[HN Gopher] Stores weigh paying you not to bring back unwanted i...
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Stores weigh paying you not to bring back unwanted items
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 50 points
Date : 2022-07-06 10:35 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| bombcar wrote:
| Amazon has done this once in a while, but I can't figure what
| triggers it.
| wincy wrote:
| I tried to return a king size mattress to Amazon, now I have an
| extra mattress I got for free.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| This is relatively standard for mattresses. Too many
| regulations surrounding their resale so many places will just
| ask you to "pretty please" donate it so they can write it off
| as a donation.
| notyourwork wrote:
| I find it odd that one item has so many regulations but
| others that I consider in the same category don't. I can
| return towels and bathing suits for example. Why are
| mattresses so heavily regulated like this but other items
| with similar surfaces for problem are not?
| codefreeordie wrote:
| 1) regulations rarely make that much sense, but also
|
| 2) bed bugs
| criddell wrote:
| Sometimes it's shipping costs. I bought a treadmill and the
| heartrate monitor was flaky so I called Amazon to get a return
| label and I was offered something like $250 to keep it.
| Maxburn wrote:
| I believe you are right. I tried to return a heavy trailer
| lock as it was the wrong size. Full refund and they did not
| want it back.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I assume it's shipping cost. as well I bought a Timex watch
| for about 30 to 50 euros, and the calendar broke on it in a
| couple of weeks. Contacted Amazon.co.uk before I went to bed,
| and the next morning they told me to keep the watch and
| they'd send me a new one.
|
| I'm guessing that me shipping that watch from Finland to the
| UK would've cost way too much.
|
| I did have to ship in a broken Seagate HDD back to Amazon.de
| on their dime though, so it's not just them not wanting
| broken goods back. Although that might also be Seagate
| wanting it back for warranty purposes even though I went
| through Amazon?
| bombcar wrote:
| I think warranty process, whether it's sold by Amazon vs
| fulfilled by them (the latter being charged for return
| shipping, likely) and whether they think it's "actually OK
| and can be resold" all factor into it.
|
| What would be sneaky would be for UPS to sell Amazon things
| that look to the customer like a return label, but they
| just throw it in the trash without shipping it ...
| AustinDev wrote:
| Weight... There was a time my friend was rather displeased with
| Amazon with how they treated their small company. So they wrote
| a script to find all the heaviest items they had that allowed 1
| or 2 day shipping. Over the course of a month they ordered
| nearly 2 tons of safes and other heavy objects with express
| delivery options. They returned most (yep they sent them the
| label to ship back a 500 lb rifle safe) but gave away some of
| the safes to friends and donated some of the furniture.
|
| Most of the SKUs they ordered are no longer eligible for prime
| delivery. This was several years ago.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| It's definitely not just weight - I ordered two different
| sizes of high-visibility mesh vests (basically almost
| weightless) and when I went to return one, Amazon told me to
| keep it. I think it was about a $10-12 item.
|
| The only other time this has happened for me was with some
| wine glasses; one out of the four in the package (single
| stock unit) was broken and they said I should keep the item.
| I guess in general they're not interested in receiving broken
| glass returns.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| On the other hand, I got a hair pomade in a small glass jar
| that broke during shipping. I tried to get a refund option
| without returning, but wouldn't let me. So I sent a plastic
| bag full of hair pomade and broken glass back to Amazon...
| robotnikman wrote:
| Anecdotal, but I heard from a friend that one of his friends
| was able to get a $2000 laptop on Amazon by complaining that
| the screen was cracked (it wasn't) and they were told to just
| keep it. They were then issued a full refund.
| skyyler wrote:
| I tried to return a $4 allen key and they told me to just keep
| it. Couldn't have weighed more than 100 grams.
| pengaru wrote:
| The average quality of consumer goods has deteriorated so far
| that it's practically all trash on arrival. Of course they don't
| want returns coming back, it's a big fat waste stream and they
| want nothing to do with it beyond skimming their take as it blows
| past.
|
| Instead we should be forcing stores to not only _always_ accept
| unwanted items, if anything to encourage them to exercise more
| care preventing low-quality /counterfeit/misrepresented products.
| But to also be at least partially responsible for the total
| waste/recycling burden their sales create.
|
| > Whenever someone hands me a flyer, it's kind of like they're
| saying "here, you throw this away." - Mitch Hedberg
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Returning products does use energy though, often in the form of
| gas or diesel. It may be more ecological to simply ask
| consumers to destroy some items such as plastic totes (bulky)
| or masonry (heavy).
| alangibson wrote:
| This has me wondering if there's an opportunity for an online
| retailer that doesn't take returns (except where required by law)
| in exchange for reduced prices. Maybe their platform could
| include an integrated eBay like marketplace for selling what
| would have been returned.
| patrickthebold wrote:
| Jet.com did something like that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet.com#Features
| alangibson wrote:
| > If the user waived their right to return an item, the item
| decreased in price
|
| That's a smart approach. Make it the consumers choice.
|
| I would make the modification of allowing buyers to list the
| stuff they don't want right back on the site and ship it
| consumer-to-consumer.
| kirykl wrote:
| Woot.com used to have this no return/low price model, before
| they were bought by Amazon. Now they take returns but charge
| for the shipping
| alangibson wrote:
| It's such an obvious idea that it almost certainly has to be
| deeply flawed, given that no one still in business is doing
| it.
| bsedlm wrote:
| truly we are living in the age of abundance... but as there are
| more and more material widgets and stuff, so does the quantity of
| garbage increase
| 8jef wrote:
| Just had a taco salad combo from the red haired girl fast food
| chain. It's made out of 10 individual plastic parts (salad bowl
| and cover, sour cream cup, nacho chips bag, chili cup cover,
| fork and fork packaging, salsa cup, water bottle and cap), 2
| cardboard (fries and chili cup), a cover for sour cream
| (unidentified material) and an aluminum cover for the salsa
| cup. I feel sick now.
| vidanay wrote:
| I tried to purchase lunch from the red haired girl a couple
| of weeks ago, and after waiting in line for 20 minutes I left
| and went to see the clown (where I got to wait another 10
| minutes).
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > I feel sick now.
|
| That's because the lettuce in the salad was supplied with so
| little margin that the $1/hour migrant workers harvesting it
| aren't given anywhere sensible to defecate.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Recently I bought about $2.5K worth of credit card readers from a
| credit card processor. During the integration process it turned
| out the processor was untrustworthy and a terrible partner
| (that's a whole other story) and so I looked into returning the
| equipment. I saw on their website they were going to charge a 25%
| restocking fee which really sucked (this is for a side-project)
| but it was worth it to drop them as my processor. After waiting
| 3+ days (and multiple calls/tickets) they finally replied to me
| "We've refunded you, please take the equipment to the nearest
| electronic recycling plant". I was very surprised (and a little
| happy I got back the full price).
|
| Just to make it clear, these were battery-powered card readers
| (VP3300's [0]) that were still in their boxes with the original
| cords. I was shocked they wanted me to just throw them away. They
| are also very small and the box that held them all wasn't big or
| heavy.
|
| [0] https://idtechproducts.com/products/mobile-payment-
| solutions...
| analog31 wrote:
| They may have been drop shipped to you, and the business has no
| physical presence where they can accept and process a return.
| yurymik wrote:
| On the other hand, what guarantees do they have that you
| haven't tampered with the readers? Are they able or can afford
| to disassemble every single one of them to inspect?
| antisthenes wrote:
| Good point. The readers are probably so high-margin that it's
| not worth it to spend any labor inspecting used/returned
| units.
| eastbound wrote:
| If you use or give them away, their serial ID may be
| blacklisted. Nvidia has marked items as stolen goods in the
| past.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Nobody knows where that return label is going to take it, just
| send it off to a charity or something.
| munificent wrote:
| Have you ever seen the inside of a book where there's a warning
| label that says you shouldn't have bought the book if it didn't
| have a cover?
|
| That's for the same reason. The way books are sold works like
| this:
|
| 1. The publisher prints a whole pile of them.
|
| 2. Booksellers order a bunch. Because both publisher and
| bookseller want to maximize sales and avoid turning away a
| customer because they don't have enough copies of the book, the
| bookseller orders more than they expect to sell.
|
| 3. Once the sales have tapered off, the bookseller is stuck with
| unsold merchandise. They could send them back to the publisher,
| but the last thing in the world the publisher wants is more
| copies of a product they themselves can mass manufacture. So,
| instead, the bookseller just destroys them and tells the
| publisher how many weren't sold so they can be refunded.
|
| 4. Of course, a nefarious bookshop could simply _claim_ that the
| books were unsold and then get to sell books that they didn 't
| pay for and pocket the profit. To prevent that, the publisher
| requires them to cut the covers off and ship those back. Shipping
| just the covers is much cheaper than shipping the entire book and
| serves to ensure that every book was indeed not sold. Then the
| bookseller trashes the rest of the book.
|
| 5. Of course, this scheme only works if the bookseller can't
| _sell_ a coverless book. So the publisher prints the warning
| inside the book to remind customers not to buy them like that.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| TIL
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I remember going to several questionable bookshops that sold
| coverless books quite cheaply (frequently $1/$2 for a lb of
| books). As a kid it was an excellent way to stock up on books.
| jancsika wrote:
| > So the publisher prints the warning inside the book to remind
| customers not to buy them like that.
|
| But the publisher's warning also _verifies_ that it 's a bona
| fide copy.
|
| Just imagining...
|
| _Dear downloader: please make sure the file with the sha1 hash
| fingerprint "34973274" is accompanied with a physical copy of
| our famous hologram logo sticker. If you don't have the sticker
| then STOP-- do not open the program to view the contents._
| DangitBobby wrote:
| If no one acts on that information then sure, sounds like a plan.
| But I suspect many people would buy things they don't even really
| want and "return" them hoping to get free shit once word gets
| out, making the problem even worse.
| codefreeordie wrote:
| that's where simple statistical models come in. The first few
| times you want your money back, you get it no-questions-asked.
| The more of an outlier you become, the less likely you are to
| get your refund approved.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| This won't end well if they take this approach. Better to just
| charge for returns or raise prices.
| uoaei wrote:
| Lowering prices would achieve the desired effect, not raising
| them. Unsold inventory is a cost for the company... so better
| to make it not worth it to the consumer to drive back to the
| store for less money.
| pengaru wrote:
| fleddr wrote:
| One of my friends is such a "liquidator", he buys up both excess
| inventory (never sold) and returned items for rock bottom prices.
|
| He has developed a keen sense in finding the profitable jewels.
| For example, women's cosmetics. They are unused (damaged boxes
| and such), he buys them up < 10% of the retail price then puts
| them up at 90% retail price on his own website.
|
| Women are spamming him to death. When do you have the cheap "item
| X" again?
|
| It should be said though that it's a very laborious business
| model. He needs to quality check, inventorize, publish, tax
| report, etc on a huge amount of items. He has a "no return"
| policy. Which is actually illegal here (Netherlands), but he
| seems to get away with it as nobody bothers with a 5$ item.
| rasz wrote:
| Aka the Chinese shit we make you overpay for is worth less than
| postage cost.
| twblalock wrote:
| Postage is not the only cost. After receiving the return the
| retailer would also need to inspect and restock it, or dispose
| of it themselves. At some point the labor costs just aren't
| worth it.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Or the margin on them is so small that they take less loss
| letting you keep the item instead of paying shipping and adding
| to the loss of an item that may not be re-sellable.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I believe they have liquidators who will take returned items
| and sell them. I think it's more of a matter of expense of
| handling return > fee liquidator would pay, and that probably
| indicates it's cheap Chinese crap.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I had Amazon do this reciently. Had a pair of side tables arrive
| damaged, asked for a return label, and they just credited my
| account and told me to keep or donate them.
| layer8 wrote:
| Amazon has been doing that for quite some time (many years),
| for products where they estimate it'll be the less costly
| option.
| Arrath wrote:
| Absolutely. My roommate at the time received his order, as
| well as a gigantic projector screen he absolutely did not
| order. This was 2014 or 2015. Once he contacted Amazon, they
| told him just to keep it.
| Pyrodogg wrote:
| In Finland a major sorts retailer, XXL, was just found to be
| destroying returned things
|
| https://yle.fi/news/3-12499114
| aasasd wrote:
| Still people are gonna keep saying that China pollutes, and not
| that the US pays them to pollute because the US consumerism is
| off the charts.
|
| One good thing about the coming of the Facebookverse is that
| USians then won't need to buy new clothes every week in the
| _real_ world.
| ausbah wrote:
| but everything will be in the metaverse-blockchain-thing so is
| it really any better
| aasasd wrote:
| Facebook money will be issued and tallied by Facebook anyway,
| so there's no need for proof-of-work minting. See how well it
| all works out.
| rsuelzer wrote:
| If they have excess inventory that they are losing money storing,
| why not dramatically lower the prices? I'm afraid I know the
| answer to this...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If stores have a lot of unsold inventory, their prices are too
| high.
|
| Could this be the start of inflation going down?
| johnwheeler wrote:
| At face value, this sounds like the stupidest thing I've ever
| heard as far as incentivizing bad behavior goes.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I've had a half-planned essay sitting around for years on how
| "rubbish has no SKU".
|
| An important part of a _product_ is its standard, fungible
| nature. Every unit off the production line the same. Quality
| maintained. Sealed in packaging.
|
| As soon as you take it out of the packaging it becomes a unique
| item with a history. It's outside the QA bubble. It might be in
| perfectly saleable condition; it might have something wrong with
| it (after all, there's a reason it's being returned); it might
| have been damaged by the customer. It's a liability. If they were
| to take it back and re-sell it to someone, and get sued, that
| would wipe out more value than throwing away hundreds or even
| thousands of the same good.
|
| This is also why secondhand goods in general are so cheap, and
| things like furniture may even have negative net value because
| they cost more to move than they are worth.
| m463 wrote:
| I think amazon warehouse is a middle ground.
|
| They must have some ROI calculation. Or would that be ROR
| (return on return?)
| mc32 wrote:
| You make some good points. Foremost is underwear/knicks and
| toothbrushes (aka intimate objects). Those are a no-no. So
| there are some things that you should not be able to return for
| a refund (like medication).
|
| But there is that new category of things with too little actual
| value to be worth processing like pillows and compressed
| mattresses (once you allow them to expand, you cannot compress
| them at home.)
|
| But a lot if the problem in returnable objects where a return
| is not cost effective has to do with shipping costs. Shipping
| it back + processing costs cuts into profits and the resale
| value does not compensate adequately. Fortunately for them, the
| "returns" ratio don't negate overall profits.
|
| That said, when it makes sense to me, I will buy from Amazon's
| warehouse deals --there are some good deals to be had.
| netrus wrote:
| Yes!
|
| > This is also why secondhand goods in general are so cheap,
| and things like furniture may even have negative net value
| because they cost more to move than they are worth.
|
| On the German equivalent to Craigs' List - Ebay Kleinanzeigen -
| IKEA furniture is much easier to sell than other furniture,
| even though IKEA furniture is cheap and quality is only "good
| enough". The reason, I think, is that used IKEA furniture comes
| closest to still being a standardized item. You can easily look
| up the dimensions online, you may already have or know the
| exact same item, you know what to enter into the search field
| [of Ebay Kleinanzeigen]. The overall buying experience might
| even be better than going to the IKEA store, as the furniture
| is already assembled and potentially closer to your home.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I wonder if ikea furniture also has value for parts. Often
| times a single piece of the furniture will break, but if the
| item or color is discontinued you can't replace it.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Ikea furniture is very easy to repair with little more than
| wood glue. Ikea is also very gracious with giving you
| replacement or spare hardware for cheap or free.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > get sued, that would wipe out more value than throwing away
| hundreds or even thousands of the same good.
|
| That sounds more like an argument for tort reform to stiff
| plaintiffs with inane complaints about refurbished/restocked
| items.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I think part of the problem is that most products are so shitty
| and short-lived that the retail value and never-used resale
| value are enormously different.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| I don't understand why returns are so permissive, especially in
| industries that can't/won't resell returned products (eg
| fashion).
|
| In my opinion, the onus is on you to do your due diligence when
| it comes to researching the correct product. Bought an HDMI cable
| instead of DisplayPort? You should have looked. Microwave doesn't
| fit your space? Measuring tapes (and AR tools[0]) exist for a
| reason. Pants are too large? Use the damn fitting room[1] before
| buying them!
|
| Of course, all three of those items are resalable after a return,
| but stores would most likely send 2/3 to be destroyed instead of
| refurbishment.
|
| I just wish we could move away from the "customer is always
| right" deplorable tactics which create umpteen amounts of waste.
| Such as my coworker, who bought 10 dresses for a wedding and
| returned 9 of them after a test drive.
|
| [0]: https://size.link [1]: I get it, fitting rooms were closed
| during COVID. It doesn't excuse the waste though (just shifts the
| blame).
| criddell wrote:
| > I don't understand why returns are so permissive, especially
| in industries that can't/won't resell returned products (eg
| fashion).
|
| Because it's a competitive market. Once your competitors offer
| something like a generous return policy you might need to do
| the same.
| recursive wrote:
| If my competitor has two out of three sales ending in
| returns, then I can sell for a third of the price by not
| offering returns. That's another way of having a competitive
| market.
| criddell wrote:
| Do you think the companies that have generous return
| policies have never run the numbers?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| It's the same reason you see companies advertising risk-free
| money-back guarantees:
|
| Buying something feels less risky if you believe you have
| recourse if it doesn't work out. Practically speaking, if a
| company can raise sales by 20% with a liberal return policy but
| 5% of purchases are actually returned, they may still come out
| ahead.
|
| Long-term, having a return policy also signals that the company
| is interested in taking care of the customer and building a
| relationship. This is why you see brands like REI building a
| reputation on top of their generous return policy. People (on
| average, not everyone of course) will actually pay a small
| premium to shop from a company with a return policy.
| torstenvl wrote:
| In addition to what everyone else wrote, note that your
| proposal is _enormously_ economically inefficient. The
| businesses that sell microwaves are much better positioned
| to... well, sell microwaves... than the average consumer. They
| are the least-cost avoider of the social harm of things going
| to waste (which is what happens when unwanted item X doesn 't
| get bought off Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or whatever
| and the original purchaser finally tosses it).
|
| If items are going to go unused, it makes economic sense for
| them to be sold on the secondary market. If they are going to
| be sold, it makes economic sense that they be sold by an entity
| that is good at selling them. The original merchant has a
| significant comparative advantage in selling items _it already
| sells_ compared to any given consumer.
| antiterra wrote:
| Buying 10 dresses to keep one is not a 'deplorable customer is
| always right' tactic. You can't reasonably purchase a wedding
| dress via due diligence, you have to try them on. The returned
| dresses should be able to be resold.
| mkeedlinger wrote:
| Others have mentioned market forces, but I don't think that's
| the only reason. Personally, when buying online there are a lot
| of things that go wrong at little (or no) fault of the
| consumer.
|
| Some examples are ambiguous (or missing!) info in a
| description, details or measurements that are slightly (or
| very) inaccurate, quality that is unacceptable but difficult to
| differentiate online (often because aggressively positive
| marketing), etc, etc.
|
| If these weren't balanced out with liberal return policies,
| then I wouldn't buy nearly as much online. Literally anything
| over a few dozen dollars would start being suspect for me. I
| think this is also the case for many other people. Really,
| until Amazon started their incredibly pro-consumer policies and
| other venues followed suite, I really didn't purchase much
| online.
| com2kid wrote:
| > Pants are too large? Use the damn fitting room[1] before
| buying them!
|
| I once bought 3 identically labeled pairs of levis jeans. I
| tried one pair on, they fit fine.
|
| The other 2 pairs fit dramatically different. Same size, same
| style, but apparently quality control at the factory was
| dramatically off.
|
| > Microwave doesn't fit your space? Measuring tapes (and AR
| tools[0]) exist for a reason.
|
| I've seen (bought) appliances with mislabeled dimensions. Half
| an inch, not much, but the door to the laundry room wouldn't
| shut.
|
| Also things like hookup placements for hoses are often not
| labeled on the box. Love it when those stick out way past the
| main body of the machine.
|
| Heck I bought some picture hooks from Home Depot where the
| included nails stuck out farther then the hooks did, making the
| entire product useless given the purpose of it was to
| distribute weight on a hook and not directly on a nail.
| (Impressive fail there...)
|
| > Such as my coworker, who bought 10 dresses for a wedding and
| returned 9 of them after a test drive.
|
| Having a "try at home" scheme is going to be an effective
| solution for this problem. Amazon does this for fashion items.
|
| "What socks/shoes/bra/necklace/earring combos go with this" is
| not an easy question to answer w/o having a piece to try on at
| home. Heck just seeing how clothing looks in different
| lighting. Fitting rooms would benefit from adjustable color
| balances in their lighting, an outfit meant to be worn outside
| in the sun may look very different under a store's yellow or
| blue lighting.
|
| > I just wish we could move away from the "customer is always
| right"
|
| Some customers abuse the rules, but I'd best that most
| customers just want to buy a product that makes them happy. If
| stores are not doing a good job matching customers up to those
| products, then the stores need to adjust their sales strategy.
| skciva wrote:
| Surely your coworker is an outlier. Feels like what you're
| describing is a great opportunity for a small amount of data
| analysis to allow companies to be gracious with customers who
| genuinely made a mistake and customers abusing the system.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I find it weird that someone would argue for a worse retail
| experience. People make mistakes, it's great that people can
| return stuff that it turns out they don't need or won't work.
|
| As to why retailers do it, I think it's a combination of:
|
| a. Regulations - many jurisdictions have a requirement that
| retailers accept returns for some period. This is _great_
| because it makes fraud on the retailer 's part extremely
| unprofitable - customers can just return fraudulently marketed
| products.
|
| b. Competition - one thing that both Walmart and Amazon did was
| lower the bar for returns. In the 90s Walmart would often
| accept returns even without a receipt, which was a competitive
| advantage against other retailers that had more restrictive
| policies. Amazon did something similar for online retail by
| paying for shipping of returned items.
|
| c. Encouraging impulse buys - Having a high bar for researching
| purchases means that impulse buys are much less likely. If
| you're in a store and you see a microwave you really like,
| knowing that you can return it makes it more likely you will
| buy it right then and there. If you have to go home and confirm
| a bunch of dimensions, it's more likely you won't return for
| the microwave as emotions will have cooled.
|
| Edit: Addressing fashion specifically. There are many factors
| that can make something that works in a fitting room turn out
| to later be ill suited.
|
| First, it's not uncommon to be buying a top or pants to go with
| other clothing in one's wardrobe. Unless you bring all that
| stuff with you when you go shopping, it's only possible to
| _guess_ whether things will work out while in a fitting room.
| There 's also a level of wishful thinking that can happen when
| trying on clothes - where you _make_ it fit by sucking in your
| gut or something that can mask the fact that clothing won 't
| work. Long term comfort is also impossible to ascertain in a
| fitting room. This is especially applicable to shoes - where
| they might be comfy for the 5 minutes in the store, but start
| to hurt after 30 minutes to an hour.
|
| Finally, it's impossible to tell how much something will shrink
| in the wash when you buy it. Some stuff that fits perfectly
| "off the rack" will no longer fit properly after it has been
| through the washer/dryer.
| malfist wrote:
| GP's post also discounts cases where the manufacturer is just
| wrong about a spec.
|
| I once ordered a custom aquarium. 200+ gallons, over 400
| pounds of glass. The sizes were standard, custom part was for
| drilled holes for plumbing. The manufacturer advertised the
| aquarium as X inches by Y inches foot print. I built a stand
| for that size, but it turns out the manufacturer was half an
| inch off in each direction.
|
| I couldn't return the aquarium since it had been made custom,
| but the manufacturer delivered me a product I couldn't use
| with the stand I built. The stands have to be built very
| specifically to transfer weight to the floor. Filled, the
| aquarium was over 3000 pounds, being off by half an inch was
| catastrophic. I had to tear apart the stand I built and
| rebuild it to support it.
|
| Manufacturers can be wrong, manufacturers can lie. A
| microwave might fit your cabinet on a spec sheet, but not
| when it's delivered. Or something else might make it a poor
| fit (i.e., it fits, but requires clearance you don't have for
| the door hinge to swing).
|
| Let customers return things.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| > I couldn't return the aquarium since it had been made
| custom,
|
| they still gave you the wrong product, you could require
| them to at least fulfill the contract.
| jinto36 wrote:
| REI has a crazy return policy, but attempts to resell
| everything that comes back. You can buy boots, through-hike the
| Appalachian Trail in them, and bring them back for a full
| refund. REI will put them on the shelf in the clearance section
| at a discount. Not sure if they finally dispose of things if
| they never sell, or if they just keep increasing the discount
| until someone finally takes it, but it's probably the latter. I
| don't go to my local store often enough to try to keep track of
| how long things have been there (not have I asked an employee,
| which would probably be the more direct way to acquire that
| information).
| itintheory wrote:
| Don't have one near me, but I've heard tales of the REI
| dumpsters being absolute treasure troves of usable outdoor
| equipment.
| et-al wrote:
| In your specific example with clothing, there are two good
| reasons:
|
| 1. There's vanity sizing going on (e.g. 30" pants actually have
| a 32" waist due to vanity-sizing) and measurements provided may
| not be consistent throughout batches. These are still handmade
| items, just not _artisanal_.
|
| 2. Fabric drapes differently, so what looks good on a model
| shots with the clothing meticulously pinned, may look different
| when you actually wear it.
|
| Also, I assume another reason for a lax return policy is that
| the margins are large enough to support it. Or retailers expect
| that most customers won't take advantage of it (until they do,
| like REI).
| fortran77 wrote:
| > . There's vanity sizing going on (e.g. 30" pants actually
| have a 32" waist due to vanity-sizing)
|
| It's a shame there can't be standard sizing. All this
| confusion just because we don't want to offend the overweight
| and obese.
| bsder wrote:
| You're an ignorant fool.
|
| The _worst_ offenders I have known about vanity sizing have
| generally been fairly small. My grandmother, for example,
| was without doubt a size 6 but would _never_ buy anything
| that wasn 't listed as a size 4. I have had two girlfriends
| who were similarly annoying--the clothing I bought them was
| clearly dead-on the correct size when they tried it on, but
| they wouldn't wear it because it was a size "too large"
| (they didn't last long as girlfriends).
|
| By contrast, the smallest and largest women I have known
| simply wanted _something_ that fit correctly regardless of
| the "labeled size".
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Telling customers just to keep returns is wide open to abuse.
|
| Why not just sell discounted "non-returnable" versions of
| products, the same as you can buy discounted non-refundable
| airline tickets?
|
| America's "everything is returnable" culture is a bit odd,
| obviously intended to encourage mindless consumption, but comes
| at a cost... You are paying extra for everything since the cost
| of return losses is built into the price - you are paying "return
| insurance" whether you need it or not.
| adrr wrote:
| You need returns for e-commerce because customers can't touch
| and feel the item or try it on prior to purchase. Top returned
| items are clothes and sizing is inconsistent across not only
| brands but styles/fabric.
| humanwhosits wrote:
| I've often wondered if retailers apply pressure on clothes
| manufacturers to provide more sizing information.
|
| S/M/L often requires simply guessing
| mc32 wrote:
| Most do provide measurement translations into inches and
| cms. But oddly a 30" is 32" and 34" actually measures 36"
| for waist sizes even in "true to fit". Vanity!
| lunarplague wrote:
| I can argue this point right now. I have measured my
| foot, it is 28 CM, and I have consistently bought shoes
| with that size in mind without fail.
|
| Until recently, where I have been trying to order a pair
| of Teva sandals (I live far away from standard stores for
| purchasing brand name items, and often don't do it except
| for shoes, beds, office chairs, etc), and I got the size
| that compared to 28 CM. Too big. Go down a size. Still
| too big. 25 CM in Teva is officially 28 CM everywhere
| else. Why the inconsistency?
| lesuorac wrote:
| I feel like this is going to backfire as a consumer.
|
| The whole point of the warranty is that the company is claiming
| the product will work for x days. If you start letting people
| sell things without a warranty they'll make products that last
| 0 days but advertise well.
| wyldfire wrote:
| You can have a "warranty" while still barring "any-cause"
| returns.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Except you often can't .. if you say the TV can't be
| returned without reason, your customer will pour a jug of
| water into it and claim it never worked...
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I'm not talking about warranty/defective item returns.
|
| I'm talking about the fact that in America you can return
| pretty much anything, without having any reason. Don't want
| that party dress after you've worn it to the party? Return
| it! Don't want the big screen TV after your Super Bowl party?
| Return it! Can't profit from your stockpile of covid-shortage
| toilet paper? Return that too!
| lliamander wrote:
| Obviously that's an exaggeration.
|
| Except that Costco comes incredibly close to that. I've
| seen them accept returns for things I would _never_ have
| imagined anyone accepting.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Yeah, a few years ago I remember a news story about Cosco
| accepting a returned real Christmas tree sometime after
| Christmas, by which time most of the needles had fallen
| off and the thoroughly used tree had no value other than
| mulch.
|
| Maybe good publicity, I suppose.
| striking wrote:
| Yeah, until you run into
| https://www.theretailequation.com/. Which is used in more
| places than you think.
| SkinTaco wrote:
| > You are paying extra for everything since the cost of return
| losses is built into the price - you are paying "return
| insurance" whether you need it or not.
|
| I've heard this before but it always confuses me. Stores always
| charge the amount such that (price per widget)*(expected number
| of widgets sold) is maximized.
|
| Put another way - If stores somehow managed to eliminated
| returns with no other side effects, would you expect the price
| to drop?
| SahAssar wrote:
| If the theory of capitalism holds then a lowered price of
| doing business combined with competition should lead to lower
| prices.
|
| I don't believe that the world operates under such a system,
| but in theory it works that way.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Then why did all the mom and pop shops go out of business
| when Kmart and Walmart and Dollar General came around
| around?
|
| Retail is a near perfect example of multiple sellers
| competing for multiple buyers resulting in razor thin
| profit margins, which means the buyers are getting what
| they want at the lowest prices possible.
|
| Retail business do not earn 2-4% profit margins because
| they want to, they earn them because their customers will
| go to the store next door if they try to take 5%+.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Stores always charge the amount such that (price per
| widget)*(expected number of widgets sold) is maximized.
|
| The error is in neglecting the stores' competitors selling
| the widget for a lower price, and customers opting to buy
| from said competitors.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Stores are certainly trying to maximize profits, but how
| optimal they are about it is going to vary.
|
| Who's doing the best job in maximizing profit - the gas
| station selling lots of gas at $2/gal, or the one across the
| road selling far less at $2.50/gal? (I don't know, but surely
| one is doing better than the other!).
|
| In other countries where "no reason" returns are not the
| norm, are stores missing out on profit they could be making
| by adopting this policy and adjusting prices accordingly, or
| is it the American stores that have it wrong?
|
| If all stores in unison dropped no-reason returns then
| there's be no competitive reason to drop prices, but if only
| one or a few did it then presumably they'd have to (else why
| pay same price for less flexibility). More to the point, they
| might WANT to drop prices as a result of this reduced cost-
| of-goods since that'd be a way to attract more customers, as
| non-stop "10% off" sales attest.
| deckard1 wrote:
| > Why not just sell discounted "non-returnable" versions
|
| They do. It's called a final sale. Clothing retailers do this
| frequently. Some are more strict on this than others. Bonobos,
| for example, often advertises as final but will accept returns
| (YMMV basis).
|
| What I'm curious about is sizing. Buy three pairs of the same
| size pants from Banana Republic and you'll get three pairs that
| fit differently. Their deviation is sometimes extreme. Same
| with Levis and others. You would think, in an online shopping
| world, that this would be the lowest of hanging fruit. I can't
| believe the cost of QA is greater than the costs of returns and
| reputational harm. Shopping online for clothes is just madness,
| and it's common to buy multiple items of the same size (or next
| size S and M) just to be able to return the ones that don't
| fit. Sometimes you may fit in S _and_ an M from the same brand.
| Just different SKU /factory/batch. It's a total crapshoot.
| lliamander wrote:
| I've been burned by that as well. I pretty much only by
| clothes on final sale if I have a high degree of confidence I
| will like the result (feel, fit, color, etc) and even then
| I've been disappointed by the variability in quality.
|
| BTW, Mr. Porter has a fantastic return process. They include
| the return label and invoice in the box. Some of their stuff
| is expensive, but I'm much more comfortable trying their
| products out because it's so easy to return.
| lliamander wrote:
| > Why not just sell discounted "non-returnable" versions of
| products, the same as you can buy discounted non-refundable
| airline tickets?
|
| Online retailers often do just that. You may see a retailer
| have a section called "final sale" or "last call" for
| discounted, non-returnable merchandise. Others simply offload
| the merchandise onto EBay.
|
| I have bought things that way, but often I have regretted it.
| In general it is hard to evaluate online goods before purchase,
| and if something ends up on "final sale" it probably wasn't
| selling well to begin with for a good reason.
| munificent wrote:
| _> America 's "everything is returnable" culture is a bit odd,
| obviously intended to encourage mindless consumption_
|
| I don't see how allowing consumers to get first-hand experience
| with a product before being forced to stick with it causes
| their consumption to be "mindless". It allows them to make
| choices that are _more_ informed.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| It encourages mindless consumption because it lowers the
| level of commitment needed. Not sure if you really want it,
| or should be buying it? ... No need to overthink it - just
| buy it anyway and return it if you change your mind.
|
| Surely you don't think stores have these policies for your
| benefit - to allow you to be a more informed consumer?! They
| have these policies because it results in them selling more
| stuff, because they are lowering the level of commitment
| needed for consumers to buy.
| Valgrim wrote:
| How can there be a supply chain crisis and a inventory surplus? I
| don't get it. It seems the market is completely upside down. Is
| the market completely incapable of adaptation?
|
| A few days ago I took a plane and more than half the flights were
| cancelled that day, supposedly because of the hiring crisis. Yet
| there are a record number of people travelling! These people
| booked their flights months ago! Why did the company not hire
| more people? Why did they not simplify the hiring process? Why
| did they not adjust the wages accounting for the labor shortage?
| fleddr wrote:
| "Why did the company not hire more people?"
|
| COVID dramatically reduced worker demand for airlines, hotels,
| restaurants, the like. So those people went to do something
| else, something that saw an increase in demand, say delivering
| packages.
|
| Now those workers are needed again, but no longer available. Or
| only a few.
|
| As an example, at Schiphol airport (Amsterdam) they require 500
| new/extra security staff. It takes months to find them and just
| training takes several weeks.
| vidanay wrote:
| I have a flight to Germany schedule in October (from the US),
| and I am terrified of what the situation will be like by then.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| In a similar boat...I'm flying to Italy in 3 weeks.
|
| I like to think that international flights are last on the
| chopping block, but I haven't done anything to verify if
| that's true at all.
| tyrfing wrote:
| > How can there be a supply chain crisis and a inventory
| surplus?
|
| Different times and different things. There can be a surplus of
| T-shirts from Vietnam and a shortage of 90nm PMICs at the same
| time. There can be a shortage of stuff in December due to port
| problems, but an oversupply of that (out of date) stuff in
| February. Not to mention the drop in real income and a large
| drop in goods spending as aggregate spending shifts _again_
| back to services like air travel.
|
| > Why did they not adjust the wages accounting for the labor
| shortage?
|
| There are far more jobs than people to hire, at present there
| are guaranteed to not be enough people somewhere. That will be
| wherever has the least capacity to pay more - and airlines are
| notable for being extremely low margin.
| naravara wrote:
| It takes over a thousand hours of flight time to even qualify
| as an airline pilot. It's not a labor pool you can just expand
| and contract on a whim. It's a work force you have to
| strategically cultivate and maintain. When companies get too
| eager to "trim the fat" in lean times this is the result. You
| can't always scale back up as quickly as you'd like.
| vidanay wrote:
| And the rest of the in-flight crew has to deal with rude,
| obnoxious, and sometimes aggressive assholes. It's not a job
| I would ever take nor recommend.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Coronavirus restrictions flipped the world upside down in a
| number of ways that interrupted multi decade processes.
|
| As a personal example, my field went WFH and so I just left it
| because I like in person interactions. That's ten or more years
| of training gone.
|
| You can argue about whether in that specific case perhaps
| someone on the other side of the world can replace me, but in
| the abstract, you can't just change everything (e.g. fire
| everyone at the airline and attempt to rehire) and expect to be
| 100% back to normal just because you want to be.
|
| People moved city, bought pets, marriages broke, etc. Things
| changed.
| throwaway24124 wrote:
| There have been a lot of pilot strikes for different airlines
| at major airports recently, that's a possibility for why it was
| cancelled last minute.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >How can there be a supply chain crisis and a inventory
| surplus?
|
| These are the same problem. Matching allocation to demand is a
| hard problem and the wild swings in demand caused by COVID and
| inflation responses means that you have both supply chain
| problems and surplus problems.
|
| Things aren't very elastic and money-saving just-in-time
| practices of eliminating buffers mean that it is harder to
| respond to the various shocks.
|
| You're essentially upset that the future wasn't predicted
| correctly when there has been a lot of uncertainty going around
| for years now.
| toast0 wrote:
| > How can there be a supply chain crisis and a inventory
| surplus?
|
| The supply chain crisis doesn't mean nothing is being supplied.
| It means that there are unknowable delays in everything. Your
| order may be made on time or delayed for several months. Once
| it's on a boat, it make take two weeks or four weeks to get
| across the Pacific, but then it might be unloaded right away or
| stuck on the boat for months. Once off the boat, it could be
| stuck at the port for a week or get transfered to a truck or
| rail right away.
|
| When faced with all that uncertainty, you're going to have
| times where things start moving and too much stuff shows up at
| once. As well as times where you don't have much to sell.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Or from another point of view: why not cancel the flights
| preemptively? It should have been clear you'd not have enough
| people to man the flights. But they kept accepting bookings.
| layer8 wrote:
| You'd probably lose money due to those passengers who
| otherwise would have canceled their flight themselves.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > Why did the company not hire more people? Why did they not
| simplify the hiring process? Why did they not adjust the wages
| accounting for the labor shortage?
|
| Training pilots takes time. Even with an aggressive hiring
| ramp-up, the new crop probably wouldn't be trained in time for
| today. Perhaps for 2024's travel season.
| groby_b wrote:
| The airlines are in the trouble they are in because they saw it
| as expedient to deny Covid exists. (Hard lobbying for an end of
| mask mandates on planes)
|
| Covid, alas, did not do them the favor of agreeing to their
| belief system and is still around. And so now they have a large
| number of people sick, and a large number of employees upset
| that their health is sacrificed for corporate profits.
|
| As for "why don't they just hire more", pilots don't grow on
| trees. A commercial licenses requires 1500 flight hours, spread
| out over at least two years. And (again, because it was cheap),
| airlines outsourced that cost to pilots. Same as all other
| education efforts. So, on the pilot side, addressing a shortage
| takes at least two years and requires finding a bunch of people
| willing to sink time and money into a license - while
| _simultaneously_ the airline companies have sent a clear signal
| they don 't care about their employees.
|
| "The market" can't fix those issues. Not in the short term, and
| with the trust lost, not even in the mid term.
|
| So why didn't airline cancel those flights? One, if you pretend
| the situation is different from reality, the pain of cognitive
| dissonance makes you buy into your own lies. Two, even if you
| resist that force, as a publicly traded company, cancelling
| thousand of flights in advance is a hit on your stock price. If
| you wait until the last moment, maybe something changes, or you
| might make it at least past bonus day.
|
| Ultimately, the market _has_ adapted. It just has adapted to
| maximizing executive pay.
| Lordarminius wrote:
| > The airlines are in the trouble they are in because they
| saw it as expedient to deny Covid exists.
|
| The airlines are in trouble because they imposed compulsory
| vaccinations on pilots who then got sick with vaccine
| injuries and depressed immune systems, making them vulnerable
| to more bouts of Covid, and now same pilots can't fly.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This is obviously true, and insiders in the airline
| industry have admitted as much behind closed doors.
| Lordarminius wrote:
| People on this app like to toe the establishment line.
| CSSer wrote:
| This is all basically correct. However, there are some
| supplementary bits of information that may be important too.
| At the beginning of the pandemic when demand dropped to
| virtually zero, they also paid older pilots to retire early.
|
| Additionally, it didn't used to take that long to get a
| pilot's license. Before 2013 you could obtain a license in
| 250 hours. This changed due to a law passed by congress that
| increased flight training time to 1500 hours in reaction to a
| commercial accident that occurred in 2009. The irony? The
| pilots of that crash both had far more than 1500 hours of
| experience. It was a sympathy play.
|
| Short-term profits and poor regulatory strategy led to this.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| I'm with you -- except for pilots.
| tengbretson wrote:
| shortage -> hoarding/over-ordering -> perceived false-demand ->
| over-ordering leads to over-supply -> cut re-supply orders ->
| suppliers reduce capacity
|
| Repeat as many times as necessary
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