Cameras and secret trackers reveal where Amazon returns end up
cbc.caLet's take a moment to look at how disingenuous this article is:
* Out of twelve returned trackers, one of them went to landfill. The article focuses on that item and does not itemise the fate of the others.
* Adding a tracking device to a returned new product is tantamount to damage. If such a device is detected during returns processing, anyone with half a brain should immediately presume a malicious actor and have the item very carefully and securely assessed for disposal.
* Did not verify that the tracking device remained within the bag.
* "30-40 percent of online purchases are returned" what absolute hoopsla. I've worked in online commerce and this is off by an order of magnitude. A very few segments (e.g. shoes) may approach such return rates.
This crap is why journalism is in such disrepute.
I completely agree that their methodology is not robust.
But Amazon also refused to state what fraction of items go to landfill, despite making subjective claims that it's "on occasion" and the "vast majority" are liquidated or resold. If that was true, Amazon would have the data to back it up and would only benefit them to say so.
If we want to know the actual number of items that go to landfill, we don't need to send GPS trackers everywhere, we can just mandate Amazon (and all other companies) to report on that. It's not like they don't have the data.
That is a very reasonable public policy idea. Let's add to that list of failures: the article has no discussion of reasonable policy ideas (despite quoting researchers whose life's work is in producing them).
NB: don't assume that there's no downside to any given retailer unilaterally disclosing their return rates, because returns are a measurable factor in marginal cost & revenue assessment and partially describe both the elasticity of demand and overall customer sentiment. Every retailer of scale would be interested in obtaining the return statistics (especially segmented) of their competitors; and, as the tone of the article illustrates, there are any number of hacks poised to scribble out mendacious venom on the basis of such data, so no corporate PR lackey worth their communications degree will willingly start that conversation.
> If that was true, Amazon would have the data to back it up
Absolutely.
> and would only benefit them to say so.
Not nearly as obvious. It might have some PR benefits (this week, until later when public opinion shifts), but it also provides information about their business that they may prefer to not share (off the top of my head, it probably leaks something about defect rates and their quality controls).
People may use this knowledge to defraud Amazon. For example, if it is clear that Amazon doesn't actually check the returns but sends them to the landfill, then an unscrupulous buyer may return a brick and keep the product for free.
People are very clever in figuring out ways to defraud companies, so if I was Amazon I'd be skeptical about giving out information about internal processes without a very good reason to.
> but it also provides information about their business that they may prefer to not share
On the other hand, it's probably not a good idea to be kept in the dark regarding how major sectors of the economy function, with only the word of corporate PR departments to go on that everything is fine.
I use amazon India, sometimes I receive broken stuff and I repair it on my own and ask Amazon India if they are willing to refund the part of the sale price.
Recently I had received a dented cooktop and since it was functional and my family isn't too much interested in aesthetics, Amazon offered 30% refund to keep it.
I think I am doing my part to prevent these products from ending up in landfill.
Amazon also honours refund and return request, but not all time I request it.
It's still better than offline shop experience where I've to deal with a real person making weird faces which I find hard to interpret.
In fairness, they outsource and sell returns by the pound. It’s a big business - they have no idea what happens to it.
> If that was true, Amazon would have the data to back it up and would only benefit them to say so.
I expect Amazon likely outsources a lot of returns handling, so they may not have that data.
They do, even if it was outsourced. Which it isn't, at least in Europe last time I talked tpo people. Liquidators, companies buying returns graded as unsellable, are used a lot so. Whatever they do with the stuff buy wholesale from Aamzon, and others, isn#t necessarily Amazon's or anyone else problem, if you ask me.
Amazon does have all the data, downto the individual returns, about the processing, decission, reason codes and final fate (sodl as new, warehouse deal, sold as used or liquidated, donated,...). They also have every reason to not share that data publicly.
I don't disagree with your assertion that the article is disingenuous. However,
> "30-40 percent of online purchases are returned" what absolute hoopsla. I've worked in online commerce and this is off by an order of magnitude. A very few segments (e.g. shoes) may approach such return rates.
In the online retail world, a 30-40% return rate is common for apparel (clothes), shoes and accessory purchases. Certain categories, such as occasion (wedding, party, etc) could be significantly higher than 40%.
Source: I was an executive at a Nordstrom subsidiary for many years.
You're supporting his point: apparel is one of the segments where such return rate is plausible, but it is completely off the mark for general merchandise.
Fair enough. But it sounds like you're arguing that it's ok to waste because it's not in all the segments mentioned?
I'm missing the larger critique. Are you ok with this waste?
I guess sometimes it seems to me like the HN community nitpicks over tiny details and fails to take part in the larger systemic critiques.
If you read my comment again, you’ll see that there is absolutely nothing there about whether “waste is ok”.
Since I started this by inadvertently writing the most upvoted comment, I'd like to put on the record that I'm against returns waste (and it boggles my mind to imagine anyone, or at least anyone with a soul, being for it), but I'm also against sensationalised tabloid journalism because I don't believe it's a constructive contribution to the discussion of how we get to a more sustainable supply-return chain.
On the contrary it tends to cause exactly those firms who'd be most intrinsically part of the solution (and whose employees most certainly would love to say "we're part of the solution", because they are not the sociopaths some would paint them as) to get their backs against the wall, since anyone even participating in the discussion makes themselves primarily a target for invective.
To build on your last point, if your return rate is above ~10% - 15% depending on category (as a merchant), you actually get penalized by Amazon to the point where they will de-list your product. Return rate targets vary by category, but in general most merchants want them to be under 5%.
I agree their methodology is far from rigorous, although I still found it an interesting read.
I've seen a lot of people on HN complain after receiving counterfeit items or "new" goods that were obviously someone else's returns. I wonder what the Venn diagram would look like of those individuals and the ones who are outraged now.
It happened to me many times. So much so that I quit amazon and went to brick and mortar instead (who will often price match amazon anyway)
Amazon is welcome to sell these returns instead of throwing them away that’s not the issue. The problem was that they sell something as new when it’s been opened and used. I think no one would have an issue with it if the returned items were sold as such for a discount.
This crap is why journalism is in such disrepute.
And this is from the Canadian Broadcasting Company - Canada's gov't funded TV/radio/print news service, not some fly by night organization focused on spitting out content to maximize ad impressions.
Doesn't give you much hope for quality reporting if they can't get it right.
The CBC is not considered to be particularly reputable even within Canada, which is extremely irritating given that our tax dollars are paying for it.
Marketplace is sensationalized garbage. Watch one of their videos on YouTube to see what I mean. It's all spin, trying to make people outraged.
CBC is definitely a mixed bag. Marketplace is amongst their worst.
Canadian tax dollars at work... They got sued a few years back for some ridiculous food allegations in a similar vein too.
Are you talking about when they said Subway chicken was only 50% chicken? Subway sued, lost, and had to pay legal fees. Pretty happy with that use of my taxes tbh.
Yea the CBC takes its cue from left wing American media which it poorly imitates
> 30 to 40 per cent of all online purchases are sent back
That seems almost an order of magnitude higher than I’d expect. Setting aside kids shoes (which probably do get 50% returned), I can’t imagine sending back even 5% of my online purchases, let alone 30-40%.
I think I’ve sent back exactly 1 Amazon order in the last year, out of nearly 100.
I think it depends a lot on category. What you said about kids clothing is spot on, but I'd expect similar dynamics for women's clothing (tighter fits = lower tolerance, also lower tolerance for color mismatch etc) and there are a couple of categories that I've outright stopped buying on Amazon because of the enormous problem rate, namely whitelabeled consumer electronics.
In 2020 I've returned ~5%:
1% sounds quite low, but if I had foregone buying anything heat/storage sensitive and followed my own rule about whitelabeled goods that's exactly where I'd be. On the other hand, my returns were painless and most gambles paid off so I think I'll carry on.markers that were dry test clips with mislabeled quantity de-laminated screen protector sheet mislabeled thermal printer (photo, listing said it had an internal spool compartment but it didn't) cell-phone arm stand that lacked the spring tension, even adjusted to maximum, to hold up my small, un-cased Google PixelI've also stopped buying at Amazon after 15 years. Even consumables and small items are problematic. Just in the last year, I encountered many issues including:
* Showerhead that came without box, and clearly used. It still had a lot of water inside!
* Underwear from a brand that sells items inside a sealed bag and discards returns came used, without bag (yuck!)
* A module of Samsung RAM had visible wear signs and didn't work
* Cycling glasses came without box and several missing items
The underwear thing upset me so much I emailed Jeff Bezos. After lots of emails forwarded around, nothing happened.
It's sad because they used to be good. But the number of returned and counterfeit items sold as new is mindboggling.
I'm always shocked when I read these comments on HN. I swear it must be just the American Amazon that's so shit, because I literally never had any problems nor know anyone with these problems here in UK. Just this year I'm on 108 orders and counting, every single one of them was fine, working, definitely not used, definitely not counterfeit and delivered within 1 day as promised with Prime. Last year I've had 140 orders total, year before that 122 orders, and again never had any of those problems. I think the only return I did was a lightbulb that broke after 3 months and Amazon refunded me but only after I shipped it back, which I thought was very wasteful.
Same here (France). I will actually pay a bit more for Amazon products because I never, ever had any problem.
The closest I had to a problem was when I sent an email stating that a product is not functional after a year and a half. They replied that the 30 days return window is over and that I should contact the producer.
I replied that according to the law, I have 2 years of warranty with zero costs from my side. They replied that are very sorry for the misunderstanding (or something like that), together with a return slip.
Teh second one would probably be when I was suggested to test Amazon Prime and I was charged 50€ right away. I replied this is a test. They replied that I actually signed for Prime, that it was not a test.
To what I replied it was, to what they replied they will reimburse me 50€ minus the fast shipping costs (that would otherwise be included in Prime). To what I replied i was really unhappy. To what they replied that 50€ are on their way to may credit card.
This is one of the reasons I buy with Amazon without much fear.
Amazon may be awful elsewhere, but it's miles better than our local French online retailers. I've got a lost mouse (the package was delivered empty), Amazon immediately refunded. I had other packages not delivered at all with other retailers, and they wouldn't refund until they enquired with the delivery company, which had to do an internal investigation. And some of them wouldn't refund but gave vouchers instead.
Also, Amazon returns are refunded as soon as the package is scanned at the post office, not 2 or 3 weeks after.
I'd really like to buy from a French company, but every time I try, they go out of their way to send me back to Amazon.
Heck, I once bought two folding cushion "stools" that could be unfolded into "ground sofas" (for lack of a better word) from IKEA.
Delivered by "Trusk". They were left with the building caretaker who just signed without checking.
We only got one. And IKEA won't do anything, because we can't prove we didn't receive the second one and aren't just fraudulently asking for a freebie.
Never got these kind of issues with anything sold by Amazon. Only time a package went missing, despite "La Poste" stating the contrary, they just re-delivered it without a fuss.
The flip side of this is Amazon actually refuses to inquire with delivery companies, and here in Canada, the post requires that the sender be the one to inquire.
I've had several instances where the item was clearly at my local post office but misplaced. Canada Post refused to check without Amazon requesting it, and Amazon refused to do anything but send a new item. In each case the original item mysteriously appeared in my box months later when the postal workers inadvertently found it.
I am completely with you. It is even surprising that none of them wants to get the, let's call it patriotic part of French Amazon customers.
But they indeed all rate much worse than Amazon
I almost never buy from Amazon anymore. Not really because of any bad experiences, though reports about the high number of counterfeit goods that Amazon sells certainly contributes to my reluctance. Also: Amazon is just too big. I like a bit of competition in the market.
Also, in Netherland, Amazon isn't all that big. In the distant past, I sometimes ordered at amazon.com, later at amazon.de. Recently I got an invitation to amazon.nl which apparently just opened, but I really don't see the point. Netherland already had a couple of big online retailers: bol.com and coolbue. They're good, fast, reliable. I don't need Amazon anymore.
A lot of people in The Netherlands [1] use Bol.com (part of Ahold; Albert Heijn's parent company). However, Amazon.de (Germany) is also popular, and you can avoid S&H with Amazon Prime.
The reason there is no huge Amazon.nl is the same reason there's no huge eBay.nl; there's already a large local competitor: Bol.com (and Marktplaats.nl).
Because of Amazon Prime Germany being popular in NL, Amazon introduced an Amazon Prime Netherlands. They even offer a discount deal but they offer a lot less than Amazon Germany, so it does not make sense to switch the Prime subscription (apart from the discount).
If you want to order something in The Netherlands from Germany, and they only ship to Germany, then you can use a service like Huifkar. They have a drop place in Germany to ship to, drive over border, and post it from there in The Netherlands to your address in The Netherlands.
I had positive and negative experiences with all of these. On Bol.com I received some kind of fashion (?) book by Kim Kardashian instead of a 200 EUR budget smartphone (I didn't even know who she was before that). They fixed it though.
If you look at the working circumstances in distribution centre of Amazon and Coolblue you understand why sometimes things go wrong.
[1] It is called "The Netherlands"; not "Netherland". You can also use the ccTLD, "NL".
> It is called "The Netherlands"; not "Netherland".
That's an archaic Anglicism in my opinion. Nobody in Netherland calls the country "de Nederlanden", and probably hasn't in two centuries. I think it's about time that English finally followed suit.
I’d think it’s more important to get people to stop calling the whole country “Holland” first.
We can just wait a few decades and change it to "waterworld".
:(
> I think it's about time that English finally followed suit.
Why? Do you think that languages should all follow the same rules about everything?
Not everything, but names, yes. When China informed the world that their capital was called Beijing rather than Peking, the world fixed their spelling and pronunciation. Why would this case be any different?
And of course there will remain spelling and pronunciation differences. I don't expect English to use "Nederland", but "Netherland" should be fine. Maybe also drop the "Dutch" and replace it with something like Netherlandish or Netherlandic. Because "Dutch" is another weird archaic holdover. Nobody in Netherland even knows why we're called that in English. (I suspect it stems from the medieval name "Diets" for a group of predecessors of our language, which stems from well before the country existed.)
That's actually a really interesting example.
Because you're entirely right about the city, and yet China doesn't call itself China.
Actually, the big three SE asian countries (Japan, China, Korea) all have different names for themselves than most languages of european origin use. Presumably others do as well, but those are the ones I looked up.
I wonder why that is.
Edit: Further thought. Most of the major cities I'm aware of (especially capital cities) in those countries are pronounced fairly accurately (with room for accents, of course). That's actually a really interesting set up.
When it's about a proper noun with a clear authoritative source, I would say yes.
> The reason there is no huge Amazon.nl is the same reason there's no huge eBay.nl; there's already a large local competitor: Bol.com (and Marktplaats.nl).
eBay has owned marktplaats since 2004. I think they’re conceptually the same.
I’m also unsure if eBay’s modus operandi has ever been to acquire and transition local platforms to their eBay platform, which is probably for the better.
Marktplaats is not an auction place, it is a market place (kind of like Craigslist). They never changed that, and eBay Netherlands has always remained a niche.
You can also do auctions on Marktplaats, though it's much more freeform than eBay. I auctioned a 1980s Transformers toy there ages ago, and I got such weird vibes from the two top bidders that I was happy to sell to a third bidder that showed up.
Not much of eBay is an auction house anymore...
My pet theory is that eBay acquires/operates classified marketplaces and lets them dominate enough to prevent a competitor from appearing and taking marketshare from the more profitable eBay platform.
I haven't checked recently but back in the days (00s) eBay offered more protection than Marktplaats.
bol.com is fine, but coolblue is overly expensive and does not offer anything above other online vendors.
I am glad Amazon is here - more competition is always good for consumers such as ourselves.
It's not just Amazon US which is terrible for that. Since moving to Spain I've stopped ordering on Amazon also. At least half the products I've received from them were either counterfeit, or clearly already used. Add to this their terrible delivery service and I don't understand how they're still in business here.
But what did you reply after that?
Ah yes, I ended up replying to a HN comment :)
I order around the same number of items every as you from Amazon in America and have never had an issue like the ones mentioned in every hn discussion about the company.
Bad experiences stick with people and they are more likely to write about it. Like the one time I ordered Harmon Kardon subwoofer from newegg like 15 years ago and it came entirely missing it's outer case, and neither newegg not Harmon Kardon (I went in person to their service center) would accept the return. It made me skeptical of ordering from newegg for a while, and it was unusual and annoying enough that I still remember it to write about.
Of all the people I know order from Amazon (we'll say 200 people if you count all the people on slack channels at every place I've worked) in the last 3 years, I've heard of some computer parts being obviously repackaged twice. That's it. These horror stories of consistent problems is just not something that's common in major metropolitan areas of the west coast USA.
I think it might just be coastal US cities? I live in a flyover US state and my experience matches yours. Universally good, overall much better experience with products ordered on Amazon than purchased at the local Walmart. Not that Walmart is a particularly high bar, but still it sets an expectation.
We live in Manhattan and order even more stuff than GP (about 25 orders last month) and we've had like two issues this year: a missing knob on a puzzle for toddlers, and paint on three toy vehicles damaged during shipping.
Could also be that people's experience depends on how picky they are about sellers. I mostly just go for Amazon or the original manufacturer (I guess I should to the original manufacturer's site, but I don't want to find my wallet...)
I'm suspicious it must just be regional, because my experience is similar.
I live in NM and have had only half a dozen "major" (?) issues over the decade+ that I've ordered from Amazon. My experience is posted slightly up thread from yours.
I’m in Seattle and that’s been my experience as well in the 7 years that I’ve been their customer.
The UK has working consumer protection and a small claims court. America mostly doesn't.
That may be true but I’ve never had a hint of a problem returning something with Amazon. Yes they do have an annoying counterfeit problem, but at the same time, the second you complain, you get an instant complete refund and maybe even an additional credit as apology.
I second this. I’ve tried to give other online retailers a shot but nothing beats the customer service and reliability of Amazon in the UK, even if something is slightly more expensive I’ll always go with Amazon
Yep, I recently made a mistake of buying a new Lenovo laptop directly from Lenovo instead of Amazon, and it was a huge mistake - the machine arrived with a broken screen and I waited over 2 weeks for the replacement, their support was generally useless and every time I rang them got a different answer to what was actually happening(they said the replacement is ready, only to say it's not and I'll get a refund 2 days later, to then turn around and say a replacement has actually been shipped, absolute nonsense). Had it been purchased through Amazon I can guarantee I would have just returned the laptop the same day with a prepaid label, had the money back in my account the next day, re-ordered and had a replacement the following day. Well, lesson learnt I guess.
At least yours arrived. I also made the mistake of buying a new Lenovo laptop directly from Lenovo some years ago, they canceled the order but didn't give the money back. Their support was completely useless, every time I called they said I had to send an email, and my emails went completely unanswered. When I tried contacting them through the consumer protection organization (PROCON), they sent a nonsense answer (as if I had received a defective laptop and wanted to send it back). I had to sue them in small claims to get my money back (plus moral damages); their defense in court was that I hadn't paid (with a printout of their internal systems showing the boleto as unpaid), even though the initial petition had a copy of the bank receipt. The lesson I learned was to never buy from Lenovo, since I can't trust I would be able to contact their support when needed.
I ordered a laptop directly from Lenovo, I paid less than the price in Amazon by a fair bit, and it arrived quickly and all was good... (Canada, YMMV)
Highly depends on the sellers and general market in your country, I suspect. In India, Amazon was good early on until it attracted scammers and painful customers.
Customer support switched to Indian contractor companies and it is not as nice anymore. Reviews became useless and downright harmful. I have gotten many incorrect items from their fulfilment program in the last 2 years. I never got any before it.
Anecdotally, Canada & US Amazon used to be like you described when they first started becoming the "everything" store but things have really declined lately.
6 or 7 years ago there was a much higher proportion of items actually sold by Amazon. Now it's a morass of third-party sellers with inaccurate listings to the point that even just finding an item is quite a choice. I recently gave up trying to buy kitchen knives because most listings had no OEM part number, a vague description and photo and people arguing in the Q&A section about basic features like whether it had a serrated edge or not.
Amazon has become a dumping ground for people who buy things on Alibaba, at liquidation or even just at Costco and try to resell for a markup. Even a search for basic consumer products like a box of cereal will have the top results be these kinds of sellers. For instance, I just searched for "ichiban noodles" (a popular international brand of instant noodles that can be found for <$1/each in any grocery store in Canada). The top result is a pack of 8 for $27!
Yes, Amazon still replaces or refunds almost anything that you have an issue with, but I'd rather just get the thing I wanted the first time.
A perfect of example of this is a picture frame I bought from Amazon (or rather, third party seller fulfilled by Amazon). It arrived damaged because it was thrown into a too-large box with no padding. I notified Amazon and they sent another one. It arrived identically packaged and also damaged. Then I asked for a refund. At this point, almost a month had passed and I still didn't have a picture frame, despite a huge amount of resources having been consumed by Amazon.
No store that actually has to bear the cost of returns themselves would do that, but Amazon made out like kings on the transaction: they got a cut of the original purchase, their FBA fees, then got to charge the seller for disposal of a broken item - twice!
In Amazon’s defence, the item sold should have been packaged better by the original seller. A number of my recent Amazon purchases have arrived in original boxes/packaging.
And Amazon in Canada does not stock or sell food items at competitive prices if at all. They barely sell a small number of Whole Foods items online. I generally buy local for most food items, except maybe bulk supplements or household items. Some things, especially now under lockdown, you can only find easily on Amazon...
I’m in the US and we order off of Amazon all the time. I’ve had exactly one problem that apparently came from a vendor with tons of complaints (wrong item and a history of refusing refunds or trying to negotiate a partial due to return shipping costs).
Aside from that, everything has been great but I also never order clothes from Amazon.
Similar experiences here. I'm no fan of Amazon, particularly with how they treat their workers. That said, some of their competition just doesn't offer the same range of products at a reasonable enough quality[1] making me suspect that a significant number of their items get returned or tossed.
In recent memory, I've had only one bad experience with a 3rd party seller not shipping the item I ordered. Oddly, I ordered twice before from them (through Amazon) and never had an issue. Something changed in the months leading up to the third purchase, because their reviews went from overwhelmingly positive to overwhelmingly negative, and I'm not sure COVID-19 would completely explain it (or maybe it does?). Two months after not receiving the purchase, I sent a dispute to Amazon and they refunded it in full. Can't complain.
I did have a product arrive damaged (actually a pack of two; one was fine). Amazon refunded the entire purchase price for both saying they couldn't do partial refunds (understandable).
Of the couple of other mistakes I can think of, they'd once sent the wrong item (a consumable) and also refunded without fuss, suggesting I should just dispose of the mistaken item as I saw fit. The other one was a carafe for frothing milk for cappuccinos that didn't arrive at all. IIRC, they refunded and sent a replacement the same day I emailed. Also had a hard drive show up with surface defects (placed in an unnecessarily large box and almost certainly got beat up during shipping), and I got a return label that same day with UPS showing up about a day later to pick it up. (Bonus: I know the usual UPS driver, so it was good to see him!)
Never have bought many clothing items from Amazon recently except for neck ties. Watching some YT channels that purchase from Amazon-related liquidators[2], the negative experiences with clothing and personal hygiene don't really surprise me. Worth watching, but be prepared to be somewhat terrified and maybe a little grossed out.
[1] I once bought a laptop cooling tray from Walmart out of curiosity. The quality was roughly what you'd expect. The USB cable failed after about a month of use (poorly terminated no doubt) and the tray is of the lowest quality manufacture you can imagine. Ironically, it was more expensive than better quality options off Amazon...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Xi9F_8Sr1-1bKRDlCO1ZA
Well I think this is just survivorship bias. Nobody really feels compelled to post when they are in the mundane majority of people who didn’t have a bad experience.
Amazon used to source everything themselves and as the years have gone by they source themselves things less and less. When almost everything used to have a “sold and shipped from amazon” many things now do not and that’s the root of the issue. They are becoming eBay without really telling anyone.
In France the only problem I've ever had that was arguably Amazon's fault was a broken glass item (arguably because it's really down to the container used by the manufacturer and the thing being broken anywhere from packaging in China to my postbox, the Amazon packaging wasn't bad).
Everything else was 100% down to the manufacturer or negligent Marketplace seller.
I have tons of valid complaints about the shitty search engine, the poor quality of filters, the dark patterns pushing shit and the over-abundance of third-party Chinese crap, but Amazon still is more reliable and friction-less than the vast majority of e-tailers.
This being said the other sites have gotten much better (not much choice), to the point Amazon isn't my one-stop-shop anymore (as it would have been five or ten years ago).
I'm guessing it's the end state of Amazon. They are still trying to take over European markets so they have to maintain quality to compete, but once there is no competition it will degrade until it's barely tolerable for the average consumer. You as a person who can spot fakes are an outlier, and a rounding error in their sales, so your boycot don't work.
Fake products are the necessary sacrifices we have to make in order to be fulfilled by Amazon. Quality control (like moderation or ethics) just doesn't scale, and we must maintain infinite growth at all cost.
I've had the same experience as you, over roughly the same number of orders in the USA.Just this year I'm on 108 orders and counting, every single one of them was fine, working, definitely not used, definitely not counterfeitI've also never really heard anybody else complaining about problems with Amazon either. I have a pretty large extended social circle, and I just don't hear any problems.
I 100% believe those who say they have these problems! I'm just trying to put things in perspective.
Nope. In UK and I had a tablet I ordered, that was supposed to come yesterday. Says that is delivered, but I never received. None of my neighbours received, so who knows where it is.
As for their own brands like thier tablets, they are probably worse quality than some counterfeits/awful brands. They have nasty cheap parts, for example the usb power port breaks in no time. I made the mistake of shopping for that non-amazon brand tablet for yesterday, but what a seriously shoddy company, for many reasons.
Ok, but how is this an issue with Amazon? Delivery company lost the tablet, that's it. The difference is that I can guarantee Amazon will just refund you after few days if you tell them you never got it, while another retailer(ekhm ekhm...pcworld) would just say that the item shows as delivered so you can get lost. That's where the main difference is - Amazon is willing to accept some amount of fraud to offer good experience to legitimate customers experiencing problems.
I feel the same way, except I'm in the US so it's not a strictly regional thing. I expect it's just that you're far more likely to hear from extreme outliers in topics like this.
I will say that "definitely not counterfeit" is a very high bar these days. I have a pair of Ray Bans that I'm still on the fence about after several years.
Perhaps the laws are more strict outside of the US re fraud. Most of the issues I’ve seen on Amazon are directly related to shady third party sellers or commingled inventory.
They are responsive to regulatory action - when I filed a complaint about COVID related price gouging via my state attorney general’s office, they acted within two hours of receipt. A firm hand is effective.
Selection bias. Of course you don't hear anything about the myriad times people ordered something and it arrived more or less as expected. I've ordered at least hundreds, maybe thousands of items from amazon over the years. I won't say everything has been completely perfect, but I also don't recall the last time I needed to return anything.
Amazon's official policy is they will send you inventory that they didn't source themselves, meaning they don't even do the bare minimum for quality control. Even if this policy results in 99% good experience, I wouldn't want to waste my time with a business that is simply serving as an online flea market when I can go to Aliexpress.com and get the same for cheaper.
Agreed. I've tried many times to give other retailers a chance but they always screw up while Amazon Canada has yet to do so.
I think it might be just certain warehouses. I'm in the US and have never had these problems either (I'm at 76 orders this year).
I do avoid clothes though, it's difficult to find ones that are shaped correctly for my body, so I go in-person to a local store, buy ones that fit, then order more of the same style from their site online using the SKU.
American here and I've had exactly one bad shipment (counterfeit earphones in 2015) in my ~20 years of buying from them.
I don't doubt that the problems described by others are real, but I think there's a lot of variance in the number and kind of problems people actually see.
Some of these issues were with Amazon UK, where I've been buying most of my items (around 400 orders).
The underwear issue was with Amazon US, and RAM with Amazon DE. But I've found Amazon UK quite problematic too.
I purchase regularly from American Amazon and have never had any of these issues. No counterfeits, nothing more than maybe a day late, no returns needed.
Amazon has prob. lower market share in e-commerce in EU than in USA. Competition (and more pro-consumer regulation) helps.
Eh, I mean I understand your comment in general, but I think it's a reasonable hypothesis that the discrepancy could be that Amazon doesn't have a large enough market share in other markets for these issues to have occurred (i.e. EU small sellers have yet to start abusing the marketplace to the extent done in the US). I certainly recognize that I don't have data to indicate either way - but my point is that the lack of problem in UK/EU doesn't necessarily mean Amazon is responding better to competition.
No they do not and actually in the G7 already 70% of product search starts on Amazon. Australia had a very fast adoption and most people installed the Amazon app within a year. Their app is the number one e-commerce app in all countries amazon operates on a country specific TLD . In other countries Ali express is the most popular app on App store.
I've had counterfeit issues with chargers a few times, other than that no issues, Amazon Germany in my case.
I see comments like this often, and I'm not sure if I'm wildly luck or others are tragically unlucky. We (as a household) probably order a couple of things from Amazon a week. We've had a couple of things not live up to expectations, and a handful of returns, but nothing like used underwear. I do tend to stick to the Prime vendors and not wander off into the dark corners of Amazon. Maybe that's why I've not (knowingly) been bitten by counterfeits or returns.
I know it's a caveat emptor environment, but it's worked for me. It's eBay that I have to watch like a hawk (just assume if you buy an electronic component, you have at best a 50-50 chance of it not being crap). I'm curious as to the wide variety of experiences I see from others.
This is really why I hesitate to buy clothes through Amazon, even though I wear a size that they have in stock easier than Kohl's or any of the other department stores (plus, I'm in the middle of losing weight, so I'm in between sizes). It's quite frustrating, especially with fitting rooms closed currently in my state.
My solution to this has been to order denim, tees, chinos, etc made to measure. It's slow, it's a bit more expensive, but you get a better fit and you don't need to worry about all this mess.
Plus, I support local people.
Where do you order these?
Companion Denim, Self Nation or Lanieri.
Are you aware of Prime Wardrobe? I haven't tried it, but it sounds good.
https://www.amazon.com/prime-wardrobe/b/?ie=UTF8&node=148071...
Amazon also makes zero effort to inform people when they have listings for items and are not an authorized retailer, which invalidates warrantees and leaves consumers with no recourse if there is a manufacturing defect or other problem that would normally be taken care of without issue.
How did you email Jeff Bezos?
jeff@amazon.com
Didn't know that, thanks.
goes straight to /dev/null
Unless it has changed, I received a response from some executive team and my request was granted (I missed a substantial Kindle sale by a day, and asked if they would still honor the price).
Amazon has reached Day 2 years ago. Today it’s eBay mixed with Walmart.
> Showerhead that came without box, and clearly used. It still had a lot of water inside!
How much water could a showerhead even hold. Certainly not a lot?
More than 0 is too much
Not to sound bitter, but why the heck do you buy so much on Amazon (you and others on this HN formum) ?
Isn't it clear from the premises that that whole online thing is treacherous at best for the environment, our environment ?
I can understand the convenience, buying stuff you don't find in your local shops, etc. But much of what Amazon do is because they have customers... So instead of complaining about Amazon, why not just fix our own behavior ?
(sorry to say that like this, I know it's super not diplomatic and one sided and maybe I could even not defend my own point of view if we'd be to talk face to face, but at some point choices must be made)
This is the least credible reason to not use Amazon.
They treat their warehouse workers cruelly, tolerate counterfeits, allow the review process to be juked to the point of uselessness, and contribute to a brittle monoculture.
But the environment? Any consumer good is transported by internal combustion engine from the factory, to some intermediate places, to the door. Maybe someone uses a bike for the last part, but mostly, they drive to the store in their private automobile. Amazon uses package delivery services, which is much more efficient, and warehouses have a smaller environmental footprint than stores, which are all backed by warehouses anyway.
It's either a small amount of additional cardboard and plastic, or a whole additional building and a few miles of driving a single automobile. It's pretty clear that Amazon wins this comparison.
I’m not so sure that a local electronics shop is way more ecological. More HVAC, more lighting, items shipped to an intermediate warehouse, then reshipped, then maybe transferred between stores, then customers driving their SUVs around shopping.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Amazon can get me a TV with lower total emissions than if I shopped locally. If I comparison shopped locally, I’m virtually certain Amazon’d win.
I won't be buying anything expensive from Amazon anymore. I ordered a 2TB nvme SSD which came in a padded envelope. I didn't even try it before returning it. Its own packing was a simple blister pack. $250
I ordered a camera lens which also came in a padded envelope. $400.
I got a box of wet wipes from them. It had its own sturdy box and they were placed in another box lined with shipping paper. $12.
I also won't buy anything that goes into my body. I ordered toothpaste and it came from some guy's basement. He wrapped them in plastic wrap and wrote two pack on the outside.
Amazon gets lazier and lazier by the day and is in a lot of ways no better than a flea market.
But is expensive the problem? Of course I don't buy anything above 100€, but neither anything computer related, clothes or in general things that I can walk ten minutes and buy in a physical shop.
Most of what I buy are products that I can't find offline easily or at all. So Amazon actually brings them sooner than what I would be able to find it offline, like vitamins or exotic incense. Also some audio electronics are too expensive in the few shops that, even in Madrid, are specialized in that area.
But computers or phones or monitors/tv? MediaMarkt or Fnac have a good enough variety and I can just walk out the shop with a box, that I can return no questions asked if defective, the same day.
I've also found out that some pieces of audio electronics or instruments are better bought used from individuals. I got a pair of pro speakers for 100€ that are triple that money new. You can go and see the thing before paying. Same for furniture that is dirty cheap used.
Edit: could be this related to USA car dependence?
I have friends who send back nearly everything. Not sure about shoe size? Order 3 sizes, keep the one you like and send back the other two (or return all 3 if you dont like it). Want a shirt? Order 5 and keep the ones you like, if any.
I'm sure there are people who abuse the system, but for you example of clothes, I'm not surprised there is a high number of returns.
Last year I bought two Levis jeans at the same time. One the exact same model, color and size as the one I was wearing which was worn out, the other a different color (figured I could use having two pairs of jeans). None fit me correctly. The model I had already was too big, the other too small. Sent both of them back and made the effort to go to a brick and mortar store where I could try them. Turns out the sizes had changed or something. I ended up with a different cut, as the model I had was either too tight on the legs or too wide at the waist...
I wouldn't even call it abuse. Buying clothes or shoes is in many cases impossible without trying them on. Also, you can't really see and feel the fabric before it's arrived. Hence, many companies have explicit free and easy return policies to encourage people to order a lot of stuff and keep only what they like. Not very eco-friendly, I know.
Levis in particular are just notoriously inconsistent in sizing. At a brick and mortar store you grab five pairs to try on if you want to buy one or two.
For mens sizes I find that very odd, as the size are defined units of measurement, unlike the headache that is womens sizes.
Take out a tape measure and measure the actual size of a few different brands of trousers. They are never even close to the size that's on the label. Maybe men's clothes are more consistent than women's, but the label is always wrong by several inches.
IME, except a couple of obvious mislabels, all men's clothes are with a couple of cms - I've never had an item more than a couple of cm out. Cut however, that's a different matter. Honestly some "designers" mustn't realise men have external genitalia.
Did you actually measure? After a few not so successful attempts to buy trousers online did I start to measure, and trousers that are supposed to measure 34" waist measured between 36" and 39".
Men's sizes are only nominally dimensional; there are various sources of potential error, and correcting for them adds cost.
It is always like that. Jeans expand when you use them. If you gain 3 lbs it might be really tight when getting new ones of the same size. I almost always buy 505s.
This is the pattern I've seen as well.
That and the anti-pattern of using Amazon as a quasi-tool-rental outlet where they buy something for a project, use it, and then return it after the project is done. The 'borrowing' aspect was also an issue at Fry's in the Bay Area where test equipment that they sold would have been used already.
Of the two I think the 'borrowing' pattern to be pretty unscrupulous. I see the buy a bunch and return the ones you won't use/wear/eat what ever is more along the lines of the store fitting room approach.
The tool borrowing is unscrupulous, but it provides a ready source of “Used-Very good” Amazon Warehouse tools at 15-35% off, which I do appreciate.
Some returned objects are sold as new, some people even swap the items before returning them. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23939042
I'd like to see Amazon start a lend/use program like auto parts stores. I guess they would have to verify tool functionality though, which can be expensive.
The auto parts stores pretty much don’t, at least in my experience, and push it off to the customers/borrowers. I’ve gotten broken or incomplete tools from the (free) lending programs enough that I’ve mostly stopped using them and just buy tools instead. I don’t have time to get stuck halfway through a job and any $50-100 tool still leaves me with cash savings overall on the job.
Even in cases where I told them I broke a piece in a kit, they didn’t seem to care and it looked like the kit was going right back into stock to me.
Parts store do it because it gets you in the door to buy parts. If the lending was done through the mail, I’m sure Amazon would sell more parts, but it’s not clear it would be enough more profit to cover 2-way (or 4-way if a tool was broken) shipping on the tools.
In Brunswick (part of Melbourne, Australia), there is a Community "Tool Library" where people can borrow tools. In much the same way as book libraries:
https://www.brunswicktoollibrary.org
It's pretty cheap (AUS$85/yr), and AFAIK they have about 400 members. Though Melbourne is currently in a coronavirus lockdown so everything is closed. :(
Regarding broken/incomplete tools, (prior to the lockdown) they had a day every week or two set aside to go through and fix broken/worn tools (etc).
Seems like a good solution to the tool sharing problem, and it seems to work well for everyone.
I've bought too many things that come with annoyingly broken parts. Not enough to render it useless, just annoying. For example, a cracked handle on a Amazon Warehouse snowblower. It still worked but required a tricky glue job. For most things now, I'll pay the extra for something new from a local shop.
Sounds wasteful but if we assume normalization of online ordering for clothing (where good fit is important) then this is probably the most efficient way to handle this situation. I suppose ordering a single item, trying, returning then ordering 2 more times until you get the right fit: that sounds a lot more wasteful than order 3 items in one go and doing a single return.
Now, IMO, ordering clothes (and shoes, or anything you're supposed to wear and where fit is important - at least important for a substantial demographic) through online shopping just doesn't seem to make as much sense as other things.
I personally rarely buy online unless I'm talking about staples like shirt and tees that I've tried from certain brands and know how it fits (so don't need returning).
As with other things... this huge shift to online ordering may make from efficiency perspective only when you ignore externalities and subsidies.
My sister buys stuff from stores that advertise this to be the recommended way to buy. Huge box in, huge box out, still cheaper than renting brick and mortar space.
This is so incredibly wasteful.
I hope we go back to shopping malls for clothing and fitted purchases.
I'm not so sure it is such a waste. From the perspective of the store, they save on retail space and personel. From and environmental perspective, the home deliveries are usually much more efficient, since they deliver to multiple nearby addresses in a single run, than single people driving their cars to the malls.
I don't know exactly how it would balance in the end. It probably depends both on the type of goods and a lot on local circumstances. But don't take for granted that this is worse than it was before.
I'm not so sure shopping malls are really less wasteful.
I do this and Amazon even encourages this pattern via its Prime Wardrobe and other past offerings.
Agreed, I think Zappo encouraged it too. It isn't abuse its a feature.
I personally never send anything back, if I dont like it I just make do and complain.
That's how every woman in my life, ever, has shopped for apparel, from TJ Maxx to Saks to Amazon.
I always felt bad about returns, but my SO worked retail in school and assured me this is how it's designed to be and how every big shopper does it.
And I don't blame returners. There used to be a website that listed variance in sizes from major clothing brands and fashion lines, and it can be huge. If I like a cut of jeans or slacks, I have to try on several, and they without fail will not fit the same.
It's not like the shoes are going out the door without them knowing that the same person just ordered three pairs in different sizes and is almost certainly going to be returning two of them.
It's simply not possible to be sure about a shoe size sight unseen. Even within the same brand of shoe, fit varies. I have to assume a very high returns rate is totally expected by online shoe retailers (and for that matter offline ones).
Even with the fancy foot scans I frequently have to do returns because the shape of my left heel is different than the shape of my right one. The overall length and with of the shoe as well as the height of the foot fits well, but the heel counter shape can cause a lot of trouble. I tend to buy another pair in the same model and size when I find a decent shoe, but obviously this doesn't work across models and brands. Last month I did 3 returns until I found an acceptable model.
I have to add its almost like this for other stuff. Its harder to showroom stuff and buy online now you need to order and return to try out. It isn't just clothes: laptops, furniture, nearly everything is likely to end up like this.
Your intuition is correct, at least in the product categories that I have experience with.
Anything over 2% returns to me generally indicates to me that something is wrong with the product or the product description is not clear enough.
In fact having a 30-40% return rate with a high enough volume will get a buyer banned from Amazon.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/banned-from-amazon-the-shoppers...
I never would have thought this till I started a relationship with a woman who buys several sizes of everything she shops for to ensure she gets the right fit. Women’s attire doesn’t have standard sizing so every brand is different. It’s a giant guessing game.
Basically, the industry needs some standards to help with all this waste.
My wife also buys a lot of clothes online, and indeed it's a matter of fitting and sending back what doesn't fit. I recently did it too: ordered two pairs of pants, one was fine, the other didn't look remotely like what I ordered, so I sent it back.
In shops, you can try them on. Online, I think it's unavoidable that people try them on at home and send more than half of their clothes purchases back.
Standardisation in the clothing business seems incredibly unlikely. And even when the size is technically correct, it can still be too uncomfortable. You just never know until you try it on.
If you want a truly universal sizing standard that will always guarantee correct sizes, it's going to have to be a lot more detailed than just one or two numbers. It would be a data dump nobody can remember. It might be interesting to have an online service that would remember such detailed sizing info for you and could produce clothes on demand with perfect fit.
You basically cannot provide enough measurement to ensure that clothing will fit.
There's an article about the US Air Force and the "average pilot" https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...
The gist of it is: The average pilot doesn't exists.
I'd assume it's not much different with clothing. While the length for instance may fit, the shape of a sleeve or trouser leg may prevent you from wearing it comfortably. You'd need a insane amount of measurement from each part of the body.
That being said, I do feel like the clothing industry could be doing better than they currently are.
Maybe with a full 3D scan of the body. But even then, clothes fit differently depending on the material: stretch, non-stretch, thick, thin, etc.
But everything would have to be pretty much tailor made. If you could do that on demand and automated, taking into account all these factors and making it as personalised as possible, that might really cut back on some clothes waste. But I have no idea whether this is technically possible, and it's definitely going to be a hard problem to solve.
In Australia, we have multiple stores that advertise free returns and include a return shipping bag. The whole idea is that you can return things that don't fit.
I'd assume similar services exist in other places, and the clothes may be sent to multiple customers.
>Basically, the industry needs some standards //
They futz with sizing because it's a part of their marketing. Fashion targeting older/ fatter people will have smaller sizing to flatter the customers.
I think buying clothes that don't fit just because you want to say it's a particular size is far more a part of female culture (in my social circles in the UK): womens' clothes are in "sizes", men's clothes are in measurements (inches/cms).
I don't think the industry, nor many of the customers for female fashion want accurate measurement-based sizing.
Women definitely want accurate sizing and it’s mostly a sexist hold over that we don’t have it. Shopping for women’s clothes is a gigantic pain.
I appreciate your sentiment, but men don't have accurate sizing either. S-M-L are completely inconsistent between brands and even within them. You have to be pretty aware of which brands vanity size, especially if your weight fluctuates. Buying something online is a crap-shoot, particularly if its from a company you've never purchased from before, or from a European or Asian brand.
Fortunately I’m one of the lucky women who has had the experience of buying both men’s and women’s clothing and I can tell you that the latter is unequivocally worse with regards to sizing consistency.
>Women’s attire doesn’t have standard sizing so every brand is different
Neither do men's attire. Even sizes that are meant to be standard (like the British/Italian/EU systems for shirt, jacket and pants sizing) aren't.
I don't buy anything from sellers that don't explicitly give the dimensions in centimetres anymore (which has become standard practice).
But that’s completely different from ordering from Amazon, and not even considered a return per se. Zappos and Zalando operate under this model where you try out different sizes and return the ones that don’t fit.
No it isn't, you can order clothes on Amazon and many women (and men) do.
Not only that, when I order clothes from Amazon they always come in a special plastic bag which is already prepared for re-sealing and return, instead of their signature cardboard boxes.
I guess the industry knows that the only way to sell clothes online is having more than half of them returned, no questions asked. It is probably cheaper than having physical stores to try them out, or even than standardizing clothes sizing: just let the client order the item in two or three sizes and return the ones that don't fit.
Can confim, my wife does this for me and herself.
IMO it's definitely exaggerated. If you're selling through Fulfillment by Amazon (as I did for years), the merchant is charged for the return shipping cost, which is often UPS Retail Pricing.
Considering the inbound shipping costs to the fulfillment center, the storage and handling costs, hard cost of the finished good, the cost of returning the item from Amazon to the merchant if it is deemed to no longer be "New" (or the choice by the merchant to destroy) plus Amazon's commission of 15-20% depending on the item category, a 30-40% return rate would make one's business unviable at best and bankrupt at worst.
> a 30-40% return rate would make one's business unviable at best and bankrupt at worst.
Amazon's retail business has poor profitability.
"Amazon's" Retail Business is great. They have third parties supply most of the inventory and take most of the risk. And then they collect the metrics and make their own knock-offs of the clear winners.
Few people probably abuse the system too much. There are scamming forums and services for Amazon refunds. Scammers take 10-20% of the item cost for refunding it without giving the original.
A trend I observed here among college students is buying clothes for a party or instagram selfie and then returning it.
Small sellers get screwed pretty hard. You should check their forums.
Wait, people genuinely buy clothes (although this is more like borrowing) just for the purpose of taking a selfie?
I can't even begin to comprehend how desperate they must be to look good and fit in.
Yes, this is so common that there is a name for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardrobing
Oh the practise I'm aware of, it was more the application of it which surprised me here. I guess it makes more sense (although that's stretching the definition of sense) when you apply it to influencers (a connection I failed to make initially).
Wait until you hear how much food foodie influencers throw away after they get their money shot (it's all of it.)
Back in the days of brick-and-mortar shopping there used to be people who bought a large screen TV shortly before a big sports game and then returned it afterwards. A lot of stores revised their return policies because of this.
I remember hearing from someone that in some parts of florida, the retirees would come down for the winter and just before returning to go back north, flock to the store and return a bunch of stuff.
My father in law will buy certain things (like a wedge pillow) that are too bulky to fly with, when he arrives at his destination. And then return it on the way back to the airport
I'm curious about the policy. "You can't return a TV if there has been a sports game on TV".
Just like the super bowl or World Series or whatever.
You could institute a restocking fee on any returns.
If the restocking fee is low enough, people would just consider it a rental fee. You'd need to make it close to 50% fee to discourage the massive returns
If the restocking fee accurately represents the cost to the store to repackage it and put it back out on the floor, and probably lower its price -- perhaps with a little left over -- then I think everyone comes out ok here. The returner gets to "rent" a TV for a weekend, and the retailer gets to pocket a little money for allowing the "rental" to happen, while covering the cost to resell the TV.
Best Buy doesn’t have that policy, I don’t think any of the major retailers do.
> A trend I observed here among college students is buying clothes for a party or instagram selfie and then returning it.
Ok, yeah, so buying something and finding a creative way to hide the tag so you can wear it to a single event and then return it is common enough that it's a decades-old TV/movie trope, but... buying something just to take a selfie for Instagram and then return it? What has the world come to...
It varies significantly between sectors.
I for one have the unfortunate problem that my clothing size is somewhere between M and L. Whenever I buy from a new manufacturer, I basically have to flip a coin if I pick the right one. So for some clothing products, I would definitely hit 50%.
And unlike many clothing stores, Amazon doesn't allow directly exchanging an item to change size. Instead, they treat an exchange as a refund followed by a new purchase (at the then-current price). When something is on sale, the discount may no longer apply by the time you go to exchange it—so if you're at all uncertain about the size you're better off ordering one of each up front, and then returning the ones that don't fit.
This is a well know problem with online clothes shopping by now. In the Netherlands 13% of all online purposes is returned, and between 30% and 60% (shoes) of clothing.
I have the same problem with my 200cm and slim posture. I have a handful of brands I can order blindly, but jeans in particular are a chore to get the right fit. I strongly prefer brick and mortar shops, but size availability varies.
People used to think that returned goods would just be freshened up and sold again — just like clothing you try on in a brick and mortar store — but the reality of the system is slowly getting understood thanks to investigative journalism worldwide.
A Dutch television program in this category concluded that returned clothes that are in good condition are often bound for for markets in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, where there is a demand for brand goods below or at the price of lower quality Chinese imports. Some brands don't want this because of brand dilution and fear of their products hitting the black market, so those items are simply destroyed instead.
Suggested solutions include charging a fee for returns, but that will have to be mandatory because people will just shop where the returns are free if left optional.
Personally I would like to see high street shops offer the option of trying on clothing ordered online at their shop for free (or others even if a good business model can be found), and have them handle the returns instead of this grossly unsustainable system we have now. By eliminating the risk of people abusing the system, the need to remove those items from the chain is diminished significantly; just like regular clothes shopping, but with the benefit of a much larger catalogue.
> Suggested solutions include charging a fee for returns, but that will have to be mandatory because people will just shop where the returns are free if left optional.
And the EU actually mandates a free 2-week return window based on the fact that you can't see the product before you buy.
Online "try before you buy" shopping, where you return everything you don't like, is more common than you'd think. Amazon actually uses this phrase as their pitch for the Prime Wardrobe program [1]:
[1] https://www.amazon.com/b?node=14807110011""" Try before you buy. Exclusively for Prime Members. 1. Choose up to 8 items. 2. Only pay for what you keep. 3. Free and easy returns. """It's important to note "sent back" doesn't imply "because it was defective".
People who pay for Prime do it specifically because it facilitates the way they shop. They buy a lot of stuff, figure out what they want, like, and need, and send the rest back.
It's completely normal, expected behavior in retail apparently.
I can confirm (via unverifiable sources sadly, so this is only anecdotal) that this number is at worst believable. I know of other online retailers that see similar return numbers.
Particularly in clothing.
From what I understand it is a relatively common practice to order 2-3 of a given item in different sizes, and to return the ones that don't fit.
And this is just the "honest returners", not even going into the whole "order this fancy clothing, wear it to a party, and then return it" "dishonest returners"
I used to work for Nordstrom who has an even better return policy than Amazon. For certain items, like women's dresses, return rates were up to 80%.
Part of this is because people will buy several sizes of the same item and return the ones that don't fit. The other part is people wearing it once then returning it.
30% seems really high. And I say that as someone who returns items more than most of my friends. My estimate is about 3-4% of items that I have returned over last 15 years of online shopping. And my friends think that is too high and guilt me for abusing the system. But maybe I should not feel as guilty.
The reasons I return items is usually false advertising. I used to spend hours reading reviews and product specs before buying. But now I don't have time to sift through reviews. And of course, fake reviews make it harder.
So all I got is maker's ads and if ads are lying then I don't feel guilty returning an item.
It seems most people have an attitude that if a buyer got duped with false advertisements then it is buyer's fault.
I have the same return philosophy as you. In 2019 and 2020 it has resulted in ~5% returns, in 2018 it resulted in 20% returns. Why? Athletic bluetooth earbuds. That single category was such a stinker that it singlehandedly quadrupled my return rate. 2015 had a similar spike when I started equipping an electronics lab, but 2016 and 2017 were fine. In any case, I think the reasonable return rate is a heavy function of what you're buying. One person's 10% return rate might be borderline fraudulent while another person's 30% return rate might be perfectly reasonable.
I was very surprised about my own Amazon usage today...
For the year 2020 (so far):
Amazon Orders: 231
Returns: 38
Return Percent: 16.45
Based on Gmail search:
amazon "your refund" after:2020/01/01 before:2021/01/01
For the year 2019:
Amazon Orders: 32
Returns: 11
Return Percent: 34.3
Based on Gmail search:
amazon "your refund" after:2019/01/01 before:2020/01/01
A couple of things to note, 2019 I was mostly buying and returning bras, shorts and shirts that my wife was trying on, because Target and other stores stopped carrying some of her favorites. Some of these clothing purchases actually spilled into early 2020.
2020 I am returning things a lot less because it's a lot of Pantry orders.
I’m more surprised about the huge number of orders you placed this year alone.
Compared to me: I have placed 197 Amazon orders since 2013, and have had 13 returns so far.
Refund can be for orders which they were unable to deliver. Example:- Groceries. I get refund if even 1 out of 30 items is not available, that isn't a return. Are these 38 in 2020 all returns?
Actually yeah, I think 2 things never showed up, so they were refunded automatically. So I guess that's 36 returns.
That's because returns are not due to faulty products, they are due to people trying to exploit the system.
I have bought hundreds of items on Amazon and never had to send back any. I bought thousands, of different types, on other services and I only ever had to send back two and that due to the fact the seller sent a wrong item.
I always do at least a very quick research regarding the seller and the item so that probably helps.
But the 30% I can understand is due to people who never intend to buy the product or buy a bunch of them to send some back.
I can sort of understand it in some of the categories (for example clothes) but I also see a lot of people proclaiming how smart they are because they surf on the wave of products they never pay for.
It’s relative. I rarely things. My wife will return 3 items for each she keeps. 30-40% seems roughly reasonable as an average when you factor in fraud.
I don't believe that stat at all. I've ordered way too many items, since 1999. I think I returned 1 or 2 in that 21 years.
QVC has an incredible return policy and their margins are built around it.
I do think that anything they cannot process properly should be handed off to charity groups who would get items in exchange for helping sort it all out. Then again, having seen my local St Vincents and Goodwill they to suffer overflow but at least with Amazon returns the items would be newer
Here in the Netherlands it is almost common for girls to shop and fit at home, the sent a lot of stuff back.
That is quite an insane number! What a waste or back and forth, and this because cities are not dense in the US and everything was built around cars. I probably return less than 5% of what I buy, but my gf returns a lot of the clothes she buys online.
Amazon sells so much garbage I'm not surprised that they end up tossing most of it.
I used prime for about a year, had probably a 50% return rate and ended up cancelling. Their items are so low quality it's not worth the effort.
There are lots of products I need to return multiple times before I get a good copy. Like my Dell 24 inch 4K monitor. Most of Amazon's warehouses are duds with faint grey lines across the screen, so you have to expect to order and return 3-4 times before you get a good one. The ones you return will probably of course be sent to other customers instead of getting sent back to Dell.
And there are the Samyang/Rokinon camera lenses as well -- you need to usually buy 3-4, test them out and keep the sharpest copy. Quality control issues on the manufacturer's side but it's a good deal if you're willing to deal with it.
Some sellers just suck at packaging. There are numerous products that are too easy to damage just by opening the packaging -- I received one item completely wrapped in 8 layers of bubble wrap followed by an entire coating of packing tape over 100% of it. It was nearly impossible to cut open without cutting into wires because you really don't know where the wires are under all that packaging.
Fortunately, the shipping costs of returns will always be on the seller. (Because you can't compete brick-and-mortar stores out of existence in part by having no return costs, and then later introduce these costs).
I never did a return, but I draw no conclusion from this statistical sample of one. I had no idea what is the percentage of returns, but I am quite disappointed by Amazon.
With all the fake items, I'd say that 30-40% sounds about right, and that a good portion of what is returned should be destroyed, not resold.
In Germany there are companies that buy up returns by the kilogram (mostly clothes), sometimes the e-commerce companies even pay them to take the goods off their backs. They then ship them to countries like Irak, Serbia or Lebanon to prevent those perfectly goood items to "flood" the European market. That way especially clothing brands protect their inflated prices.
So, then, why aren’t there companies doing the reverse: buying up the bulk clothing return boxes, not shipping them out of the country, but instead retailing them locally (and, indeed, “flooding” the domestic market in the process)?
Seems like exactly the sort of competitive strategy I’d expect from the “off-price” stores (TJ Maxx in the US, Winner’s in Canada, etc.).
Many companies does that, they buy the pallets and sell the stuff, sometime even on Amazon directly. There's plenty of Youtube video talking about it. There's even a shop near I live that even clearly advertise that they sell returns from Amazon.
It's way scarier the stuff they send directly to landfill. I know someone that works in chemical waste disposal and they had a deal with Walmart to take care of it all (I'm pretty sure they still do). She was taking back some pretty nice stuff that could easily be sold pretty easily.
I would assume it’s an issue of agreements with Amazon.
I think the alternative would be to destroy the fashion items. I prefer the method you describe. I’m not saying it’s right. It’s just how the world of fashion works.
Whether right or wrong it decimates the destination country’s market place. Food for thought.
I guess I really know nothing about economics... Sincere question: how does paying less for functionally/fashionably equivalent products hurt the economy of the country that's consuming them?
The same detrimental effects can happen with lots of aid given to Africa. Basically, the majority of Africa is clothed with first world hand-me-downs. The result is that there is virtually no market for home-grown clothing makers in Africa.
Think about it, the US has "anti-dumping" laws to protect US manufacturers, but we "dump" into other countries all the time in the form of "aid".
Are you really complaining about too much aid being given to a continent mostly stricken with extreme poverty?
I think the African people have more to worry about than supporting local clothing makers. The fact that they can be clothed cheaply allows them to concentrate on other problems they are facing.
See: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
> Are you really complaining about too much aid being given to a continent mostly stricken with extreme poverty?
Yes, absolutely, and there is plenty of evidence that a lot of this aid keeps Africa in extreme poverty.
This is not an extreme, or at this point even a particularly unusual, viewpoint. Some other sources that argue, convincingly in my opinion, why much of the aid given to Africa over the past 50 years has been counterproductive:
https://youtu.be/Jv4cAVzC8xM - good video about a Ghanaian entrepreneur and how NGO aid hurts the economic development of his country
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/13/why-t...
https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/-gYxhXHjOckC?hl=en
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2019/08/05/afri...
Ah, that makes plenty of sense. Thank you!
Isn't this just the broken window fallacy though? Creating work is not a good thing in and of itself.
It makes global economic sense to 'dump'. It just doesn't locally.
And to counter my earlier point, it makes sense globally if you value profit the same everywhere. But profit made by people in low income is worth a lot more. So are capital investments by those people.
This is the result of those people 'consuming more'. In more humane terms, this is the result of poor people having more of a need for money. But that is 2 different ways of saying the same thing.
The local makers of said clothing can’t compete with low prices and therefore go out of business.
This practice has resulted in it being impossible for local competitors to spring up in those places, incidentally. When your clothing market is flooded with nearly-free product from overseas, domestic competition becomes impossible. This would seem good for consumers superficially, but it winds up limiting economic growth and creating a dependence which is likely to eventually fail.
This is also a deep Youtube rabbit hole to dive into.
People buying returned stuff in bulk and seeing what happens, kinda similar to people buying rented warehouses when the lease expires.
Good thing they don't mind flooding the market in Iraq, Syria, or Lebanon!
Amazon has become an expensive place to shop for everyday items. I've found they typically don't have the best prices anymore and many of my tastes have changed over the years.
They are still super useful to find those hard to get parts that would typically be impossible to find locally or at least very expensive. Like a carburetor for a chainsaw or a part for an appliance, bearings for a hood fan motor, monitor arm, etc.
A lot of retailers have picked up their game when it comes to online shopping. Places like rockauto.com for auto parts are super competitive and offer a massive inventory (what a great acquisition it would be for AMZN to break into the auto parts sector). Newegg/MicroCenter for PC parts, Costco, etc.
But over all I can't remember the last time I had to return anything and my experience over the last 20 years has been a positive one.
While this may seem shocking, logistically it makes sense. It’s potentially easier to destroy or dump a returned product than re-preparing it for sale.
I went out on a date with a program manager for one of Amazon’s return programs and she told me her job was basically finding out ways to repurpose returns as cheaply as possible. Apparently destroying and dumping it’s the easiest and least resource consuming way to deal with returns.
In a similar note, search for Amazon Warehouse. That’s one of their programs for returned merchandise and sometimes I have found insane deals there. But you gotta check often.
> Apparently destroying and dumping it’s the easiest and less resource consuming way to deal with returns.
Not the least resource consuming - the least costly to amazon. There is a massive environmental cost to the practice - it's just externalized. If the companies involved (amazon, the manufacturer) had to bare the full environmental cost, the calculation would often come out different.
> Not the least resource consuming - the least costly to amazon.
I suspect that cost is a much better approximation of resource consumption than what feels wasteful, especially because it forces you to factor human time as a resource, which many environmental activists like to treat as infinite and free.
I would absolutely agree with you, IF externalities were priced into the cost. Things like environmental damage are not part of the cost of something, so amazon does not factor it into their decision.
If we had things like carbon taxes on goods, then amazon's decision would likely be much more optimal for the environment.
Imagine the cost, in both time and work, to create all of the iron ore, coal and all the other natural resources that go into a single piece of crap sold on amazon.
If that were priced into the crap, I'm sure having some humans spend a few of their hours on repurpuosing it would make financial sense.
It is priced in by the price of the item.
No, what's priced in is the cost of digging something up. Not the cost of creating it in the first place.
Also not priced in is the environmental cost of discarding the assembled product.
Edit: I might add that in the cost of digging up resources, in many cases the lives of the people doing the digging are not valued much more than the hours of the people doing the sorting of returned items. So that's something to think about as well.
> what's priced in is the cost of digging something up
Just to add to that, without carbon pricing the cost of digging up contains the fuel cost, but not the cost of emissions associated with burning that fuel to dig + process
Totally! That’s what I was going for. Least resource consuming but I’m talking about economic resources. Like man hours, packaging, transportation, etc.
The environmental impact is big! I hope this is being considered in their Climate Pledge.
If the environmental cost is dominated by shipping I could see destruction as more environmentally friendly. This is likely the for many small cheap items.
Fine, but two things are happenings:
1. It’s being hidden from consumers, who might adapt their behavior if they knew a return meant the trash.
2. Stuff is shipped back to amazon and then disposed of.
I’d they didn’t require step 2, their “return” rates would skyrocket though.
Their return policy is designed to make you buy things without thinking too hard about it or worrying about the quality - the "ah who cares, if it sucks I can just return it" mentality. That strategy means that you buy things you don't need, causing a TON of environmental externalities. So, yeah, they'd have more fraud - maybe their return policy isn't compatible with the environment. Maybe their profit margins are not compatible with the environment. Maybe... just maybe... their entire business model isn't compatible.
I imagine most consumers who return items would be throwing them away instead.
My thought was, if I knew it was being thrown out, I would be more careful about what I buy. I suspect a lot of people would feel the same way. It's like a mini trolley-problem, but for the guilt of throwing something perfectly good in the trash.
What about the dumping is not internalized? Do companies not pay for landfill? I know that historically companies would take their trucks up the river and dump it in and hope nobody noticed but I sort of doubt that Amazon does that today.
The cost of the landfill is a pittance compared to the ultimate full remediation cost, and damage to the environment.
Likewise the cost of pollution from all the shipping and manufacturing of the old and new items and returns is (almost) completely not bourne by Amazon.
There is a significant environmental cost to the logistics of refurbishing, storing, repackaging, and reshipping returned goods though.
Yup. That's why the most environmental move you can do is just to buy and consume less stuff.
Logistics pipelines are designed to efficiently flow in one direction only. At large scale if returns are handled at all, it has to be a separate system. In the extreme case of logistic pipelines into war zones it leads to what looks like extreme waste. There was an infamous case during the Vietnam war when enterprising journalists exposed how expensive stuff, the really big item being F4 Phantom jet engines, that could not be used were being destroyed on site. Some politicians got to profess outrage at the Pentagon's wastefulness and get air time on the evening news. I believe there were even congressional hearings into the case of the jet engines. There really is no other way in a wartime logistics pipeline. The cargo airplanes land one after another. All the labor and equipment is dedicated to unloading the airplane as fast as possible and loading on waiting trucks. The loaded trucks drive out the exit gate. Aircraft take off as soon as they are emptied to repeat a cargo run. Empty trucks come in the entry gate and queue up to go on the tarmac for loading. There is no room in the process for a loaded truck to enter the premise, or for an empty plane to wait around. There is no labor or equipment available to do loading in the reverse direction either. And that's just the simplified version. There are many more nodes in the system expecting unidirectional flow. The goal is to get as much stuff into the war zone as fast as possible. Anything deviating from this goal is wasteful.
The big bottleneck in Amazon's process is probably, among others, how inefficient it would be to restock individual items in the warehouse.
This reads like a rationalisation to me. I would guess that the forces that beat the US in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese & the Viet Cong, were far more parsimonious in their resource use and put effort into extracting their equipment.
Of course, in the Vietnam War, the corporations back in the US who were making huge profits in supplying the war weren't at all worried about equipment being wasted overseas and not returned. And so we're back at the US military industrial complex and all of its unethical madness, famously satirised by Heller in Catch-22.
These days there are also so many health and safety concerns that putting any items which had their packaging unsealed back on sale is a big risk unless they are carefully checked and tested. Often this is not cost effective or even doable at all.
I got a $350 Japanese made pump for my koi pond for $100 from warehouse. It was brand new but it leaked the oil from inside into the box so that’s why it was returned. I don’t even think it was turned on. Replaced the oil and works perfectly.
> It’s potentially easier to destroy or dump a returned product than re-preparing it for sale.
Why can't returned goods be resold as "open box" or "scratch and dent" products with missing or damaged packaging for a significant discount? Surely making some money is better than paying to dispose of it - not to mention the terrible optics when you get caught.
> "Why can't returned goods be resold as "open box" or "scratch and dent" products with missing or damaged packaging for a significant discount?"
Most likely because a person has to carefully inspect and repackage it (expensive and the volume is large) and it's a separate inventory category that has to be managed and have separate storage space allocated for it (another expense) and, on top of all that, it doesn't bring in as much money as a new item. And if there was some problem or damage that wasn't caught by the inspection, it's yet another return.
The difficulty of managing customer returned items is common to all retailers and has been known for a while, e.g.:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/10/growing-online-sales-means-m...
https://money.cnn.com/2017/12/26/news/retail-returns-landfil...
> Apparently destroying and dumping it’s the easiest and least resource consuming way to deal with returns.
They used to routinely ask the customer to destroy and dump the items, which was certainly less marginally costly. (If it encouraged more abuse, that cost is borne by other business units)
I wonder why someone couldn’t build a business like this. Basically contract with Amazon to handle all of their returns. That company then salvages and resells anything they can.
That's what happens. That's the "liquidators" the article/video is referring to, and most of the stuff goes there.
Can't do that with e.g. counterfeits though, or with products that may be dangerous.
And not everything is resellable in practice. To resell something you need to 1. determine what you have (not just the product but also the state it is in), 2. have someone who wants it, 3. that person needs to be willing to accept the risk of getting a used/substandard product (higher risk of it arriving broken), 4. you have to find that person, 5. you have to get the product to that person, 6. you have to manage the whole overhead of the process (additional shipping, sorting, testing, ...).
Each of these steps is associated with costs, both financial and environmental (the latter will skyrocket as soon as you start e.g. attributing some of the environmental footprint of the people whose labor you spend on these tasks to those tasks).
It's very unlikely that Amazon wouldn't optimize something so obvious.
Once the returns are generated, there's probably not much of a better way to deal with it. However, if you ban returns, online shopping becomes less attractive - people will use retail stores again. Which also toss stuff that doesn't sell, use a lot more real estate, air conditioning, and again, human labor. There's a reason online is often cheaper, and it may well be "cheaper" (better) for the environment too, despite the waste.
They do. Look up amazon pallet videos.
Everyone in the chain is complicit... people who carelessly order things, suppliers who decide it's cheaper to just let Amazon handle their returns, and Amazon who is stuck dealing with returns.
If we're going to fix something, it really aught to be food waste!
The amount of food that gets disposed of daily - while millions go hungry - is humanities greatest issue - not unwanted coveralls.
How long does it take food to decompose versus a pair of coveralls?
This is one of those situations where saying "this problem isn't important, look at X," isn't the best strategy. We have to solve _waste_ in general. Different types will have different solutions.
> This is one of those situations where saying "this problem isn't important, look at X,"
It's all about directing (our extremely limited) focus on issues with a higher priority. Food insecurity (even in North America) is a significantly bigger problem than Amazon returns.
A lot of food ends up in the landfill where it doesn't decompose, which is truly a waste.
Sure, but just try telling hipsters that you need to put preservatives on their food to keep it good long enough to get it into the hands of the less fortunate.
The GPS tracker technique does not seem foolproof, basic QA on returned goods would likely be trashing the GPS trackers.
yeah. what people don’t understand is that the return has to be processed when it comes back. in an ideal world anything like a GPS tracker would surely be discovered.
there are also several issue with how the return may go. amazon may tell you to just keep the item (if the cost of shipping + processing the return is higher that the actual product price / margin on the item). they may decide that the item is in not good condition when it comes back. the packaging may be missing parts or damaged. i would guess that a lot of items don’t make it through the process.
also i would guess that because Amazon keeps existing and making a profit they have this baked into their business model. Also I would be shocked if the return rate is 30-40%. Again guessing, I would say it’s probably 1-2%. A lot of people buy shit they don’t need and keep it.
As far as “hacking the system” I think that they should have a system in place to track how many things you return (and if they were in good condition/could be resold) and how much money they made on your purchases. If overall you’re a net negative I would not be surprised if your account got suspended/banned. Why would they do business with you if you’re a bad actor?
You could surely hide it easily enough in the cardboard? Just wrap it over in parcel tape. The people at the other end will just assume you went a bit overboard in packing.
I think it's safe to assume that the returned item gets taken out of the box that you ship it back to them in, which is then discarded (along with the taped-on tracking device).
GPS emits an EMF, should be easy catch if you are trying.
Also, I wonder if you can catch it with batteries. Does amazon make the seller list the type of battery in their product?
I very much doubt any returns are scanned for GPS wavelength EMF.
this sounds like someone who isn’t thinking about all the edge cases for nuts returning stuff. i would not be surprised if there was a protocol in place for screening against all kinds of things (with emf being the small potatoes)
yes. that’s why i said that it should be caught but probably is not.
it’s also probably borderline illegal to do this kind of things
My read of that was that so little human attention is devoted to returned items that no one noticed a super-suspicious greenboard kicking around in the box.
Everyone probably noticed, but didn't care. I imagine they see a lot of returns where the customer forgot to empty the pockets, or something got mixed in with the returns, etc.
Which would explain why the clothing "went" to an electronic recycler (tracker removed and tossed into e-waste).
I also wonder how much is handled by weight. Weight of returned product != expected weight of product -> something is off and it's probably not worth figuring out.
This. The false positive rate is unknown and therefore the data could be highly misleading.
Exactly, a GPS tracker in the landfill != product in the landfill.
So this was a lot about Amazon, but it leaves out comparisons to any other store. What do others do? Is this the common practice?
I don't know what it's like now, but, when I worked at Best Buy in the 90s, we had a couple of shoulder height palletized bins in the back. If a customer brought something back with a "didn't work" reason, it went in the bin.
We threw items in the bin from a distance, so they were definitely unsellable. I'm sure that lots of merchandise that would have been functional/sellable ended up being thrown out.
Devo!
I remember as a pc tech (before they did that geek squad stuff) having to validate computer returns. The amount of stuff people would pull daily always amazed me. Putting bricks in a computer box, an old video card for a matrix vga card, the most wild was some video equipment where they replaced it with a two liter bottle of urine. I remember confronting people once I opened it and they would always pull the "well my son packed it and gave it to me" and promptly leave (with their item). They usually worked multiple stores in the area and sometimes we'd chat with the other stores, but usually that was for the bigger scams (people using altered receipts, asking for cash refunds on multi thousand dollar purchases).
It is standard practice in the industry, and certainly any by any profitable retailer. In fact it was a story by an executive about how much money it was costing the company to manage returns, and it was far cheaper to just throw them away. It surprised me at first, but I came to learn that this is just how it is done.
I am disappointed by CBC making a click bait Amazon story, when it is actually the story of retail that our unconscious civilization ignores. CBC does mention this later in the article.
I feel the worst about mattresses getting returned. I'm tempted to buy a new bed (it's just that time), but not being able to try them out, I'd feel bad returning one if I didn't like it. Those things are huge and hard to recycle, and you can't exactly resell them.
Depending on the company, they are often donated to homeless shelters and other places. But yes they generate a lot of waste too.
It's possible to resell nicer mattresses on Craigslist. CA also has a mandated recycling fee imposed on their sale now.
But it’s foam. So what they’ll shred it and put it in a trash bag?
Bean bag chairs, punching bags, who knows what else.
I'm reminded of the Simpson's lunch lady: "There's very little meat in these gym mats" as she's grinding them into meatloaf.
I'm more concerned now since who knows with the virus what the right way of possibly sanitizing a mattress would take that nobody will be taking them for a while.
I mean bedbugs are gonna live in the mattress far longer than a virus.
> Kevin Lyons, an associate professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey who specializes in supply chain management and environmental policy, says that 30 to 40 per cent of all online purchases are sent back. That number drops to less than ten per cent for merchandise bought at bricks and mortar stores.
What the hell? I rarely return either, but find myself returning online merchandise even less often than brick and mortar simply because of the inconvenience of managing packing and shipping.
How are people returning 30-40% of everything they purchase online?
At this point I assume massive waste in every industry until proven otherwise. Massive waste in the food industry really distresses me.
I made this comment in reply to another post:
The important part of this article is the critique of the powerful monopolistic corporate player, Amazon:
"[Amazon] did write the playbook on free returns, says Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at Publicis Groupe, a global marketing and advertising agency.
The tactic of enticing customers to buy more than they need and return what they don't want "has had tragic repercussions for the environment and business," he says."
It seems to me like the HN community sometimes nitpicks over tiny details and fails to take part in the larger systemic critiques. Are there others who are also frustrated by the lack of larger, systemic critiques?
A Staples by where I used to live threw anything returned away. Used to dumpster dive there and got all kinds of interesting things. Perfectly good stationary, an expensive suitcase, an office chair, a PC (which was on the of cash registers but still neat).
> Fulfillment by Amazon Donations, which Amazon says will help sellers send returns directly to charities instead of disposing of them.
So the seller ends up having to take the loss?
The seller has the option of taking the item back if they prefer. If they don't want it back, they can donate it.
Well, everyone who buys from the seller splits the loss. No doubt it's built into their prices.
Yes, and it's a serious problem.
But they at least get a tax write off for a percentage of the value of the donation.
No. It's not "at least they get a tax write off", because that implies a benefit, such as when paying profits to a charity you want to support anyway.
With these returned items, the seller just loses money and has a lower income than if they could resell them.
Their tax goes down because of returns, but that's just normal income tax because their income goes down.
If they didn't donate the goods, just threw them away, they would pay exactly the same tax. So there is no tax benefit gained from donating.
As someone who never, ever returns online purchases (even in the 1/100 cases where I'm genuinely unhappy with what I got), I would love the ability to shop at a 10-20% discount at an online store (or some setting on Amazon) which completely disallows returns. You buy it, you keep it. Always.
Would love to stop subsidizing the indecisive, the scammers, the people who can't bother to research products before they buy, etc.
It could be that tracker was noticed and sent to landfill, not the item
I hate to say it, but the decadence of first world countries is truly a burden on this planet.
How did they make sure that the entire backpack was returned, not just the tracker tossed?
Why not have the customer hold onto the return item until another customer buys it as used on amazon, and the return label ships directly to the new customer? Sure people could send unacceptable returns, but couldn't that be mitigated by losing the privilege to return in that way with amazon? It still seems better than the alternatives of throwing it away.
If you were just dealing with commodity items and trustworthy customers you might be able to get this to work. But I think in the real world it would break down quickly.
First problem: When do you credit the refund?
If you credit it right away, what happens if the customer subsequently loses the item? Even assuming you can simply rebill them, you've still pissed off the new purchaser who was expecting that item to be available.
If you don't issue the refund until the new buyer confirms receipt (which aligns some incentives of your returner) then what happens if it takes months to sell? Defer too long and you've pissed off the old customer and effectively reneged on your return policy (not to mention forced them to store your item without compensation).
Next problem: How do you apportion blame if old customer says they sent it in good condition and new customer says it arrived damaged? You have no way of knowing who's right. Do you just write it off?
My gut says you'll run into more issues as you flesh this out. e.g. The "speediness" of your brand will tarnish when customers drag their heels to ship things out (sorry, I'm on vacation, will have to wait until i get back). Human nature will tempt people to "borrow" the item while they're holding onto it for you. If you thought inventory control was hard with a bunch of warehouses fully under your control, imagine what it'll be like after you crowdsource it out to a bunch of consumers.
Amazon already let's you just keep low-value items that cost more to ship back than they're worth. The upside of your idea to Amazon seems small, and I see so much opportunity for abuse.
If you think you can solve the challenges, maybe you can launch a decentralized inventory startup. Would be worth a ton if you do manage to get it to work.
I think you're right there would be huge challenges you mentioned. But I still think that the smarts of modern IT business-logic coupled with the scale of a company like amazon could at least do better than throwing it away in many cases.
Amazon is very customer-centric company. Given the huge pain this kind of system could cause for customers is my guess why they haven't rolled-out any attempts at a solution to the general public.
It's a fascinating problem to me. I've been buying/selling on eBay for 10 years. I also sell on Facebook marketplace for hard-to-ship items. I've learned that if you buy and sell used, you can essentially rent certain things for very cheap, which is a problem set and solution that has a lot in common with amazon's product return problem.
We have known for awhile that online shopping is hurting the planet. Alibaba and Amazon are a huge part of the problem as the biggest online retailer in the world. with packaging thrown out and returns often destroyed. There are efforts to mitigate this but they are insufficient and need to be further developed.
Rhetorical question: if the returns are unsellable, why don't they give them away for free to the poor?
It says they have a program to donate the items to charity in the US and UK, but it's not available in Canada.
Because people who get free things don’t buy things. It doesn’t make economic sense.
People who are too poor to buy things won't buy any fewer things just because they get free things. They'll just have more things that they can resell for more money, which they will likely use to buy things they actually need.
Giving money--even indirectly--to poor people makes economic sense because they'll spend it on goods and services that keep other people employed.
Punishing the poor out of some moral imperative is economically destructive.
From the point of view of manufacturers not having their stuff bought, it doesn't matter if these people spend their money on other things.
Amazon disposes of it, but how much is the manufacturer involved? Who foots the bill in the end?
Near the end of the CBC Marketplace video, they show a vendor contract and state that the vendor pays either the shipping costs to receive the returned item or the disposal cost otherwise.
The reporting seems oblivious to the cost of humans making resell/reuse/repair/recycle/disposal decisions at this scale.
Learning about this, I'm half-way tempted to return an empty box and donate the actual item to charity. I mean, I usually get my refund 5 minutes after the UPS guy scans the label. Do you think they do anything beyond that?
That's still fraud, even if your heart is in the right place.
Theres a guy on youtube who buys Amazon returns by the pallet and then sells it on. Its quite eye-opening. http://resalerabbit.com/
I wonder if Amazon will pursue these folks - they ordered items intending to return them. Got to violate some terms and conditions somewhere.
Huh I thought these would be resold as "Amazon Warehouse" returned items. I've bought several of those and they were definitely used.
With the amount of food and goods wasted (probably approaching 50%), it’s amazing we have an economy where half the people’s effort is wasted.
Now compare these lies of recycling goods and plastic with the other lie of harvesting trees for paper pulp. ;-)
It's a perfect animal farm!
To save you the trouble of loading the page: the Amazon returns they tracked for this article ended up in a landfill.
I'm not sure you actually read the article. They bought 12 items and one went to landfill (which Amazon said was because it arrived damaged). What they describe is pretty egregious, but not all returns go to landfill - some are resold, some are sold in bulk, and some go to landfill.
Wow. You’re right. Thank you for correcting me!
I guess this means you can buy stuff, return a box with trash inside, get the money back and keep the stuff. Sweet!
That's like the most common scam on Amazon. Many of the packages are put back on the shelves/on sale without being checked, so some other buyer gets it and either has to (once again) return it or lose their money. It's pretty ridiculous.
Amazon prime creates bad shopping habits and Amazon needs to be responsible for the extra emissions and returns.
Yes. In a perfect world there would be no externalities. All costs would be charged.
If the return rate is truly 30-40% wouldn’t this be easily proven by quarterly income statements? Even at the generous assumption that every item is sold for double the wholesale price if 1 of 3 packages are returned and tossed/recycled or otherwise not resold I can’t imagine Amazon being even close to profitable as a retailer. I know Amazon was famously unprofitable for years but those days are gone now right?
How do these trackers read a GPS signal from inside these bulky items, plus packaged, plus inside a building?
Newer GPS chips are downright magical. Several years ago, I had a 5-series Ublox get a signal when, as a joke, I soldered a trimmed stub of paperclip to its antenna pin. No tuned patch antenna, no polarization sensitivity, no preamp, no SAW filter, just a piece of wire that I eyeballed to be roughly probably something like a quarter-wave at 1.5GHz. Ish.
It got a fix in about 3 minutes, indoors, on a workbench, under 2 shelves of equipment and parts, in a part of a building with a double roof.
And that was the 5th generation chipset. We're on the 9th now, and they're much, much, much more sensitive.
All the habits and assumptions I learned with my 2002-era Garmin eTrex no longer apply.
I have some GPS data loggers that can do that. The fix isn't great or very accurate indoors, but it's probably good enough for this purpose.
It's insane to me that ONE of their returns traveled 105 miles around the city of Toronto alone.
It is unintuitive that an overnight package sent from Mississauga to Milton would go to Atlanta first, but that is the key insight Fred Smith had when he created FedEx. Regarding the CBC returns featured in the video, the 105 mile detour and the denim coveralls going to an electronics recycling facility support FedEx's strategy: exceptions in the normal processing workflow are error prone and expensive relative to the extra transportation costs.
The assumptions underlying the criticism of Amazon's and FedEx's strategy is that landfill costs and/or transportation costs do not represent the true cost to society.
I think the majority of people don’t return stuff because it is such a pain to find a UPS store.
When I called them last week, they offered to repair a faulty hard drive (clicking noises, SMART errors through the roof) ...
If they try to repair an irreparable hard drive but throw perfectly good items like a bag they're quite dysfunctional.
And their inability to send all the ordered items in ONE package is irritating too.
The pinnacle of consumerism!
Jain likes the convenience of online shopping but worries about Amazon's carbon footprint.
What is this article about exactly?
Am I the only one worried about:
* The privacy of consumers who might eventually buy some of the stuff stuffed with their trackers.
* The scene at 1:49 where it appears they put a tracker in a plastic bag inside something like a coffee kettle.
* Sticking a tracker to a kid's toy.
What the hell is wrong with these people? I get they wanted to do a great investigation, but this seems so wrong to me...
> The privacy of consumers who might eventually buy some of the stuff stuffed with their trackers.
I don't share your concern here. CBC is a reputable org. They can just turn off the trackers if the items appear to be getting re-sold to an end-consumer. Even then, I don't think it would be a privacy violation for a journalist to go and talk to them and say "hey did you know this was a returned item?" etc.
If the kids toy made it into the hands of a kid without that tracker being noticed, I'd have deeper concerns. I.e. what's stopping someone from putting razorblades or some toxic checmical in a kids toy and returning it? Someone needs to check over returned items for basic quality, and should DEFINITELY notice the massive tracker.
Yes, you’re the only one. Anybody could put a tracker inside items they’re returning, it’s on Amazon to inspect returned items, which any brick-and-mortar store would do.
Journalists tend to get a little more leeway for investigative purposes. And presumably they followed up and retrieved these trackers in some way. And will get rid of any personal information about the people who received the items.
Also, note they were expecting most or all of them to end up in landfills, them finding homes is an ideal outcome, but maybe not expected.
It also says something about the quality of returned merchandise and inspection of it: Amazon didn't find and remove the tracking devices, the products "looked fine" and were sent on their way. Perhaps that's one reason Amazon prefers to just toss stuff.
That’s an interesting ethics angle. Certainly a potential issue, but not likely to be an actual problem. They’d know where the item ended up, but not much about who it ended up with. Kid’s toys go to adults first on average. Knowing I bought a backpack on Amazon doesn’t say much, a little weird, but far better than a phone’s location tracking.
If the items were sensitive in some way (bondage equipment, say, or doctored home security equipment) then certainly.
> The tactic of enticing customers to buy more than they need and return what they don't want "has had tragic repercussions for the environment and business," he says.
That's disingenuous. I've never purchased "more than I need" from Amazon. But probably about 10% of items purchased for the first time simply aren't as advertised -- not Amazon's fault, but the manufacturer's. They don't meet the needs you bought them for, so you have no choice but to return them. And of course clothing is notorious, because manufacturers still insist on making up their own idiosyncratic definitions of S/M/L, when simply providing measurements in inches or centimeters would fix most problems. (Also color-accurate photography, for when the item listed and photographed as red turns out to be orange-pink.)
> "You're lucky if half of all returns can still be sold as new, so a huge amount of merchandise has to be dispositioned via some other means — liquidation, refurbishment, recycling, or landfill."
Yup, that's just how it works. That's why I buy a lot of stuff "open box" off eBay -- especially things like dongles, adapters, cheap peripherals. They all come from returns from places like Amazon and Best Buy, but are half the price. It's great.
This article isn't surprising, except for one data point about a single bag that wasn't resold. But they're probably hiring minimum-wage workers to categorize returns, who make errors.
There isn't really anything new in this article.
> > The tactic of enticing customers to buy more than they need and return what they don't want "has had tragic repercussions for the environment and business," he says.
> That's disingenuous. I've never purchased "more than I need" from Amazon
It's a stretch to extrapolate from your singular experience to accuse the author of acting in bad faith.
No, this is absolutely a "thing", and I know several people who shop clothes from Amazon this way. It is incredibly wasteful.
> idiosyncratic definitions of S/M/L
Its called vanity sizing. Basically people buy more clothes if they don't feel like they are buying fat/anorexic size clothes.
> That's disingenuous. I've never purchased "more than I need" from Amazon.
My guess is you've never purchased clothes then. Regardless, this is your own individual experience and doesn't represent the trend as a whole.
Literally three sentences later they talk about buying clothes.