Frankly, making the returns easy and remove the hassle for the customer and the cost is absolute key to Amazons success. I wouldn't buy even half the things I buy on Amazon if I wasn't able to return it if it was something wrong with it etc. Take shoes or clothes for example, often you don't know how they fit until you have tried them. Then there is electronics etc.
Amazon actually encourages returns and has made it soo easy for customers to return things. They place the negative cost on the sellers which sucks because most sellers take a loss at a whole bunch of returns. They even added returnless refunds and they encourage sellers to provide them
How do you return an Amazon product when they just leave the item by the door, don't ring the doorbell to alert the customer that the package was delivered, and some knucklehead comes and steals it?
@@indriadrayton1132 Then you report it to Amazon and get a refund. If there is no signature how can they prove that you got it. Amazon know full well that packages are just dropped on porches. They get stolen. They could require signature but they know it would mean they need to drop it at post office if someone isn't home. Causing hassle. So they rather deal with it that way and take the loss. Big ticket items do require signature.
@@loki76 just wondering how many times does it take to keep reporting items that get stolen when stuff is delivered to you and your doorbell isn't rung to alert you? Almosr everyday, my neighbor ends up with packages at their doorstep, me ending up ringing their door myself to let them know there is a package at their door. Nope. Will not do business with Amazon.
I came here to say this! I always check to see if there’s a used option before I purchase, but the items are never discounted enough! Considering that we are doing them a favor by repurchasing these goods, they could at least make it worth our while.
They need a review process where they verify listings. For example if returns for a particular item reach a certain percentage then Amazon should review the listing to ascertain the issue.
Amazon is doing that for a long time. This problem is not an issue with listing. It's the customers who know that they can do whatever they want. Even if the product is good, customers use it and return it.
I am an FBA seller and my return rate is from 6% - 8%of my total sales. This means every month I get about 140 returns and most of them go to disposal.
It's not "consumerism", it's Amazon reselling third-rate products, often under their own name, as well as providing a sales platform for shady companies to charge you for garbage on a massive scale in hopes you won't bother to try and return it.
Yep companies can dump their crap on you anonymous. I don't even bother with them if it's an item of importance, only some cheap crap I can't find anywhere else
The best way to lower returns is to directly deal with why people return in the first place. People return purchased goods because it is not what they thought the product would be. To prevent this from happening the item photos has to be good enough that people can see from all directions and angles and the dimensions of the product has to be very well label. Then the description has to describe everything about the features and its uses. I find most products on Amazon are lacking complete descriptions. And even when it is label it is often wrong. If Amazon just invests more money in product listing, the number of returns would naturally be much lower and dealable.
@@mylesgray3470 yup. There's a huge 5 stars for a coupon or $off on a product in many companies/Amazon retailers. Basically taking advantage of people to get money back for a good review. Holding money hostage against honesty.
Like the example of the woman that bought 9 wedding dresses knowing 8 would go back. You can't try them all on when you buy online and you never know how shoes will feel until you get them on your feet.
When I return items it’s because the item is absolutely not what I ordered (sent an Eric Clapton LP when I ordered a Glen Campbell LP) or arrives damaged (CDs and DVDs arriving in broken cases). I would return much less if more care was taken in packing items so they didn't arrive in damaged cases.
In the past I was an Amazon seller. The products I sold were custom made and drop-shipped from the printer. If for any reason the customer didn't like the product or changed their mind or overspent and needed a refund, that money was taken from my Amazon earnings. It was impractical for the item to be sent to me as I don't live in the US and there were often personalized. This is going back a few years and the return policy is even more lenient. For a small business person, working on small profit margins a high return rate can destroy their business. Amazon doesn't lose any money - the seller does.
@@markmarco6277 the story of the woman that ordered 8 wedding dresses because she could just return 7 made me feel sick TBH. If they were damaged in transit, mistreated by the bride, that is a huge loss. Not only does the vendor lose the sale but the loses the shipping cost both ways and potentially the item. But, hey, great that Amazon has a return policy that makes them look great at no cost to them.
@@markmarco6277 Usually, the seller suffers the cost. There are supposed to be seller protections to cover certain situation, but even then Amazon doesn't always honor them and the seller gets screwed.
I very rarely return anything. However, I like knowing that I can if necessary. Before I buy anything I do my homework by researching the product to make sure it’s what I want and need.
I wondered how they could possibly do "zero waste" and then I heard the magic word, donating. They will donate their previous waste items, and recipient of said donation will then throw it away. That's just waste with extra steps.
Well... Maybe. See, like Goodwill a business will form around repurposing the items. Unfortunately, what can you do with returned underwear, toothbrushes, cosmetics, stained clothing, clothing that isn't cut right?, etc., etc, on and on. Hopefully some sort of recycling can at least be performed. If it can't form any sort of profit, it will probably go to a landfill.
@@justinminer1354 The largest secondary market for USA's discarded clothing, if I remember right, is actually African countries. A podcast (Planet Money?) did a long series detailing the lifecycle of a t-shirt, and one of the things they learned is that Goodwill grades used clothing and only resells the best quality stuff in American stores. Everything else gets sold in bulk to businesses in developing nations.
@@justinminer1354 Why do you guys act like everything returned to Amazon is damaged??? I've returned items because I realized I just didn't want it and the product was I'm excellent condition
@@KC-ki9uj I work in Hazmat for Amazon, which means i process the donation and damaged items. I can say that my FC threw away about 50% of the product, and still the amount of donations totaled $8.4 Million dollars in 2021 for my FC. The total amount of donations for Amazon in 2021 was about $280 Million.
I wouldn’t return anything if listings were accurate. When a description and pictures show something _completely_ different from the cheap Chinese-made crap that I actually get, yeah it’ll be returned immediately.
@@EastWood2004 Stop trying to save money and you won't get cheap chinese-made crap. You know there are alternatives but you're just too poor and cheap to buy them.
I think they're overlooking one aspect, make it so that the customer knows exactly what they're getting so they dont think about returning. More information of the product, more images, videos etc.
Agreed, but also a lot of people (specially young women seemingly) buy stuff just to buy stuff. Maybe take some pics in "their new clothes" and then return it. Think a good model for large online stores might be giving a customer a very, very limited number of free returns and then add a cost to returning items.
Returns are an inherent part of online shopping. Merchandise doesn't always look as advertised, doesn't fit perfectly, or doesn't function as intended. I find this to be far less of an issue with things I inspect and buy in person at a brick and mortar store.
Facts gonna start going to best buy to get my phones cause i get them from amazon breaks in 3 months and not being able to tell certain things like what charging port it uses, 4g or 5g, unlocked??, the size, battery life etc. most isn’t stated and it’s upsetting because you pay more for a more expensive item that displays all that information then the cheaper item
the most environmentally responsible thing I did this year was to cancel my amazon subscription. I canceled it when I noticed that in everything that I ever ordered, I was constantly disappointed by the quality. They take advantage of the online platform to sell cheap low quality garbage, sometimes selling worse quality versions of things you could buy from brick and mortar stores under the same brand name. Their "returns problem" is entirely their own fault.
I agree. Never used them because I dont like their corporate practices, and the way they treat employees. Society should take some blame too, people pretend to care about workers, and the environment, but they will support companies that abuse those things, to save 3 dollars, or get free shipping. Its not like there are not other options.
Indeed! I now order from Amazon once or twice a year, and only a product I already know about. Too many disappointments. Online browsing for a real product will never replace the efficiency of a real world purchase. In the real world, I've rarely had to do a return, only if a defect was discovered after use. You see, touch and feel, and try on, and know exactly what your getting.
Purchased disposable briefs for my husband who passed away a couple of days after receiving package. I tried to return, was told to keep and was promptly issued a full refund. I donated them to a local medical supply charity since the box was unopened.
I'm a seller on AMZ until the end of this year when I will be moving back to Ebay. The whole 'you can keep it' attitude gets paid for by sellers, not out of AMZ's ever bulging coffers. Ebay does not have this problem. The non-profits in the article are the AMZ sellers!
its crazy im moving 50-70% of my inventory back to ebay as well right now. to me the returns are like another fee increase on top of the new fee increase. there will be alot of us jumping ship and the things i sell amazon cant buy and sell to compete with me. amazon going to see we are there customer not the consumer.
@@alexlim1275 with all due respect, AMZN doesn't care who you are or where you sell your wares. More importantly, you're sadly mistaken if you think they are worried about competing with you. Their stock closed last week out at north of three thousand dollars ($3,000) a share. You all could leave and they wouldn't even notice nor would the share holders.
@@southrichmondtofl i understand, ive been in this space for 30 years. just like when a lot of us jump ship from malls to these two platforms see how that worked out. how ebay saw the movement from the secondary market of shoes to stockX and goat they felt that, enough large resellers like my self move they will feel it. just like 15-20 years ago alot of us moved over from ebay to amazon ebay felt that. if i lost a seven figure customer i would feel that.
@@alexlim1275 The mall is a one trick pony and ebay is as well, for the most part. AMZN is into way more than most people even know or understand and growing and evolving every day. For example, they started off by selling books, now they are a major player in controlling what you see and how you use the internet, they shut down the social site Parler. Again, they could lose however many of however many figure sellers and they wouldn't feel it. That's just one example of what this company controls no matter the number of sellers.
This must be a joke: the companies know the percentage of products that will be returned. Guess who pays for that... Yes: you that don't return anything. The price we pay for products includes the percentage that will be returned. And Amazon profits twice from the same products when it resells them in pallets.
Right, they sell this story like the public needs to worry about the waste they're creating when sending items back. We need to worry about Amazon's greed!!!!!!
Yes! you nailed it. Rather than charging for return they should have incentive for non returning, such as discounts or other things. In the end is the same, but customer perception can be different.
When a company liquidates (what you call resell) it makes a fraction of the selling price (a $10 item might get sold for $4). Given that margins in retail are like 5%, this is a loss. The retailer doesn’t make any money because it pays back the customer the entire amount and often doesn’t charge the seller for the return shipping cost (and even if it did, there is no way that shipping charge covers the entire loss is value since shipping charge is about 10-20% of the price of the product). If only you were capable of basic math and reasoning
@@_myemptynest_8497 I won’t shop there because they can’t seem to get stuff to our home. This went on for a few years and became a game of ordering and watching it go back. Maybe I should get a prime account again and do it some more. The people you work for are idiots as I explained the problem many times but they continued to do it their wrong way. I hope I cost your company thousands of dollars with the game. It worked liked this, Amazon told me it would b sent FedEx so they would require a street address. I’d give them that but then they would transfer it to the post office but they couldn’t deliver it because we don’t have home mail delivery but get our mail at a PO Box. When the package got to the main post office they would send it back as the street address was the only address on the package. I’ll bet I can still do it. I started doing it just as a game because I knew I knew I would never get the packages. I never had that problem with other online sites.
Amazon delivery driver, currently delivering packages as I watch this video. What's insane to me is that everyday I'll usually have one to five packages that are being returned to the warehouse, and there's 200 drivers that all experience the same thing on a daily basis. We're talking about returns but it surprises me that they didn't talk about the fact that customers cancel orders and the orders are still shipped processed and loaded into Vans despite having been canceled before my route even starts. It's insane how much waste this company produces and how little everyone gives a damn except the highest paid people, who paint a facade as if they are taking every step to do anything about the absolute devastating circumstances pertaining to waste and returns
They're just collecting checks and pushing paper, nobody up top is doing the big work for massive change to improve everything for everyone including the workers.
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I can’t even tell you how many Christmas trees got returned to the UPS Store this January that were likely bought on Black Friday and had until February 1 to return it. It’s honestly sickening how many Amazon returns we get. Probably 90% of our business and we offer a dozen services.
We’re on the same ship. There’s times where I work the store alone, and I’ll have millions of things to do, bubble wrap and pack picture frames, do the mail, contact mailbox holders, etc. However, I have to constantly stop what I’m doing because someone always comes in when a box load of Amazon returns. And it’s not just the amount, but when they decide to come in. I kid you not I had to stay 20 minutes after closing to pack and consolidate all these returns. I truly feel that Amazon isn’t doing enough to crack down on the frequent returns
The problem is that Amazon sells junk quality products or it isn't as described or it's counterfeit. It's too easy to become a seller and it's too easy to skate by with low quality products. Other retailers have started to accept junk products. I've returned more stuff to Costco in the last two years than in the past decade before.
The issue is Amazon allows a flood of sellers onto their platform. This means lots of counterfeit goods which leads itself to returns. If the product I am buying is made of low quality, getting pumped up by fake reviews, and not as described, of course people are going to be issuing returns. That's the issue with Amazon: They don't exactly have the best reputable sellers. I bet if you do a rate of return of Amazon Basics items vs their counterfeit counterpart, you would see a much lower return rate on the Basics items. Same with name brands listed on Amazon. And it's foolish to believe that the stuff Amazon donates to these third-party centers aren't selling them. I guarantee they are keeping and selling the stuff worth doing so. Also, Amazon already charges customers for that return cost. It's all built in to the product, prime membership, etc., No seller is foolish enough to continue selling if it isn't profitable so they are clearly earning enough $ to justify the returns. Does returns eat into their margin? Yes. But that ease of return also allows them to generate massive amounts of sales.
@@troooooper100 Not questionable. Counterfeits have a higher rate of 'not as described' or 'defectiveness' due to it having lower quality control standards.
Exactly, the cheap ass quality products being shipped is the issue. I stopped ordering from Amazon for over a year & closed my account. After working in the parcel warehouse industry I limit online consumption because ppl are not pid fairly .
Amazon should have a seperate review window for why users made a return. That will filter a lot of people fron purchasing the item, although it may impact Amazon’s revenue.
The business I work for sells on Amazon, eBay and own website. Amazon returns are 4x higher than the other platforms, Amazon created this problem by making returns so easy and mostly free to the customer
@@caspernicus5822 Not true, but the problem can be (other than metal and I think paper) the plastic and electronics often end up being shipped to dumps overseas, and so left un-recycled.
I don't get why this is a problem. I know so many people who buy stuff just to return it after. When I buy something, I know I want it and keep it forever.
Because of all the influencers man. They order, take the picture to market themselves that they 'have it' whatever it is (clothes, phones etc.) and then return. Best way to keep content up and expenses low.
The only stuff I returned were items that were more damaged than advertised (warehouse deals) incorrectly labeled stuff or damaged during shipping. I also returned an item that stopped working during the warranty period. Much better service than eBay where you can't return stuff AT ALL, ever. And the shipping costs are atrocious.
Amazon can fix this issue with the drop of a hat. They will move the items in unidentifiable trucks to landfills in Canada and Mexico and then release commercials showing the company as a ZERO waste company and get WAPO to push the narrative.... Problem Solved.
@@rickygkilla1358 sure that's definitely gonna happen regardless. The big point being though people who may not be able to afford the items that they want at full price could get a second chance.
I wise they do a story on how Amazon sends you already damaged items. Over the years I have received several things from Amazon that are broken or completely damaged right out the box. And I don't mean the shipping box was damaged... For many of my items the Amazon shipping box was in perfect shape...but when opening the box the inside content is broken. And you can tell that they packed it that way. For instance I had some things that said DO NOT BEND... And amazon bent it up and shoved it in a box and shipped it to me.
That's because those fulfillment warehouses make the employees pick and pack 1,865,925 items every hour. No breaks, not even potty breaks. No wonder stuff like that happens!
My returns are mostly because there is no quality control. The only way to know if something is good is by waiting for hundreds of customer reviews which are paid for by the seller. Amazon needs a “certified product” label that can only be given by submitting your product to independent review by Amazon judges.
Fundamentally returns are the symptom not the problem. Streamlining returns and burning them for energy and reselling them is simply a Band-Aid for the actual problem. There is not a good quality control system for Amazon purchases. Many times it is just products that are bought off of Alibaba and re-sold on Amazon with very little value added or quality control. Then the customer who bought the product wind has two options, throw it away or return it.
Even if the product is certified, does not mean it will be quality. I rarely buy on Amazon because of too many disappointments. One was buying an item which was labeled 100% leather but after two weeks, it was already peeling. This was from a well known national brand. So I claimed, they paid for return, and I got a refund. The same item is still listed on the site with 100% leather and I have no idea how in the real world a store would allow that to happen.
Though a summary of the logistics of Amazon Returns, it exposed that Amazon counts it's returned items, donated to "charities" that refurbish/sell them, as tax writeoffs. This must count for a lot, given that Amazon does not pay taxes. It benefits directly from a system it setup, part of the easy lifecycle that it makes available to the consumer. It profits from a problem it creates. It externamize and individualize the responsibility of a system it created.
I don't take advantage of returns and understand it can be a burden on the company and planet but if a product is not as advertised and is over priced junk then I do wish to return easily
It's nearly impossible to make a good informed decision when buying clothes and shoes without trying them on. This kind of item should be banned from Amazon and online stores. Amazon and online sales should be only for books, electronics and technology, kitchen supplies, etc.. Clothing, shoes, linens and anything involving a fabric, texture, size, etc.. Should be banned simply because the odds of matching what you see on the screen with a perfect fit it's highly unlikely. As for clothing returning to the retail, shopping mall, experience of the 90's and trying stuff it'll be better for the environment and maybe even create jobs. Returning should be only for damage items not because you thought the color was wrong.
Ebay used to have it so there was allowed a fee to be charged by the sellers if someone bought something and tried to return it without a valid reason that had to be proven, but policy changes has basically destroyed this option for the most part. Might want to bring back this model if you want less returns of products as well as less losses for those third party sellers that usually get hit the hardest.
There is also a borrowing problem with Amazon customers in particular because of their easy return policy. There were litterally whole Tiktok and redit posts on how to do this. As a handmade seller on the platform among other selling platforms, I ONLY have this issue with Amazon clients. They buy a product, use it at an event, then return it for a refund. Which comes out of my small businesses pocket because we cover the shipping costs. It's a problem for multiple reasons. I totally get needing to return some things, but when it's blatantly obvious that people are abusing the system. Something needs to change.
Amazon *is only* following Costco's lead. Costco may not have the volume of sales as Amazon, but they also don't have the volume of fake products/false advertisements/general counterfeits as Amazon.
If Amazon discontinued their Free Prime Shipping & Returns, I would drop it in a HeartBeat! The Prices are already skyrocketing. When I can now find an item at my Local ACE Hardware for the same price as Amazon, then things are heading in the wrong direction for Amazon!!
How about partial returns. I’ve had several purchases lately where one of the items were broke but the duplicate 4 or more were just fine. I’d be willing to take just part of my money back for that one broken item versus returning the lot and repurchasing wasting time and fuel on both sides.
Small things make a huge difference in a company that size. For example, I am an Amazon handmade seller, and one thing that always irks me is, the very first paragraph on a receipt is how to return the item and the second is how to relieve leave a review from the seller . What would happen if they just reversed those two? Make it less easy to just jump to the conclusion at once that they should return the item. Small things add up!
Amazon's problem is largely managing its sellers to standardize. If Amazon demanded some quality and standards, returns would be less. This is ESPECIALLY true in terms of women's clothing, underwear, bras, shoes, and so on. Sellers use Asian sizing and it's a gamble to buy their crap. If Sellers want to sell in the US, they should have to adhere to Amazon's own US size charts. If I could know things will fit with more probability, I would buy more and return less. Also, even some of the brand names sell lesser quality crap on Amazon, the sell "imperfect" or knockoff items. I was just looking at Hanes T-shirts for women. I have worn Hanes T-shits for years, so I know how they should fit and their quality. But if you read reviews, people are getting mis-sized items, ill fitting items, items that have seams falling apart on the sides of T-shirts and in armpits. It's obvious, these are not up to the quality of Hanes clothing you'd get at say, Macy's, JC Penny, and so on. Also, sellers post inaccurate titles, sellers try to trick buyers with misleading photography, post inaccurate colors, or have their models hold their arms or stand a certain way to hid fit issues. I bought a lovely designed ribbed sweater over the winter, but when I put it on, the fabric content was very poor, and the ribbing made the sweater bulge in very unattractive ways, giving the appearance I had a "spare tire" around my waist. When I went back and looked at the model, she was holding her arms to camouflage what was happening at her waist. The model was bone skinny, so you know if it was bulging at her waist, on a more athletic built woman like myself, it would look even worse. I only noticed it and had to look hard at the picture because of the model's arms bent at the waist and her hands touching in front of her body. Once I noticed it, it was an odd stance and clearly positioned to hid how crappy the fabric was. Completely designed to be misleading. That is not the buyer's fault.
i read about a man in his 50s that started investing in stocks and real estate, then retired in 2years with over $6million, that right there is my utmost goal and I'd really appreciate clues and tips on how to reach this goal within 5years
1. Limit your spending/cut off retail therapy 2.Put the extra cash towards investing in high yielding or steady investment. 3. Get a financial coach/mentor to guide through your investing goal. These might look simple but they require good amount of willpower, but through mentorship, I've been able to consistently grow my portfolio to $800K and I'm looking forward to retiring at 50 as well and I only wish I started up early. Goodluck
@@flossietaylor6239 *’ Natalie * Andrea * Bows *' , is the coach helping me out, and you can book an appointment with her through her website, just look her up online tp get more info about her
That is why i am a prime member. If there is no easy return I wouldn’t be a prime member. I shopped $30k from Amazon yearly. I maybe return $4k of it. I am very happy with Amazon return policy.
They really should better incentivize the repurchase of used/returned goods. I always check to see if there’s a used option before I make a purchase. I got my rollerblades, a Dutch oven, and a dry erase board used this year, and I’m happy with every purchase. Most people would rather have new items though. Since we are doing amazon a favor by repurchasing these items, they really should consider a larger discount on those used items. A couple of dollars off isn’t enough to get most people to choose the used option, even if it’s in great condition. If this stuff is going to get thrown away or donated at some point anyway, why not just sell them for a 50%+ discount? Everybody wins! What’s the harm in that? Currently, it seems like amazon is just trying to make as much money as possible from these items that will eventually be garbage anyway, and it reeks of greed.
I do think that the next step for Amazon is to shift back toward the store model, but in a new way. Have their giant Amazon warehouses, but adjacent to that, have a showroom floor. Let companies with products _lease_ that showroom space to show off large items that people would want to personally interact with before buying, or that would be prohibitive to return. Amazon would be proving them the space to demo their products to the customers. This would be more like an Ikea than a Walmart, something you wouldn't have in every town, but within driving distance for most people. For clothing, they would keep popular stuff in stock, and you could try it on in store. you could also "store order" an item off their website, have it delivered to the store rather than your home, try it on in the store, and if you didn't want to keep it, then it would remain in their custody and they could use their normal logistics to get it to another new customer, rather than considering it "damaged goods." This method could offer a discount to the consumer that the ship to home model would not.
Just like an a$$hat to have buildings full of stuff they are doing absolutely nothing with or destroying rather than DONATING it to homeless shelters, programs for kids, ETC.
I bought a full length mirror recently and was disappointed it arrived shattered so I had to “return” it. If the delivery drivers didn’t smash the merchandise, that would save on returns. They refunded me but I have to get rid of a huge shattered mirror myself. The whole thing could have been avoided.
No matter what you said about Amazon. Amazon have the best and the hassle free return among all . That's why I love shopping from Amazon only. Easy, simple and reliable online shopping site
What would make this more useful is looking at the carbon footprint comparison of physical returns with traditional physical stores and B2C processes to that of Amazon.
they never mention, the "amazon mystery box" you can buy for 50 or 100 bucks filled with electronics, you might get a 1400$ laptop, or 600$ game console but most the time you end up with a box of useless items not barely worth the money for the box
It's no different than walking into a brick and mortar to try on 7 dresses for a special occasion. If the Amazon sellers were to have their dress sizes standardized to, say, the Amazon size chart for the US, then women would not have to try on so many, hoping that one would fit.
There's the shady third-party seller thing with subpar quality products going on for sure, but the ease of the online commerce also brought the special kind of abusers of "buy, use, and return claiming refund" types of consumers. As a seller myself, I have seen an increase in refund claims for "undelivered parcels" even when GPS and photo evidence is there to prove otherwise. Another increasingly common issue is returns with "ordered wrong item/colour" type of customers, I mean, you gotta be an idiot, how do people even shop around if they are willingly buying the wrong item?! After chatting with some of the customers I've realised that people have no idea how logistics and online shopping actually work, the majority of customers are oblivious to the freight, storage, shipping, and human labour and costs associated with that, let alone the ecological factors associated with the entire market.
Amazon has helped foster a gross sense of entitlement among consumers. It is really disgusting. A generation ago, even Sears, known for their generous return policies, would have never tolerated the kind of abuse Amazon lets people get away with.
Bingo… the quality of products being sold via Amazon has drastically diminished over the last 5-10 years. When I was in college, purchases from Amazon lasted so I shopped several times a week. Today I order only about 2 times a year because the “name brand” items usually break / malfunction after the 30 day return window & the products are extremely poor quality or “fake.”
I've been buying Amazon returns at local auctions for the past few months. It works well for me. I got a perfect exercise bike for $4 when it costs $200 new. It keeps it out of a landfill and gives it another life.
Maybe Amazon should start with how they package items in the first place. Whenever I order a book on Amazon I expect to have to return it because the packaging of the item for shipping is horrible, and the book normally comes damaged due to it being unprotected during the shipment process. I understand as a consumer that items will have "shelf wear", but Amazon is horrible when it comes to ordering books because of the lack of protection they give to the packaging of the item. Most likely a lot of other items come damaged too because of a lack of packing properly for shipment.
Try buying from a third party seller on Amazon if you can. Not from a megaseller, who are as bad as Amazon with packaging, but one that takes time to list a book with a good description, lots of pictures and such. Much more likely to package books and media properly.
Video games are just as bad. They just throw it in a bubble mailer and by the time you get it, the case is always cracked and the disc is just floating around inside.
Paying for return shipping is the worst. I bought a keyboard on Newegg several years ago, didn't like it had to ship it back. They had Restock fee back then of 15% so there I lost 15% of my money. Returning it via UPS cost a lot of money. In the end I lost half the money I spent buying that keyboard. This is why I like Amazon, free returns and no hassle and no restock fees or arguing with customer service. On top of that I love how Amazon often deal with late packages or packages that could be assumed lost. They send out a new replacement and often if the original package show up you get to keep it. Even if at time they say they want it back you can just tell them in chat that the Amazon delivery just drop the package so you couldn't refuse it and also you don't want the hassle of going to post office etc. They usually just say, if it shows up, feel free to keep it.. I got myself an extra HDD valued at $140 because of that. So I have 2 HDD , 1 for free and not cheap either.
Amazon should also put into place a price match policy. Not prime matching other competitors but with themselves. I see myself purchasing an item for $300 and the next two days, it’s $270 on Amazon. Would be nice to just get $30 back without wasting
Coddling customers = frivolous returns People order multiple clothing items with the intent to return them because they CAN, What did they do before Amazon? Were they naked? This new convenience is nice, but at what cost to the market and the environment?
Clothing is hard to buy online and amazon tends to have bait and switch for clothing they might have the model donned in cotton and you get spandex version of it inspite of that not being an option at all for the product. The same issue exists with jewelry the customer can't determine what it will look like, feel like, or how thick the chains are till it shows at their house.
Clearly you are male and can just order your waist size and things fit. Not true for women. If I have a special event, I will go to a brick and mortar and take 7 dresses into a stall and try them all on. Why should it be any different, ESPECIALLY when Amazon allows its Chinese sellers to peddle crap in Chinese sizes. I am a women's size 12---fairly average for a woman. I do have a large bust, so sometimes in Chinese crap, I have to order a size 5XL or more. Does that sound right????? Amazon needs to make its clothing sellers adhere to Amazon's own size chart for the US. That would solve a lot of the problems.
I work at an online auction house. We auction off Amazon, Costco, Home Depot, and other major retailer's products. Many returns end up being returns from bad people. We find all sorts of "cheated the system" returns. Old products in new packaging is quite common. Sometimes key parts are missing from high end items. No matter the condition of the returns we end up with a bunch of garbage items because people are dishonest.
The secondary market and donating them often does a poor job of getting items properly utilized. This means many of them STILL end up in the landfill unused.
If they want to reduce returns they should probably focus on sizing. Making sure that shoppers can as accurately as possible choose the right size. Most of my returns occur because the product was too big or too small.
Yep. If Amazon required its Chinese sellers to use the Amazon size chart for the US, then I would not return as much. But I am a woman's size 12-14, with a large chest, and I often wear between a size 3X - 5X in Amazon's Chinese crap. Then there's the odd thing that is way too big. It's insane how hard I try to research a product and when it shows up, it's wildly inaccurate. Also, Amazon needs to block sellers who mislabel the ad as one fabric content like say "Cotton" and then when something shows up it's 100% nylon. That is just misleading.
I stumbled on a shop called Crazy Hot Deals yesterday and they sell the Amazon returns it looks like. They sell them from $7 to $2 for most things. It's a messy store and I won't be coming back...but so many do and it is the second life for the returns it seem
I tend to return items that are made in China when the country of origin is not found in the sellers Amazon description. My advice to Amazon, to cut down much of the returns, is to simply require sellers to clearly label the “country of origin” in their product descriptions. This video does not cover the percentage of defective, substandard, and/or mislabeled Chinese made goods that are returned each year. Since the Covid pandemic, there has been an increase of negative reactions to Chinese made products in the Amazon customer reviews I have read.
so you don't like chinese made products,cool! I also hate iPhones ;-) but why order stuff if the country of origin is not found in the sellers description? just don't place the order!
20% of the total sales in returns is enough to say that a walk in store is by far better than an online store . In a walkin store a customer can verify the product ,get a good demo of the product from the stores sales agent before making the purchase , looking at some of these return figures . One might argue having a walkin store can be more operationally cheaper than the online store. I have not added the logistical costs.
What would happen if people were allowed a certain limited number of free returns before then having to pay shipping, and then after a certain number, having to pay restocking fees after that? In that way, the people who abuse the process would pay but the rest of us could still return the occasional problem item.
What about people who buy a lot of wardrobe that ends up not fitting, and they do it quite often? My wife always orders the same size but they don't always show up the right size and she orders a LOT of clothes often.
@@RichardBaran You saw the same video I did? The environment is crumbling by the amount of people who are returning products. Why not buy from your local vendors? The only way to stop people from consuming is to hit their wallets.
I guess it depends on what you buy. Clothes, undergarments, shoes and make-up are what I largely buy. There is A LOT of false ads, misleading product pictures, inaccurate size charts, inaccurate listings and so on. I read all the reviews and look for the ones where women give their measurements in inches, bra size and so on, which most fake reviewers won't do. But it's still a gamble. I have probably returned half the clothes and shoes I have ever bought on Amazon, because of fit issues in spite of my due diligence, studying size charts, knowing ALL my own measurements and reading every last review. It that my fault? If they start limiting my returns, I will quit buying from Amazon. They need to have standards for their sellers, standards for product pictures---a big one is to put a "picture" of an article of clothing on the picture of the model. Not an actual picture of a real woman wearing the items. That's a huge red flag.
@@MrSuperJaskirat That's the fault of people who return things? Man this sounds like corporate propaganda. No it has everything to do with how items are delt with after they are returned. When you return something to Amazon, how much time do you think the person has time to review the item? 1 minute? 2? This isn't enough time to properly assess the item. Should be directly resold, sold as new, sold to bulk buyers, sold for parts, given to charity, and so on.
Amazon can reduce the number of days eligibility for return to 7 days or 2 weeks. They should also display some sort of message on their website informing the environmental impact of return. If this reduces the return by even 1 % of their returns then it is worth a try. Sometimes customers also need to be taught the right consumer behaviour.
If only that were possible to 'educate' the consumer but the consumer has already gotten used to being king and it's very hard for other businesses to compete with this giant by offering the same level of no questions asked returns. Amazon lost billions to develop the amazing operation it is now, and it has very deep pockets to take losses and simply push the cost of return on to the seller instead.
The solution is simple. All the sellers should have an insurance deposit of half-year sales. And the sellers should take care of returns. And if the seller would send those to a landfill, - it means that their product is junk. For each ended product on the landfill, the seller should get a penalty and some money away from their deposit. Sellers should start looking for high-quality products and not for junk to make a one-day profit. Strict return policies should fix it. But Amazon wouldn't do it. Guess why? Cause they are making a profit by selling cheap replicas of everything.
...then no one would sell on Amazon...🙃 People return things simply because they don't want them anymore. People buy things with the intention of returning them. Amazon workers have reported stories of people returning Beats By Dre headphones with a pair of Dollar Store headphones in the package. People have purchased household and personal hygiene products and have returned them just because they've needed or wanted the money back. Some things can't even be resold. The policy is very lenient and the face to face interaction usually y required for a return is missing, thus allow people to run amuck. And no, I am not an Amazon seller.
@@TomikaKelly yeah, Tomika, unfortunately, you are so damn right. I remember 30 years ago buying anything would be for me like a special occasion. We were not able to by things weekly/daily. We were needed to plan ahead and put money aside, - cause everything was high quality and not easy to get. Replacing items is the fraud,- but nobody sends cases to the court. People should be prosecuted for doing such awful things. Maybe AI-based judge startup will help in the nearby future? Like Amazon will submit fraud evidence to the portal, the decision will be made by AI and then the sentence needs to be executed. I was thinking also about why Amazon is not verifying users: credit score, SSN, employment and so on. It's like not related data, - but Amazon can build a reputation within their community. It is probably in there already,- we just don't know yet.
Amazon could fix this by requiring all sellers on the US based Amazon to adhere to Amazon's own US size chart for women's clothing. That would be an easy standard to achieve. It would cut down on returns overnight.
In My Opinion, I think Amazon should investigate reasoning behind all the returns. For me, I'd say most of my returns are usually for a defective item. If we make items more durable and to built to last, at least that category, for the honest people, would be eliminated. To encourage people to actually thouroughly read descriptions and ensure that's the item they want, the free returns I think could be modified. If the description was accurate and nothing is wrong with the item, a return fee should apply (partial refund). Of course if there is something wrong that's on the company then it should be completely free. What do you guys think would help?
Sometimes the one who damaged the item is the previous customer who return the item after being used. And then amazon fail to notice the damage and the item is put back into shelf and sold to the next customer who get the damaged item.
All that was said and shown is why i dont order stuff online and rather go to a place and get what i can anytime. also not gotta worry about porch pirates, etc.
Most of those returns os probably from scammers replacing the items with something similar thats broke.Maybe Amazon needs to start inspecting the items before giving refunds.
I have never ordered anything from Amazon- I do order a lot of products online and have never returned anything; however, I have thrown a few things away because of various quality issues.
Just sell the returned item for way cheaper. People will 100% buy. Amazon didn’t want to do this before cause it’s more valuable for them to sell a new expensive product.
Having worked at Amazon processing softline returns (i.e. clothing and shoes), an issue just as big as the returns themselves is the sheer volume of packaging waste generated from the original sale to the ultimate return. Brick and mortar is so much more efficient in this regard. Also we were told to ignore returns fraud cases as we lacked the trained and authorized processors who could interact with the customer account system. It would astonish me the blatant fraud which I knew all Amazon customers paid for ultimately.
If you're dealing with 3rd partiesaybe there are problems. I only buy what I can return to Amazon if there is a.problem, otherwise I try to find it in store. That's why we all pay so much for the convenience of being a Prime member.
Amazon is losing its ability to stop fraudulent sellers and just going back to a situation a nascent online delivery service would be in. If they are growing too large that quality checking suffers and underemploys staff, their business would suffer.
Customer incentives would greatly reduce returns - for instance, if less than x number of products are returned within a certain time span the customer gets an account credit. Amazon has made friction in the purchase and return process so low that they are now dealing with the consequences. Whenever they have a product they promise they can deliver overnight there are almost always delays (understandably because overnight delivery is horribly hard to achieve) however now that customers have experienced this it would be hard to scale back without backlash
if Amazon would stop selling Defective / Seconds / Damaged / Open Box / Refurbished items as new none of this would be a problem. rather than having a "Manufacture Returns" department Amazon just resells these items again in the hopes Customers dont bother returning the crap they sold to these unsuspecting buyers. this is why i stopped buying stuff from EBay, Amazon and NewEgg - especially electronics. *Buyer Beware*
One of my biggest concerns buying on line is taking delivery of merchandise that has been returned or rejected by someone else. If some one else has worn the clothes or played around with the product I do not want it. Some people are just nasty and so are their homes and some people are very careless especially if they know they are going to return the items. I would gladly pay extra to know if I am buying a new or returned item. I would buy more on line if I knew the product was brand new. I also want to know where the item is made. I do not care if it is made in Beijing or New York. If you are hiding where it was made then I am skeptical. I like Best Buys. They give you an option of brand new unopen box or a discounted open box. Cabelas only sends customers brand new never worn clothes. Returns are only sold in their Bargin Caves. I trust these two stores.
Frankly, making the returns easy and remove the hassle for the customer and the cost is absolute key to Amazons success. I wouldn't buy even half the things I buy on Amazon if I wasn't able to return it if it was something wrong with it etc.
Take shoes or clothes for example, often you don't know how they fit until you have tried them. Then there is electronics etc.
Amazon actually encourages returns and has made it soo easy for customers to return things. They place the negative cost on the sellers which sucks because most sellers take a loss at a whole bunch of returns. They even added returnless refunds and they encourage sellers to provide them
How do you return an Amazon product when they just leave the item by the door, don't ring the doorbell to alert the customer that the package was delivered, and some knucklehead comes and steals it?
@@indriadrayton1132 Then you report it to Amazon and get a refund. If there is no signature how can they prove that you got it. Amazon know full well that packages are just dropped on porches. They get stolen.
They could require signature but they know it would mean they need to drop it at post office if someone isn't home. Causing hassle. So they rather deal with it that way and take the loss. Big ticket items do require signature.
on the front lines of innovation? yet unions arnt allowed or bathroom breaks
@@loki76 just wondering how many times does it take to keep reporting items that get stolen when stuff is delivered to you and your doorbell isn't rung to alert you? Almosr everyday, my neighbor ends up with packages at their doorstep, me ending up ringing their door myself to let them know there is a package at their door. Nope. Will not do business with Amazon.
Amazon should make a used category on their website, that’s marked down 50% but can no longer be returned if bought ,as is🤔
They throw it all on a pallet and have pallet auctions. They have been doing that for awhile.
I came here to say this! I always check to see if there’s a used option before I purchase, but the items are never discounted enough! Considering that we are doing them a favor by repurchasing these goods, they could at least make it worth our while.
They need a review process where they verify listings. For example if returns for a particular item reach a certain percentage then Amazon should review the listing to ascertain the issue.
Good idea, obviously nothing will happen.
@@jonhelmer8591 they do this already foo
They have the process i think its 15% return rate i am not sure, i am an amazon seller and returns are pain in the A$$
Amazon is doing that for a long time. This problem is not an issue with listing. It's the customers who know that they can do whatever they want. Even if the product is good, customers use it and return it.
I am an FBA seller and my return rate is from 6% - 8%of my total sales. This means every month I get about 140 returns and most of them go to disposal.
It's not "consumerism", it's Amazon reselling third-rate products, often under their own name, as well as providing a sales platform for shady companies to charge you for garbage on a massive scale in hopes you won't bother to try and return it.
Yeah, like charging you 75 bucks for shipping on a 20.00 item. Or 25.00 “restock fee” on a ten dollar item..
I have thought that for awhile and quit buying from them.
I did send a couple OBDB readers back but kept many things not worth bothering.
Yep companies can dump their crap on you anonymous. I don't even bother with them if it's an item of importance, only some cheap crap I can't find anywhere else
Help me here. Covid-19 didn't perpetuate the issue? Planned consumers for being more relient on government telling them What to do? LMAO
But that tactic is part and parcel of a consumerist society. That’s a con of capitalism
The best way to lower returns is to directly deal with why people return in the first place. People return purchased goods because it is not what they thought the product would be. To prevent this from happening the item photos has to be good enough that people can see from all directions and angles and the dimensions of the product has to be very well label. Then the description has to describe everything about the features and its uses. I find most products on Amazon are lacking complete descriptions. And even when it is label it is often wrong. If Amazon just invests more money in product listing, the number of returns would naturally be much lower and dealable.
Yeah we should make a law that the photos have to be actual photos taken of the item in real life, not just a photoshopped version.
Yes, and crack down on fake reviews that burry legitimate problem with the product.
@@mylesgray3470 yup. There's a huge 5 stars for a coupon or $off on a product in many companies/Amazon retailers. Basically taking advantage of people to get money back for a good review. Holding money hostage against honesty.
Like the example of the woman that bought 9 wedding dresses knowing 8 would go back. You can't try them all on when you buy online and you never know how shoes will feel until you get them on your feet.
When I return items it’s because the item is absolutely not what I ordered (sent an Eric Clapton LP when I ordered a Glen Campbell LP) or arrives damaged (CDs and DVDs arriving in broken cases). I would return much less if more care was taken in packing items so they didn't arrive in damaged cases.
In the past I was an Amazon seller. The products I sold were custom made and drop-shipped from the printer. If for any reason the customer didn't like the product or changed their mind or overspent and needed a refund, that money was taken from my Amazon earnings. It was impractical for the item to be sent to me as I don't live in the US and there were often personalized. This is going back a few years and the return policy is even more lenient. For a small business person, working on small profit margins a high return rate can destroy their business. Amazon doesn't lose any money - the seller does.
Hello there how are you doing hope you’re fine
@@markmarco6277 the story of the woman that ordered 8 wedding dresses because she could just return 7 made me feel sick TBH. If they were damaged in transit, mistreated by the bride, that is a huge loss. Not only does the vendor lose the sale but the loses the shipping cost both ways and potentially the item. But, hey, great that Amazon has a return policy that makes them look great at no cost to them.
@@markmarco6277 Usually, the seller suffers the cost. There are supposed to be seller protections to cover certain situation, but even then Amazon doesn't always honor them and the seller gets screwed.
Same as eBay
@@GlenisRetiredNZ You can have all those 8 dresses the same size. They will all fit differently.
Kudos to the returns lady on evading questions like a pro!
I noticed that too. 🤦♂
She did very well!
She’s a shill, no kudos to her. But kudos to the person who trained her
"I came from the night shift, now I make ridiculous policy like zero waste!"
She has a future in politics.
I very rarely return anything. However, I like knowing that I can if necessary. Before I buy anything I do my homework by researching the product to make sure it’s what I want and need.
I wondered how they could possibly do "zero waste" and then I heard the magic word, donating. They will donate their previous waste items, and recipient of said donation will then throw it away. That's just waste with extra steps.
Well... Maybe. See, like Goodwill a business will form around repurposing the items. Unfortunately, what can you do with returned underwear, toothbrushes, cosmetics, stained clothing, clothing that isn't cut right?, etc., etc, on and on. Hopefully some sort of recycling can at least be performed. If it can't form any sort of profit, it will probably go to a landfill.
@@justinminer1354 The largest secondary market for USA's discarded clothing, if I remember right, is actually African countries. A podcast (Planet Money?) did a long series detailing the lifecycle of a t-shirt, and one of the things they learned is that Goodwill grades used clothing and only resells the best quality stuff in American stores. Everything else gets sold in bulk to businesses in developing nations.
@@TheNynax yeah I watched that, it's crazy the Africans pay to have it shipped all the way over there then end up still throwing away 80%(?) of it.
@@justinminer1354 Why do you guys act like everything returned to Amazon is damaged??? I've returned items because I realized I just didn't want it and the product was I'm excellent condition
@@KC-ki9uj I work in Hazmat for Amazon, which means i process the donation and damaged items. I can say that my FC threw away about 50% of the product, and still the amount of donations totaled $8.4 Million dollars in 2021 for my FC. The total amount of donations for Amazon in 2021 was about $280 Million.
I wouldn’t return anything if listings were accurate. When a description and pictures show something _completely_ different from the cheap Chinese-made crap that I actually get, yeah it’ll be returned immediately.
If it's chinese-made, it says on the description page, so you're the fool that bought it in the first place. Seems like someone lacks a brain.
On these days most of items are cheap Chinese made crap, unfortunately.
@@EastWood2004 Stop trying to save money and you won't get cheap chinese-made crap. You know there are alternatives but you're just too poor and cheap to buy them.
You are a good responsible person, not like some people who used the item then return it near the 30 days mark.
I think they're overlooking one aspect, make it so that the customer knows exactly what they're getting so they dont think about returning. More information of the product, more images, videos etc.
Sales?
Agreed, but also a lot of people (specially young women seemingly) buy stuff just to buy stuff. Maybe take some pics in "their new clothes" and then return it.
Think a good model for large online stores might be giving a customer a very, very limited number of free returns and then add a cost to returning items.
So Ebay
Returns are an inherent part of online shopping. Merchandise doesn't always look as advertised, doesn't fit perfectly, or doesn't function as intended. I find this to be far less of an issue with things I inspect and buy in person at a brick and mortar store.
plus the slightly false advertising of the product
@@shaystern2453 ''slightly''
Facts gonna start going to best buy to get my phones cause i get them from amazon breaks in 3 months and not being able to tell certain things like what charging port it uses, 4g or 5g, unlocked??, the size, battery life etc. most isn’t stated and it’s upsetting because you pay more for a more expensive item that displays all that information then the cheaper item
the most environmentally responsible thing I did this year was to cancel my amazon subscription. I canceled it when I noticed that in everything that I ever ordered, I was constantly disappointed by the quality. They take advantage of the online platform to sell cheap low quality garbage, sometimes selling worse quality versions of things you could buy from brick and mortar stores under the same brand name. Their "returns problem" is entirely their own fault.
I agree. Never used them because I dont like their corporate practices, and the way they treat employees. Society should take some blame too, people pretend to care about workers, and the environment, but they will support companies that abuse those things, to save 3 dollars, or get free shipping. Its not like there are not other options.
Indeed! I now order from Amazon once or twice a year, and only a product I already know about. Too many disappointments. Online browsing for a real product will never replace the efficiency of a real world purchase. In the real world, I've rarely had to do a return, only if a defect was discovered after use. You see, touch and feel, and try on, and know exactly what your getting.
Purchased disposable briefs for my husband who passed away a couple of days after receiving package. I tried to return, was told to keep and was promptly issued a full refund. I donated them to a local medical supply charity since the box was unopened.
I'm a seller on AMZ until the end of this year when I will be moving back to Ebay. The whole 'you can keep it' attitude gets paid for by sellers, not out of AMZ's ever bulging coffers. Ebay does not have this problem. The non-profits in the article are the AMZ sellers!
I am a Amazon seller I can confirm this
its crazy im moving 50-70% of my inventory back to ebay as well right now. to me the returns are like another fee increase on top of the new fee increase. there will be alot of us jumping ship and the things i sell amazon cant buy and sell to compete with me. amazon going to see we are there customer not the consumer.
@@alexlim1275 with all due respect, AMZN doesn't care who you are or where you sell your wares. More importantly, you're sadly mistaken if you think they are worried about competing with you. Their stock closed last week out at north of three thousand dollars ($3,000) a share. You all could leave and they wouldn't even notice nor would the share holders.
@@southrichmondtofl i understand, ive been in this space for 30 years. just like when a lot of us jump ship from malls to these two platforms see how that worked out. how ebay saw the movement from the secondary market of shoes to stockX and goat they felt that, enough large resellers like my self move they will feel it. just like 15-20 years ago alot of us moved over from ebay to amazon ebay felt that. if i lost a seven figure customer i would feel that.
@@alexlim1275 The mall is a one trick pony and ebay is as well, for the most part. AMZN is into way more than most people even know or understand and growing and evolving every day. For example, they started off by selling books, now they are a major player in controlling what you see and how you use the internet, they shut down the social site Parler. Again, they could lose however many of however many figure sellers and they wouldn't feel it. That's just one example of what this company controls no matter the number of sellers.
This must be a joke: the companies know the percentage of products that will be returned. Guess who pays for that... Yes: you that don't return anything. The price we pay for products includes the percentage that will be returned. And Amazon profits twice from the same products when it resells them in pallets.
Your point is? We also pay for what gets stolen.
Right, they sell this story like the public needs to worry about the waste they're creating when sending items back. We need to worry about Amazon's greed!!!!!!
Yes! you nailed it. Rather than charging for return they should have incentive for non returning, such as discounts or other things. In the end is the same, but customer perception can be different.
@@GamerbyDesign there's a penalty for stealing. No penalty right now for returns
When a company liquidates (what you call resell) it makes a fraction of the selling price (a $10 item might get sold for $4). Given that margins in retail are like 5%, this is a loss. The retailer doesn’t make any money because it pays back the customer the entire amount and often doesn’t charge the seller for the return shipping cost (and even if it did, there is no way that shipping charge covers the entire loss is value since shipping charge is about 10-20% of the price of the product). If only you were capable of basic math and reasoning
I actually work at an Amazon return center it’s a crazy amount of stuff that just gets disregarded
Dumpster dive
@@Iwish4zombies sounds like they burn it to prevent that
I work in a return department, they don't take into considering the undeliverable and misshipments
@@Rittersport88 You don't take things from Amazon.. lol it's not possible.
@@_myemptynest_8497 I won’t shop there because they can’t seem to get stuff to our home. This went on for a few years and became a game of ordering and watching it go back. Maybe I should get a prime account again and do it some more. The people you work for are idiots as I explained the problem many times but they continued to do it their wrong way. I hope I cost your company thousands of dollars with the game. It worked liked this, Amazon told me it would b sent FedEx so they would require a street address. I’d give them that but then they would transfer it to the post office but they couldn’t deliver it because we don’t have home mail delivery but get our mail at a PO Box. When the package got to the main post office they would send it back as the street address was the only address on the package. I’ll bet I can still do it. I started doing it just as a game because I knew I knew I would never get the packages. I never had that problem with other online sites.
Just have box that you can click that say "AS IS No Returns." And if you click that box you get the item cheaper.
That would stop returns in a hurry.
Would have to ensure quality somehow.
Would have to ensure quality somehow.
Reputation of the brand or seller ensures quality, that's what brands are for
That is a great idea but you know how it is here in America we want our cake and to eat it too.
Genius idea!
Amazon delivery driver, currently delivering packages as I watch this video. What's insane to me is that everyday I'll usually have one to five packages that are being returned to the warehouse, and there's 200 drivers that all experience the same thing on a daily basis. We're talking about returns but it surprises me that they didn't talk about the fact that customers cancel orders and the orders are still shipped processed and loaded into Vans despite having been canceled before my route even starts. It's insane how much waste this company produces and how little everyone gives a damn except the highest paid people, who paint a facade as if they are taking every step to do anything about the absolute devastating circumstances pertaining to waste and returns
They're just collecting checks and pushing paper, nobody up top is doing the big work for massive change to improve everything for everyone including the workers.
It is a miserable situation particularly when we are experiencing high inflation due to the supply shortage.
Are you the driver who just ran over my dog while watching a video while driving?!
That's the last mile delivery business in general
You should be fired for watching videos while driving.
Stewie Griffin said it way back before this video in family guy.. “Most of what America is now is just boxes going back and forth “ 😄
Just watched that ep this week dude, holy f
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Please , how do I connect with your financial planner( Donald Nathan Scott) ?
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I can’t even tell you how many Christmas trees got returned to the UPS Store this January that were likely bought on Black Friday and had until February 1 to return it. It’s honestly sickening how many Amazon returns we get. Probably 90% of our business and we offer a dozen services.
We’re on the same ship. There’s times where I work the store alone, and I’ll have millions of things to do, bubble wrap and pack picture frames, do the mail, contact mailbox holders, etc. However, I have to constantly stop what I’m doing because someone always comes in when a box load of Amazon returns. And it’s not just the amount, but when they decide to come in. I kid you not I had to stay 20 minutes after closing to pack and consolidate all these returns. I truly feel that Amazon isn’t doing enough to crack down on the frequent returns
The problem is that Amazon sells junk quality products or it isn't as described or it's counterfeit. It's too easy to become a seller and it's too easy to skate by with low quality products. Other retailers have started to accept junk products. I've returned more stuff to Costco in the last two years than in the past decade before.
The issue is Amazon allows a flood of sellers onto their platform. This means lots of counterfeit goods which leads itself to returns. If the product I am buying is made of low quality, getting pumped up by fake reviews, and not as described, of course people are going to be issuing returns. That's the issue with Amazon: They don't exactly have the best reputable sellers. I bet if you do a rate of return of Amazon Basics items vs their counterfeit counterpart, you would see a much lower return rate on the Basics items. Same with name brands listed on Amazon.
And it's foolish to believe that the stuff Amazon donates to these third-party centers aren't selling them. I guarantee they are keeping and selling the stuff worth doing so. Also, Amazon already charges customers for that return cost. It's all built in to the product, prime membership, etc., No seller is foolish enough to continue selling if it isn't profitable so they are clearly earning enough $ to justify the returns. Does returns eat into their margin? Yes. But that ease of return also allows them to generate massive amounts of sales.
"counterfeit goods which leads itself to returns" --- a very questionable assertion
@@troooooper100 Not questionable. Counterfeits have a higher rate of 'not as described' or 'defectiveness' due to it having lower quality control standards.
Exactly, the cheap ass quality products being shipped is the issue. I stopped ordering from Amazon for over a year & closed my account. After working in the parcel warehouse industry I limit online consumption because ppl are not pid fairly .
Amazon should have a seperate review window for why users made a return. That will filter a lot of people fron purchasing the item, although it may impact Amazon’s revenue.
You're last statement is why they wouldn't do it
The business I work for sells on Amazon, eBay and own website. Amazon returns are 4x higher than the other platforms, Amazon created this problem by making returns so easy and mostly free to the customer
Returns shouldn’t be hard for consumers though
Recycling should be a last resort, not the "dumpster".
Recycling is basically non-existent in the US
@@caspernicus5822 Not true, but the problem can be (other than metal and I think paper) the plastic and electronics often end up being shipped to dumps overseas, and so left un-recycled.
Oh how I wish I could show the amount of waste in the fulfillment centers. It’s mind boggling.
I don't get why this is a problem. I know so many people who buy stuff just to return it after. When I buy something, I know I want it and keep it forever.
Because of all the influencers man. They order, take the picture to market themselves that they 'have it' whatever it is (clothes, phones etc.) and then return. Best way to keep content up and expenses low.
The only stuff I returned were items that were more damaged than advertised (warehouse deals) incorrectly labeled stuff or damaged during shipping. I also returned an item that stopped working during the warranty period. Much better service than eBay where you can't return stuff AT ALL, ever. And the shipping costs are atrocious.
If Amazon were to offer their crap directly to local thrift shops at deep discounts if they can pick it up I'd say that would be very sustainable.
Amazon can fix this issue with the drop of a hat. They will move the items in unidentifiable trucks to landfills in Canada and Mexico and then release commercials showing the company as a ZERO waste company and get WAPO to push the narrative.... Problem Solved.
They go to liquidations at least for third party sellers or return to address
@@rickygkilla1358 sure that's definitely gonna happen regardless. The big point being though people who may not be able to afford the items that they want at full price could get a second chance.
I wise they do a story on how Amazon sends you already damaged items. Over the years I have received several things from Amazon that are broken or completely damaged right out the box. And I don't mean the shipping box was damaged... For many of my items the Amazon shipping box was in perfect shape...but when opening the box the inside content is broken. And you can tell that they packed it that way. For instance I had some things that said DO NOT BEND... And amazon bent it up and shoved it in a box and shipped it to me.
I had 1 instance like that and they didn’t hesitate to send another unit or refunding
Always record before opening the boxes so you have proof
That's because those fulfillment warehouses make the employees pick and pack 1,865,925 items every hour. No breaks, not even potty breaks. No wonder stuff like that happens!
Just cancelled my membership yesterday
$152 is too much just for Prime
Hit me up 👆
Translation: What's good for business is not always good for us.
My returns are mostly because there is no quality control. The only way to know if something is good is by waiting for hundreds of customer reviews which are paid for by the seller. Amazon needs a “certified product” label that can only be given by submitting your product to independent review by Amazon judges.
Fundamentally returns are the symptom not the problem. Streamlining returns and burning them for energy and reselling them is simply a Band-Aid for the actual problem. There is not a good quality control system for Amazon purchases. Many times it is just products that are bought off of Alibaba and re-sold on Amazon with very little value added or quality control. Then the customer who bought the product wind has two options, throw it away or return it.
There's the Amazon renewed program
Even if the product is certified, does not mean it will be quality. I rarely buy on Amazon because of too many disappointments. One was buying an item which was labeled 100% leather but after two weeks, it was already peeling. This was from a well known national brand. So I claimed, they paid for return, and I got a refund. The same item is still listed on the site with 100% leather and I have no idea how in the real world a store would allow that to happen.
Though a summary of the logistics of Amazon Returns, it exposed that Amazon counts it's returned items, donated to "charities" that refurbish/sell them, as tax writeoffs. This must count for a lot, given that Amazon does not pay taxes.
It benefits directly from a system it setup, part of the easy lifecycle that it makes available to the consumer. It profits from a problem it creates. It externamize and individualize the responsibility of a system it created.
I honestly hate this company.
I don't take advantage of returns and understand it can be a burden on the company and planet but if a product is not as advertised and is over priced junk then I do wish to return easily
It's nearly impossible to make a good informed decision when buying clothes and shoes without trying them on. This kind of item should be banned from Amazon and online stores. Amazon and online sales should be only for books, electronics and technology, kitchen supplies, etc..
Clothing, shoes, linens and anything involving a fabric, texture, size, etc.. Should be banned simply because the odds of matching what you see on the screen with a perfect fit it's highly unlikely. As for clothing returning to the retail, shopping mall, experience of the 90's and trying stuff it'll be better for the environment and maybe even create jobs. Returning should be only for damage items not because you thought the color was wrong.
Ebay used to have it so there was allowed a fee to be charged by the sellers if someone bought something and tried to return it without a valid reason that had to be proven, but policy changes has basically destroyed this option for the most part. Might want to bring back this model if you want less returns of products as well as less losses for those third party sellers that usually get hit the hardest.
There is also a borrowing problem with Amazon customers in particular because of their easy return policy. There were litterally whole Tiktok and redit posts on how to do this. As a handmade seller on the platform among other selling platforms, I ONLY have this issue with Amazon clients. They buy a product, use it at an event, then return it for a refund. Which comes out of my small businesses pocket because we cover the shipping costs. It's a problem for multiple reasons. I totally get needing to return some things, but when it's blatantly obvious that people are abusing the system. Something needs to change.
Hello there how are you doing today
Amazon *is only* following Costco's lead. Costco may not have the volume of sales as Amazon, but they also don't have the volume of fake products/false advertisements/general counterfeits as Amazon.
If Amazon discontinued their Free Prime Shipping & Returns, I would drop it in a HeartBeat! The Prices are already skyrocketing. When I can now find an item at my Local ACE Hardware for the same price as Amazon, then things are heading in the wrong direction for Amazon!!
Choosing to host poor quality goods that are often fakes will not reduce returns
First and more foremost more honest and accurately detailed descriptions!
How about partial returns. I’ve had several purchases lately where one of the items were broke but the duplicate 4 or more were just fine. I’d be willing to take just part of my money back for that one broken item versus returning the lot and repurchasing wasting time and fuel on both sides.
Small things make a huge difference in a company that size. For example, I am an Amazon handmade seller, and one thing that always irks me is, the very first paragraph on a receipt is how to return the item and the second is how to relieve leave a review from the seller . What would happen if they just reversed those two? Make it less easy to just jump to the conclusion at once that they should return the item. Small things add up!
Hello there how are you doing today
This is why I don’t use Amazon…. I know some businesses I buy from uses them… but I avoid wherever possible
Amazon's problem is largely managing its sellers to standardize. If Amazon demanded some quality and standards, returns would be less. This is ESPECIALLY true in terms of women's clothing, underwear, bras, shoes, and so on. Sellers use Asian sizing and it's a gamble to buy their crap. If Sellers want to sell in the US, they should have to adhere to Amazon's own US size charts. If I could know things will fit with more probability, I would buy more and return less. Also, even some of the brand names sell lesser quality crap on Amazon, the sell "imperfect" or knockoff items. I was just looking at Hanes T-shirts for women. I have worn Hanes T-shits for years, so I know how they should fit and their quality. But if you read reviews, people are getting mis-sized items, ill fitting items, items that have seams falling apart on the sides of T-shirts and in armpits. It's obvious, these are not up to the quality of Hanes clothing you'd get at say, Macy's, JC Penny, and so on. Also, sellers post inaccurate titles, sellers try to trick buyers with misleading photography, post inaccurate colors, or have their models hold their arms or stand a certain way to hid fit issues. I bought a lovely designed ribbed sweater over the winter, but when I put it on, the fabric content was very poor, and the ribbing made the sweater bulge in very unattractive ways, giving the appearance I had a "spare tire" around my waist. When I went back and looked at the model, she was holding her arms to camouflage what was happening at her waist. The model was bone skinny, so you know if it was bulging at her waist, on a more athletic built woman like myself, it would look even worse. I only noticed it and had to look hard at the picture because of the model's arms bent at the waist and her hands touching in front of her body. Once I noticed it, it was an odd stance and clearly positioned to hid how crappy the fabric was. Completely designed to be misleading. That is not the buyer's fault.
i read about a man in his 50s that started investing in stocks and real estate, then retired in 2years with over $6million, that right there is my utmost goal and I'd really appreciate clues and tips on how to reach this goal within 5years
Everything is possible, it all depends on your consistency and discipline.
It is essential for you to have a mentor to keep you accountable
1. Limit your spending/cut off retail therapy
2.Put the extra cash towards investing in high yielding or steady investment.
3. Get a financial coach/mentor to guide through your investing goal. These might look simple but they require good amount of willpower, but through mentorship, I've been able to consistently grow my portfolio to $800K and I'm looking forward to retiring at 50 as well and I only wish I started up early. Goodluck
@@williamwdclarkfm7097 That's awesome 👏 if it is not asking too much, do you mind hooking me up with your coach?
@@flossietaylor6239 *’ Natalie * Andrea * Bows *' , is the coach helping me out, and you can book an appointment with her through her website, just look her up online tp get more info about her
That is why i am a prime member. If there is no easy return I wouldn’t be a prime member. I shopped $30k from Amazon yearly. I maybe return $4k of it. I am very happy with Amazon return policy.
👆👆✍️📩📩
They really should better incentivize the repurchase of used/returned goods. I always check to see if there’s a used option before I make a purchase. I got my rollerblades, a Dutch oven, and a dry erase board used this year, and I’m happy with every purchase. Most people would rather have new items though. Since we are doing amazon a favor by repurchasing these items, they really should consider a larger discount on those used items. A couple of dollars off isn’t enough to get most people to choose the used option, even if it’s in great condition. If this stuff is going to get thrown away or donated at some point anyway, why not just sell them for a 50%+ discount? Everybody wins! What’s the harm in that? Currently, it seems like amazon is just trying to make as much money as possible from these items that will eventually be garbage anyway, and it reeks of greed.
I do think that the next step for Amazon is to shift back toward the store model, but in a new way. Have their giant Amazon warehouses, but adjacent to that, have a showroom floor. Let companies with products _lease_ that showroom space to show off large items that people would want to personally interact with before buying, or that would be prohibitive to return. Amazon would be proving them the space to demo their products to the customers. This would be more like an Ikea than a Walmart, something you wouldn't have in every town, but within driving distance for most people.
For clothing, they would keep popular stuff in stock, and you could try it on in store. you could also "store order" an item off their website, have it delivered to the store rather than your home, try it on in the store, and if you didn't want to keep it, then it would remain in their custody and they could use their normal logistics to get it to another new customer, rather than considering it "damaged goods." This method could offer a discount to the consumer that the ship to home model would not.
Just like an a$$hat to have buildings full of stuff they are doing absolutely nothing with or destroying rather than DONATING it to homeless shelters, programs for kids, ETC.
I bought a full length mirror recently and was disappointed it arrived shattered so I had to “return” it. If the delivery drivers didn’t smash the merchandise, that would save on returns. They refunded me but I have to get rid of a huge shattered mirror myself. The whole thing could have been avoided.
It’s not always the drivers, Amazon will load up damaged packages just to get them out of the warehouse.
No matter what you said about Amazon.
Amazon have the best and the hassle free return among all .
That's why I love shopping from Amazon only.
Easy, simple and reliable online shopping site
I cancelled my Amazon Prime 2 years ago. Best decision ever
Why was it the best decision ever? Just curious
@@tde2019 because big bad bezos did big bad thing. Evil. 😅
@@Editnamehere cheeky & unique comment. i laughed; not enough to use an emoji though
@@jamms2966 work on your sentence structure.
@@Editnamehere work on your trolling. youre boring
What would make this more useful is looking at the carbon footprint comparison of physical returns with traditional physical stores and B2C processes to that of Amazon.
they never mention, the "amazon mystery box" you can buy for 50 or 100 bucks filled with electronics, you might get a 1400$ laptop, or 600$ game console but most the time you end up with a box of useless items not barely worth the money for the box
Probably why they didnt mention it
Where to buy them please?
They're fine with buying 9 dresses and only keeping one? I've heard of people getting banned from Amazon if your returns are too high.
It's no different than walking into a brick and mortar to try on 7 dresses for a special occasion. If the Amazon sellers were to have their dress sizes standardized to, say, the Amazon size chart for the US, then women would not have to try on so many, hoping that one would fit.
There's the shady third-party seller thing with subpar quality products going on for sure, but the ease of the online commerce also brought the special kind of abusers of "buy, use, and return claiming refund" types of consumers. As a seller myself, I have seen an increase in refund claims for "undelivered parcels" even when GPS and photo evidence is there to prove otherwise. Another increasingly common issue is returns with "ordered wrong item/colour" type of customers, I mean, you gotta be an idiot, how do people even shop around if they are willingly buying the wrong item?! After chatting with some of the customers I've realised that people have no idea how logistics and online shopping actually work, the majority of customers are oblivious to the freight, storage, shipping, and human labour and costs associated with that, let alone the ecological factors associated with the entire market.
Amazon has helped foster a gross sense of entitlement among consumers. It is really disgusting. A generation ago, even Sears, known for their generous return policies, would have never tolerated the kind of abuse Amazon lets people get away with.
Bingo… the quality of products being sold via Amazon has drastically diminished over the last 5-10 years. When I was in college, purchases from Amazon lasted so I shopped several times a week. Today I order only about 2 times a year because the “name brand” items usually break / malfunction after the 30 day return window & the products are extremely poor quality or “fake.”
@@ssrb9406 is this in US or EU market?
I've been buying Amazon returns at local auctions for the past few months. It works well for me. I got a perfect exercise bike for $4 when it costs $200 new. It keeps it out of a landfill and gives it another life.
Maybe Amazon should start with how they package items in the first place. Whenever I order a book on Amazon I expect to have to return it because the packaging of the item for shipping is horrible, and the book normally comes damaged due to it being unprotected during the shipment process. I understand as a consumer that items will have "shelf wear", but Amazon is horrible when it comes to ordering books because of the lack of protection they give to the packaging of the item. Most likely a lot of other items come damaged too because of a lack of packing properly for shipment.
Try buying from a third party seller on Amazon if you can. Not from a megaseller, who are as bad as Amazon with packaging, but one that takes time to list a book with a good description, lots of pictures and such. Much more likely to package books and media properly.
Video games are just as bad. They just throw it in a bubble mailer and by the time you get it, the case is always cracked and the disc is just floating around inside.
Paying for return shipping is the worst. I bought a keyboard on Newegg several years ago, didn't like it had to ship it back. They had Restock fee back then of 15% so there I lost 15% of my money. Returning it via UPS cost a lot of money. In the end I lost half the money I spent buying that keyboard.
This is why I like Amazon, free returns and no hassle and no restock fees or arguing with customer service.
On top of that I love how Amazon often deal with late packages or packages that could be assumed lost. They send out a new replacement and often if the original package show up you get to keep it. Even if at time they say they want it back you can just tell them in chat that the Amazon delivery just drop the package so you couldn't refuse it and also you don't want the hassle of going to post office etc. They usually just say, if it shows up, feel free to keep it..
I got myself an extra HDD valued at $140 because of that. So I have 2 HDD , 1 for free and not cheap either.
Amazon should also put into place a price match policy. Not prime matching other competitors but with themselves. I see myself purchasing an item for $300 and the next two days, it’s $270 on Amazon. Would be nice to just get $30 back without wasting
Coddling customers = frivolous returns
People order multiple clothing items with the intent to return them because they CAN,
What did they do before Amazon? Were they naked?
This new convenience is nice, but at what cost to the market and the environment?
Clothing is hard to buy online and amazon tends to have bait and switch for clothing they might have the model donned in cotton and you get spandex version of it inspite of that not being an option at all for the product. The same issue exists with jewelry the customer can't determine what it will look like, feel like, or how thick the chains are till it shows at their house.
Clearly you are male and can just order your waist size and things fit. Not true for women. If I have a special event, I will go to a brick and mortar and take 7 dresses into a stall and try them all on. Why should it be any different, ESPECIALLY when Amazon allows its Chinese sellers to peddle crap in Chinese sizes. I am a women's size 12---fairly average for a woman. I do have a large bust, so sometimes in Chinese crap, I have to order a size 5XL or more. Does that sound right????? Amazon needs to make its clothing sellers adhere to Amazon's own size chart for the US. That would solve a lot of the problems.
@@DK-zu6tt don't make your problems everyone else's
I guess 20:80 rule applies here.
20% of the consumers represents 80% of the returns.
This is the problem with brand names going away. Garbage in = garbage out.
Brand names mean nothing. US business handed overseas companies the reins to do whatever they wanted with our American made items
a long time ago.
I work at an online auction house. We auction off Amazon, Costco, Home Depot, and other major retailer's products. Many returns end up being returns from bad people. We find all sorts of "cheated the system" returns. Old products in new packaging is quite common. Sometimes key parts are missing from high end items. No matter the condition of the returns we end up with a bunch of garbage items because people are dishonest.
Order 9 dresses to keep 1??? That’s criminal. Just wrong.
Amazon should stop selling junk
The secondary market and donating them often does a poor job of getting items properly utilized. This means many of them STILL end up in the landfill unused.
If they want to reduce returns they should probably focus on sizing. Making sure that shoppers can as accurately as possible choose the right size.
Most of my returns occur because the product was too big or too small.
Or the pant stitches ended up in the middle of the pant leg instead of on the sides where it belongs. Same for tops.
Yep. If Amazon required its Chinese sellers to use the Amazon size chart for the US, then I would not return as much. But I am a woman's size 12-14, with a large chest, and I often wear between a size 3X - 5X in Amazon's Chinese crap. Then there's the odd thing that is way too big. It's insane how hard I try to research a product and when it shows up, it's wildly inaccurate. Also, Amazon needs to block sellers who mislabel the ad as one fabric content like say "Cotton" and then when something shows up it's 100% nylon. That is just misleading.
I stumbled on a shop called Crazy Hot Deals yesterday and they sell the Amazon returns it looks like. They sell them from $7 to $2 for most things. It's a messy store and I won't be coming back...but so many do and it is the second life for the returns it seem
They do one of these videos every year. I wonder if anything is even changing?
I tend to return items that are made in China when the country of origin is not found in the sellers Amazon description. My advice to Amazon, to cut down much of the returns, is to simply require sellers to clearly label the “country of origin” in their product descriptions. This video does not cover the percentage of defective, substandard, and/or mislabeled Chinese made goods that are returned each year. Since the Covid pandemic, there has been an increase of negative reactions to Chinese made products in the Amazon customer reviews I have read.
so you don't like chinese made products,cool! I also hate iPhones ;-)
but why order stuff if the country of origin is not found in the sellers description? just don't place the order!
20% of the total sales in returns is enough to say that a walk in store is by far better than an online store . In a walkin store a customer can verify the product ,get a good demo of the product from the stores sales agent before making the purchase , looking at some of these return figures . One might argue having a walkin store can be more operationally cheaper than the online store. I have not added the logistical costs.
What would happen if people were allowed a certain limited number of free returns before then having to pay shipping, and then after a certain number, having to pay restocking fees after that? In that way, the people who abuse the process would pay but the rest of us could still return the occasional problem item.
What about people who buy a lot of wardrobe that ends up not fitting, and they do it quite often? My wife always orders the same size but they don't always show up the right size and she orders a LOT of clothes often.
Good idea
@@RichardBaran You saw the same video I did? The environment is crumbling by the amount of people who are returning products. Why not buy from your local vendors? The only way to stop people from consuming is to hit their wallets.
I guess it depends on what you buy. Clothes, undergarments, shoes and make-up are what I largely buy. There is A LOT of false ads, misleading product pictures, inaccurate size charts, inaccurate listings and so on. I read all the reviews and look for the ones where women give their measurements in inches, bra size and so on, which most fake reviewers won't do. But it's still a gamble. I have probably returned half the clothes and shoes I have ever bought on Amazon, because of fit issues in spite of my due diligence, studying size charts, knowing ALL my own measurements and reading every last review. It that my fault? If they start limiting my returns, I will quit buying from Amazon. They need to have standards for their sellers, standards for product pictures---a big one is to put a "picture" of an article of clothing on the picture of the model. Not an actual picture of a real woman wearing the items. That's a huge red flag.
@@MrSuperJaskirat That's the fault of people who return things? Man this sounds like corporate propaganda. No it has everything to do with how items are delt with after they are returned. When you return something to Amazon, how much time do you think the person has time to review the item? 1 minute? 2? This isn't enough time to properly assess the item. Should be directly resold, sold as new, sold to bulk buyers, sold for parts, given to charity, and so on.
Amazon can reduce the number of days eligibility for return to 7 days or 2 weeks. They should also display some sort of message on their website informing the environmental impact of return. If this reduces the return by even 1 % of their returns then it is worth a try. Sometimes customers also need to be taught the right consumer behaviour.
💯 agreed
If only that were possible to 'educate' the consumer but the consumer has already gotten used to being king and it's very hard for other businesses to compete with this giant by offering the same level of no questions asked returns. Amazon lost billions to develop the amazing operation it is now, and it has very deep pockets to take losses and simply push the cost of return on to the seller instead.
The solution is simple. All the sellers should have an insurance deposit of half-year sales. And the sellers should take care of returns. And if the seller would send those to a landfill, - it means that their product is junk. For each ended product on the landfill, the seller should get a penalty and some money away from their deposit. Sellers should start looking for high-quality products and not for junk to make a one-day profit. Strict return policies should fix it. But Amazon wouldn't do it. Guess why? Cause they are making a profit by selling cheap replicas of everything.
...then no one would sell on Amazon...🙃 People return things simply because they don't want them anymore. People buy things with the intention of returning them. Amazon workers have reported stories of people returning Beats By Dre headphones with a pair of Dollar Store headphones in the package. People have purchased household and personal hygiene products and have returned them just because they've needed or wanted the money back. Some things can't even be resold.
The policy is very lenient and the face to face interaction usually y required for a return is missing, thus allow people to run amuck. And no, I am not an Amazon seller.
@@TomikaKelly yeah, Tomika, unfortunately, you are so damn right. I remember 30 years ago buying anything would be for me like a special occasion. We were not able to by things weekly/daily. We were needed to plan ahead and put money aside, - cause everything was high quality and not easy to get. Replacing items is the fraud,- but nobody sends cases to the court. People should be prosecuted for doing such awful things. Maybe AI-based judge startup will help in the nearby future? Like Amazon will submit fraud evidence to the portal, the decision will be made by AI and then the sentence needs to be executed. I was thinking also about why Amazon is not verifying users: credit score, SSN, employment and so on. It's like not related data, - but Amazon can build a reputation within their community. It is probably in there already,- we just don't know yet.
Imagine if we sized all clothes and shoes like men's pants. Think of how many returns would not be made the world over from clothing alone.
Or if clothing were stitched properly and in the right places.. sheesh.
Amazon could fix this by requiring all sellers on the US based Amazon to adhere to Amazon's own US size chart for women's clothing. That would be an easy standard to achieve. It would cut down on returns overnight.
Ordering 9 dresses to keep one. I don't even need to further comment.
Why are there so many returns in the first place? They should rather look into that, and reduce the return rate.
They should look at how many times a product is getting returned
In My Opinion, I think Amazon should investigate reasoning behind all the returns. For me, I'd say most of my returns are usually for a defective item. If we make items more durable and to built to last, at least that category, for the honest people, would be eliminated. To encourage people to actually thouroughly read descriptions and ensure that's the item they want, the free returns I think could be modified. If the description was accurate and nothing is wrong with the item, a return fee should apply (partial refund). Of course if there is something wrong that's on the company then it should be completely free. What do you guys think would help?
Sometimes the one who damaged the item is the previous customer who return the item after being used.
And then amazon fail to notice the damage and the item is put back into shelf and sold to the next customer who get the damaged item.
@@claraisnotmebutilikeit I'd say this is also true
Instead of burning it, they should simply have a storage room auction program. Load all the returns in a “black box” and let people bid on it.
Every two weeks we have returns day.
It's quicker to get the item. Easier to inspect it in person. And easy to return.
All that was said and shown is why i dont order stuff online and rather go to a place and get what i can anytime. also not gotta worry about porch pirates, etc.
Most of those returns os probably from scammers replacing the items with something similar thats broke.Maybe Amazon needs to start inspecting the items before giving refunds.
I have never ordered anything from Amazon- I do order a lot of products online and have never returned anything; however, I have thrown a few things away because of various quality issues.
If your returns are bigger than the us defense budget I'm sure you could be donating the useful stuff to homeless people and organization ,
Just sell the returned item for way cheaper. People will 100% buy. Amazon didn’t want to do this before cause it’s more valuable for them to sell a new expensive product.
Having worked at Amazon processing softline returns (i.e. clothing and shoes), an issue just as big as the returns themselves is the sheer volume of packaging waste generated from the original sale to the ultimate return. Brick and mortar is so much more efficient in this regard.
Also we were told to ignore returns fraud cases as we lacked the trained and authorized processors who could interact with the customer account system. It would astonish me the blatant fraud which I knew all Amazon customers paid for ultimately.
You have to keep following up several times with Amazon to get credit for your returns. The people that don't are giving Amazon free money.
I have returned things many times and I always get my money back
Never had a problem and I order constantly
@@jean4157 well my wife does and she ordered a lot
If you're dealing with 3rd partiesaybe there are problems. I only buy what I can return to Amazon if there is a.problem, otherwise I try to find it in store. That's why we all pay so much for the convenience of being a Prime member.
"a $10 bag of crap..." I was so focused on the seriousness and then that happened. 😂
shoe sizing and clothing sizing differ with different brands, so yeah, it makes sense to make it easer to return those types of items.
Amazon is losing its ability to stop fraudulent sellers and just going back to a situation a nascent online delivery service would be in. If they are growing too large that quality checking suffers and underemploys staff, their business would suffer.
Customer incentives would greatly reduce returns - for instance, if less than x number of products are returned within a certain time span the customer gets an account credit. Amazon has made friction in the purchase and return process so low that they are now dealing with the consequences. Whenever they have a product they promise they can deliver overnight there are almost always delays (understandably because overnight delivery is horribly hard to achieve) however now that customers have experienced this it would be hard to scale back without backlash
we ran a business on amazon many years ago and the returns made it not worth the effort.
Hello 👋 hope
Cherris Armour, very smart person. I liked her. No wonder she became a director. 👏🏼
if Amazon would stop selling Defective / Seconds / Damaged / Open Box / Refurbished items as new none of this would be a problem. rather than having a "Manufacture Returns" department Amazon just resells these items again in the hopes Customers dont bother returning the crap they sold to these unsuspecting buyers. this is why i stopped buying stuff from EBay, Amazon and NewEgg - especially electronics. *Buyer Beware*
One of my biggest concerns buying on line is taking delivery of merchandise that has been returned or rejected by someone else. If some one else has worn the clothes or played around with the product I do not want it. Some people are just nasty and so are their homes and some people are very careless especially if they know they are going to return the items. I would gladly pay extra to know if I am buying a new or returned item. I would buy more on line if I knew the product was brand new. I also want to know where the item is made. I do not care if it is made in Beijing or New York. If you are hiding where it was made then I am skeptical. I like Best Buys. They give you an option of brand new unopen box or a discounted open box. Cabelas only sends customers brand new never worn clothes. Returns are only sold in their Bargin Caves. I trust these two stores.