Hacker News Reader

Comment by jordanb | Hacker News Reader

The thing is this was the pitch for buying clothes online: worried it won't fit? Just return it. No questions asked! We'll even pay return shipping!

It's interesting how companies are now redefining things they explicitly encouraged their customers to do as "abuse."

View on HN

The GP described it as abuse. That's not evidence of companies calling it abuse. As you say, this is basically intrinsic to the deal of buying clothes/shoes/etc online and obviously online retailers know that and accept it, or else they would not allow it (and in turn would not exist as businesses).

Well we don't know that they're talking about clothes at all. Clothing retailers are still pretty open about returns afaik because it's kind of the only way to run an online clothes store people will actually use.

From what I've heard, most returns just get binned. Its terribly sad how wasteful online shopping is.

I think that depends a lot on the industry. There's a lot of evidence Amazon is recycling "unopened" returns into the new stock pool because people are getting sealed items with their contents replaced because it turns out it's not that hard to shrink wrap items well enough to convince an overworked return intake employee.

Some also gets diverted into return resale stores where companies like Amazon will sell a 3rd party a pallet of miscellaneous returns they then sell.

The few cases where this is an advertised arrangement should be excluded from the usual situation where returns are meant for defects/errors.

Even then, the one clothes example (shoes - which had been returned stained and with socks in the box) mentioned in the above still wouldn't seem like a valid return by any stretch.

Zalando has free return for 30 days in my country, and they also include returning goods from multiple orders in a single return package as a suggestion in their FAQ.

They sell clothes and also shoes.

Zalando very much is operating on the principle that you order things to try them out at home and return whatever doesn’t fit or whatever you end up not liking. Just like in a physical store you try out clothes and shoes inside the store to see how it fits and how it looks on you.

That being said, there are limits to what they consider reasonable:

> One key part of that experience, and something our customers deeply value, is the ability to make an order, try the items at home, and, if needed, easily return those they don’t want to keep. In short: bringing the fitting room to your home.

> […]

> Customers whose return activity reaches disproportionately high levels will receive an email warning. This proactive step gives them the opportunity to reflect on their behavior, discover the solutions we provide to avoid returns, and adjust before further measures are taken.

https://corporate.zalando.com/en/convenience/bringing-transp...

I've edited the above to clarify the issue in GP's shoes example was meant to be about the previous return being stained with socks in the box, not just that it was shoes in general.

Makes sense :) My bad for not understanding what you meant there.

No, my bad for lacking clarity! :)

Due to having extremely wide feet, in shoes that don't specifically have a wide option, my shoes can be anywhere from an 8.5 to a 10, depending on the manufacturer and style.

I've edited the above to clarify the issue in GP's shoes example was meant to be about the previous return being stained with socks in the box, not just that it was shoes in general.

> Due to having extremely wide feet, in shoes that don't specifically have a wide option, my shoes can be anywhere from an 8.5 to a 10, depending on the manufacturer and style.

As someone with wide feet, I don’t buy shoes unless they specifically have width options. It’s not particularly easy to do unless you really like traditional men’s leather shoes and boots, but there are some athletic shoe makers that offer wide width shoes (NB and Hoka for sure).

Even given all of the above, I still own shoes in 3-4 different sizes because shoe sizes are not standardized between makers, like you said.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com