. Do what I do, disable it. I never have autocomplete issues on websites.

Then you'll have to memorize a lot of long numbers.

I used to have my CC numbers memorized, until over time they were all replaced due to fraudulent charges.

You know they print them right on the card right? How hard is it to punch in 20 characters and a name and billing address? Talk about first world problems.

"disable it"

I don’t use autocomplete, but a large number of sites feel the need to reinvent how a credit card form should be displayed. I do not care for your innovation. Put it in the same layout as the physical card. Plus the large number of sites that have broken tabbing (does not work or seemingly jumps to fields at random).

This is what you get when "frontend devs aren't real devs" and every job wants a "full-stack dev" (surprise, they can't do frontend!).

Legally liable is one thing, arguing with a bank another.

For me it is 2-3 times a year, which is a major pain. I have to switch every billing service over manually. Sometimes bills lapse. I have even had replacements stolen from mail and used.

>You're not liable for fraud and most banks will replace the card quickly.

It's enough of a pain in the ass that most people would rather not deal with it at all. An extra layer of security to help it not happen is a very nice benefit.

Cancelling and replacing credit cards is a massive pain and waste of time.

> You're not liable for fraud

No, but you're still paying for it.

Let's say you're a small EU-based merchant accepting payment for international orders via Stripe. An incoming iDEAL payment costs €0.30 / transaction. An incoming credit card payment? €0.25 / transaction, plus 2.5% of the transaction value. On top of that, you as merchant are charged €20 for every chargeback! And those additional costs are of course passed on to the customers because they will raise all prices by 2.5% to make up for it.

There is no free lunch. You are implicitly buying fraud insurance on every order and paying 2.5% for it.

I used to do that until I got screwed a couple times.

I bought something for $2k, it was bad, shipped it back, and "we never received it".

UPS had collected signature, went to correct place.

Tried to resolve it amicably, they dragged their feet, and finally I asked amex for a chargeback. and... some deadline was elapsed and they wouldn't refund.

long story short, with amazon, every single problem was resolved, with very little friction.

That said, amazon is horrible for name brands. They have basically pushed value of brands to zero. Everything comes from UPPERCASENONSENSE brand, searches seem to be 99% sponsored results, many 5.0-star reviews seem to be fake. ugh.

Shopify has helped a lot too. Having all my info on their platform with a checkout that’s familiar really helps. Plus their app to track everything is nice - although could do without all the spam.

> Still don’t get the Whole Foods return ability when not shopping from Amazon

Free returns aren't free. We need to de-normalize this practice of people buying so much junk just to immediately return it.

> Free returns aren't free. We need to de-normalize this practice of people buying so much junk just to immediately return it.

One of the things you lose from online shopping is sizing. Shoes run in different sizes, lengths, widths. How do you suggest you order shoes to find the right size if shopping online?

> How do you suggest you order shoes to find the right size if shopping online?

Don't shop for shoes online? Unless you're happy with most of those shoes you tried on but returned going to the landfill.

That's not an option for a lot of people. For example, the vast majority of physical shoe stores simply don't carry my size. There is literally only a handful of stores in my country I could go to - and I don't even have an incredibly unusual size!

Physical stores increasingly cater to the average. They would rather stock 20 different items in 5 sizes than 10 different items in 10 sizes. All of the long-tail stuff is only available online, so you are forced to buy online.

If your solution to the problem is “don’t do the thing you want to do” it’s never going to work. It’s not just shoes, it’s all clothing, lots of tech (ever bought a device only to find out it doesn’t actually do what it’s supposed to do?), lots of homeware goods. You’re basically saying don’t shop online.

If you think retailers are dumping every pair of shoes they get returned, you’re wrong by the way.

> lots of tech (ever bought a device only to find out it doesn’t actually do what it’s supposed to do?)

No, because I don't buy the cheap no-name junk off Amazon. It's pretty rare for me to encounter returns for stuff like that, because I already try and avoid supporting the e-waste game from the get-go. But I would say if you honestly tried to get a good and it wasn't what was advertised that's a good reason for a return.

But acting like the majority of returns are things which weren't as advertised is ignoring reality. Look no further than sibling comments here where that user openly acknowledges buying more than needed regularly and returns the rest. They're not alone with this; tons of people behave in this way. Buy something, decide later they didn't really want it/need it, return it. Decent chance it went to the trash. It's not worth it for the retailer to actually inspect and restock it.

> If you think retailers are dumping every pair of shoes they get returned, you’re wrong by the way.

Not all of them, just most of them.

Buying a dozen shirts and returning 10 of them because in the end you just didn't like the fit, you probably sent 5-7 otherwise fine articles of clothing straight to the landfill. Maybe a few of those will make it to some "donation" scheme, which will probably send half of those "donation" bound goods to the landfill. Then the last few will get put on a boat in a giant pile of goods, dropped off to some poor part of the world, and have a 50/50 chance of being worn by someone there or just become another piece of trash floating around.

Buying five pairs of shoes and returning four of them probably sent 2-3 pairs to the landfill. The rest are probably following that same flow above.

Do you honestly think retailers are throwing away 50% of their returned stock? They’re absolutely, 100% repacking and reselling what they can.

> Do you honestly think retailers are throwing away 50% of their returned stock?

For lots of categories of goods like apparel, yes. Its far cheaper for them to trash the item than spend all that money on the reverse logistics of actually analyzing the item. Other categories are probably more like 20-30%.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1yqcagavfY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG8idKaX9KI

If you're thinking the vast majority of your returns are getting restocked you're woefully uninformed.

Both your links are related to amazon for cheap items, not e.g. high street retailers that are managing their own stock and inventory. Do you think Office [0] are chucking 4 pairs of New Balance trainers in the trash? No.

[0] https://www.office.co.uk/

These links are not just about Amazon, but Amazon is overrepresented here due to the high percentage of their overall online sales.

And if Amazon can't get it to work with their already centralized logistics, smaller retailers probably have an even harder time with the reverse logistics.

> Do you think Office [0] are chucking 4 pairs of New Balance trainers in the trash? No.

Sure. If it costs them more to handle the return than what their margin on the goods would be, why would they reprocess it? Of that original sale say a $100, they probably only got $5-10 or so of original profit. And that was with the optimized supply chain getting it in to the original warehouse. So now they have to figure out the return shipping to the processing center, pay for inspections on the item, probably pay to re-ship to a warehouse, pay to re-stock it, and then for a lot of items list it as open box (if its anything that could have been plugged in to the wall it cannot be sold as new in the US), and then have all the regular costs of selling the item again.

Or they just eat the loss and increase prices a few percent and send it to "energy recovery". Or they "donate" it and claim they gave $100 worth of goods to charity. Or they sell the lots of returned goods for a few bucks a pound at the place where the returns were originally mailed to.

I returned some hardcover books that were intended as gifts, but the corners got banged up in shipping (because why bother doing something right when you can make it up in scale?). Perfectly usable items, but I obviously wasn't going to pay the new condition price for items they damaged with incompetent handling. When I brought them to return, the clerk just stuck the Amazon return label right in the middle of the front dust jacket. I doubt that's getting resold.

Well the first step is retailers and manufacturers needing to de-normalize this practice of playing continual games with pricing. These days if I see a "good sale" (aka non-sucker price) on something I'm in the market for, I will hit buy and then make the actual purchase decision over the next few weeks. Or if I'm unsure how many of something I will need, I will buy extra and then figure out how many I need later. Because I'm sure as shit not going to buy one or two for an honest price and then feel like a sucker later when I end up needing more but they've got me over the barrel. My main consideration is whether I've already got pending returns using the same method, or if I'm making a new task for myself.

It feels like this is part of a larger dynamic where companies are basically arbitraging consumers' feeling bad about waste and environmental destruction to increase their own bottom line. Like Target is abjectly terrible at packing items in boxes, such that things often get crushed in shipping. So then you're left with the dynamic of either complaining and accepting that return/resend creates a bunch more waste, or just shrugging off the damage they've caused (willfully, at this point). Now that I've seen the pattern, I just call that bluff too.

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