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I don’t understand why returns are so permissive, especially in industries that can’t/won’t resell returned products (eg fashion). In my opinion, the onus is o

by KMnO4 4y ago

I don’t understand why returns are so permissive, especially in industries that can’t/won’t resell returned products (eg fashion). In my opinion, the onus is on you to do your due diligence when it comes to researching the correct product. Bought an HDMI cable instead of DisplayPort? You should have looked. Microwave doesn’t fit your space? Measuring tapes (and AR tools[0]) exist for a reason. Pants are too large? Use the damn fitting room[1] before buying them! Of course, all three of those items are resalable after a return, but stores would most likely send 2/3 to be destroyed instead of refurbishment. I just wish we could move away from the “customer is always right” deplorable tactics which create umpteen amounts of waste. Such as my coworker, who bought 10 dresses for a wedding and returned 9 of them after a test drive. [0]: https://size.link https://size.link [1]: I get it, fitting rooms were closed during COVID. It doesn’t excuse the waste though (just shifts the blame).

criddell 4y ago
> I don’t understand why returns are so permissive, especially in industries that can’t/won’t resell returned products (eg fashion). Because it's a competitive market. Once your competitors offer something like a generous return policy you might need to do the same.
- recursive 4y ago
  If my competitor has two out of three sales ending in returns, then I can sell for a third of the price by not offering returns. That's another way of having a competitive market.
  - criddell 4y ago
    Do you think the companies that have generous return policies have never run the numbers?
    - recursive 4y ago
      No, I think they have. But also, I don't find this argument particularly compelling. "It is how it is. It can never be any other way. Because all the things that make it how it is won't let it."
      - criddell 4y ago
        Nobody made that argument.
AlexandrB 4y ago
I find it weird that someone would argue for a worse retail experience. People make mistakes, it's great that people can return stuff that it turns out they don't need or won't work. As to why retailers do it, I think it's a combination of: a. Regulations - many jurisdictions have a requirement that retailers accept returns for some period. This is great because it makes fraud on the retailer's part extremely unprofitable - customers can just return fraudulently marketed products. b. Competition - one thing that both Walmart and Amazon did was lower the bar for returns. In the 90s Walmart would often accept returns even without a receipt, which was a competitive advantage against other retailers that had more restrictive policies. Amazon did something similar for online retail by paying for shipping of returned items. c. Encouraging impulse buys - Having a high bar for researching purchases means that impulse buys are much less likely. If you're in a store and you see a microwave you really like, knowing that you can return it makes it more likely you will buy it right then and there. If you have to go home and confirm a bunch of dimensions, it's more likely you won't return for the microwave as emotions will have cooled. Edit: Addressing fashion specifically. There are many factors that can make something that works in a fitting room turn out to later be ill suited. First, it's not uncommon to be buying a top or pants to go with other clothing in one's wardrobe. Unless you bring all that stuff with you when you go shopping, it's only possible to guess whether things will work out while in a fitting room. There's also a level of wishful thinking that can happen when trying on clothes - where you make it fit by sucking in your gut or something that can mask the fact that clothing won't work. Long term comfort is also impossible to ascertain in a fitting room. This is especially applicable to shoes - where they might be comfy for the 5 minutes in the store, but start to hurt after 30 minutes to an hour. Finally, it's impossible to tell how much something will shrink in the wash when you buy it. Some stuff that fits perfectly "off the rack" will no longer fit properly after it has been through the washer/dryer.
- malfist 4y ago
  GP's post also discounts cases where the manufacturer is just wrong about a spec. I once ordered a custom aquarium. 200+ gallons, over 400 pounds of glass. The sizes were standard, custom part was for drilled holes for plumbing. The manufacturer advertised the aquarium as X inches by Y inches foot print. I built a stand for that size, but it turns out the manufacturer was half an inch off in each direction. I couldn't return the aquarium since it had been made custom, but the manufacturer delivered me a product I couldn't use with the stand I built. The stands have to be built very specifically to transfer weight to the floor. Filled, the aquarium was over 3000 pounds, being off by half an inch was catastrophic. I had to tear apart the stand I built and rebuild it to support it. Manufacturers can be wrong, manufacturers can lie. A microwave might fit your cabinet on a spec sheet, but not when it's delivered. Or something else might make it a poor fit (i.e., it fits, but requires clearance you don't have for the door hinge to swing). Let customers return things.
jinto36 4y ago
REI has a crazy return policy, but attempts to resell everything that comes back. You can buy boots, through-hike the Appalachian Trail in them, and bring them back for a full refund. REI will put them on the shelf in the clearance section at a discount. Not sure if they finally dispose of things if they never sell, or if they just keep increasing the discount until someone finally takes it, but it's probably the latter. I don't go to my local store often enough to try to keep track of how long things have been there (not have I asked an employee, which would probably be the more direct way to acquire that information).
- itintheory 4y ago
  Don't have one near me, but I've heard tales of the REI dumpsters being absolute treasure troves of usable outdoor equipment.
et-al 4y ago
In your specific example with clothing, there are two good reasons: 1. There's vanity sizing going on (e.g. 30" pants actually have a 32" waist due to vanity-sizing) and measurements provided may not be consistent throughout batches. These are still handmade items, just not artisanal. 2. Fabric drapes differently, so what looks good on a model shots with the clothing meticulously pinned, may look different when you actually wear it. Also, I assume another reason for a lax return policy is that the margins are large enough to support it. Or retailers expect that most customers won't take advantage of it (until they do, like REI).
- fortran77 4y ago
  > . There's vanity sizing going on (e.g. 30" pants actually have a 32" waist due to vanity-sizing) It's a shame there can't be standard sizing. All this confusion just because we don't want to offend the overweight and obese.
  - bsder 4y ago
    You're an ignorant fool. The worst offenders I have known about vanity sizing have generally been fairly small. My grandmother, for example, was without doubt a size 6 but would never buy anything that wasn't listed as a size 4. I have had two girlfriends who were similarly annoying--the clothing I bought them was clearly dead-on the correct size when they tried it on, but they wouldn't wear it because it was a size "too large" (they didn't last long as girlfriends). By contrast, the smallest and largest women I have known simply wanted something that fit correctly regardless of the "labeled size".
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
It's the same reason you see companies advertising risk-free money-back guarantees: Buying something feels less risky if you believe you have recourse if it doesn't work out. Practically speaking, if a company can raise sales by 20% with a liberal return policy but 5% of purchases are actually returned, they may still come out ahead. Long-term, having a return policy also signals that the company is interested in taking care of the customer and building a relationship. This is why you see brands like REI building a reputation on top of their generous return policy. People (on average, not everyone of course) will actually pay a small premium to shop from a company with a return policy.
antiterra 4y ago
Buying 10 dresses to keep one is not a ‘deplorable customer is always right’ tactic. You can’t reasonably purchase a wedding dress via due diligence, you have to try them on. The returned dresses should be able to be resold.
mkeedlinger 4y ago
Others have mentioned market forces, but I don't think that's the only reason. Personally, when buying online there are a lot of things that go wrong at little (or no) fault of the consumer. Some examples are ambiguous (or missing!) info in a description, details or measurements that are slightly (or very) inaccurate, quality that is unacceptable but difficult to differentiate online (often because aggressively positive marketing), etc, etc. If these weren't balanced out with liberal return policies, then I wouldn't buy nearly as much online. Literally anything over a few dozen dollars would start being suspect for me. I think this is also the case for many other people. Really, until Amazon started their incredibly pro-consumer policies and other venues followed suite, I really didn't purchase much online.
torstenvl 4y ago
In addition to what everyone else wrote, note that your proposal is enormously economically inefficient. The businesses that sell microwaves are much better positioned to... well, sell microwaves... than the average consumer. They are the least-cost avoider of the social harm of things going to waste (which is what happens when unwanted item X doesn't get bought off Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or whatever and the original purchaser finally tosses it). If items are going to go unused, it makes economic sense for them to be sold on the secondary market. If they are going to be sold, it makes economic sense that they be sold by an entity that is good at selling them. The original merchant has a significant comparative advantage in selling items it already sells compared to any given consumer.
com2kid 4y ago
> Pants are too large? Use the damn fitting room[1] before buying them! I once bought 3 identically labeled pairs of levis jeans. I tried one pair on, they fit fine. The other 2 pairs fit dramatically different. Same size, same style, but apparently quality control at the factory was dramatically off. > Microwave doesn’t fit your space? Measuring tapes (and AR tools[0]) exist for a reason. I've seen (bought) appliances with mislabeled dimensions. Half an inch, not much, but the door to the laundry room wouldn't shut. Also things like hookup placements for hoses are often not labeled on the box. Love it when those stick out way past the main body of the machine. Heck I bought some picture hooks from Home Depot where the included nails stuck out farther then the hooks did, making the entire product useless given the purpose of it was to distribute weight on a hook and not directly on a nail. (Impressive fail there...) > Such as my coworker, who bought 10 dresses for a wedding and returned 9 of them after a test drive. Having a "try at home" scheme is going to be an effective solution for this problem. Amazon does this for fashion items. "What socks/shoes/bra/necklace/earring combos go with this" is not an easy question to answer w/o having a piece to try on at home. Heck just seeing how clothing looks in different lighting. Fitting rooms would benefit from adjustable color balances in their lighting, an outfit meant to be worn outside in the sun may look very different under a store's yellow or blue lighting. > I just wish we could move away from the “customer is always right” Some customers abuse the rules, but I'd best that most customers just want to buy a product that makes them happy. If stores are not doing a good job matching customers up to those products, then the stores need to adjust their sales strategy.
skciva 4y ago
Surely your coworker is an outlier. Feels like what you're describing is a great opportunity for a small amount of data analysis to allow companies to be gracious with customers who genuinely made a mistake and customers abusing the system.
formerkrogemp 4y ago
It's called the Uniform Commercial Code and it exists to protect consumers and to get us to spend more. I agree that it can get pretty ridiculous with generous return policies. I've worked for 3 retailers, and I've seen some shit. Who returns milk two months later??

by KMnO4 4y ago

criddell 4y ago

> I don’t understand why returns are so permissive, especially in industries that can’t/won’t resell returned products (eg fashion). Because it's a competitive market. Once your competitors offer something like a generous return policy you might need to do the same.

recursive 4y ago
If my competitor has two out of three sales ending in returns, then I can sell for a third of the price by not offering returns. That's another way of having a competitive market.
- criddell 4y ago
  Do you think the companies that have generous return policies have never run the numbers?
  - recursive 4y ago
    No, I think they have. But also, I don't find this argument particularly compelling. "It is how it is. It can never be any other way. Because all the things that make it how it is won't let it."
    - criddell 4y ago
      Nobody made that argument.

AlexandrB 4y ago

I find it weird that someone would argue for a worse retail experience. People make mistakes, it's great that people can return stuff that it turns out they don't need or won't work. As to why retailers do it, I think it's a combination of: a. Regulations - many jurisdictions have a requirement that retailers accept returns for some period. This is great because it makes fraud on the retailer's part extremely unprofitable - customers can just return fraudulently marketed products. b. Competition - one thing that both Walmart and Amazon did was lower the bar for returns. In the 90s Walmart would often accept returns even without a receipt, which was a competitive advantage against other retailers that had more restrictive policies. Amazon did something similar for online retail by paying for shipping of returned items. c. Encouraging impulse buys - Having a high bar for researching purchases means that impulse buys are much less likely. If you're in a store and you see a microwave you really like, knowing that you can return it makes it more likely you will buy it right then and there. If you have to go home and confirm a bunch of dimensions, it's more likely you won't return for the microwave as emotions will have cooled. Edit: Addressing fashion specifically. There are many factors that can make something that works in a fitting room turn out to later be ill suited. First, it's not uncommon to be buying a top or pants to go with other clothing in one's wardrobe. Unless you bring all that stuff with you when you go shopping, it's only possible to guess whether things will work out while in a fitting room. There's also a level of wishful thinking that can happen when trying on clothes - where you make it fit by sucking in your gut or something that can mask the fact that clothing won't work. Long term comfort is also impossible to ascertain in a fitting room. This is especially applicable to shoes - where they might be comfy for the 5 minutes in the store, but start to hurt after 30 minutes to an hour. Finally, it's impossible to tell how much something will shrink in the wash when you buy it. Some stuff that fits perfectly "off the rack" will no longer fit properly after it has been through the washer/dryer.

malfist 4y ago
GP's post also discounts cases where the manufacturer is just wrong about a spec. I once ordered a custom aquarium. 200+ gallons, over 400 pounds of glass. The sizes were standard, custom part was for drilled holes for plumbing. The manufacturer advertised the aquarium as X inches by Y inches foot print. I built a stand for that size, but it turns out the manufacturer was half an inch off in each direction. I couldn't return the aquarium since it had been made custom, but the manufacturer delivered me a product I couldn't use with the stand I built. The stands have to be built very specifically to transfer weight to the floor. Filled, the aquarium was over 3000 pounds, being off by half an inch was catastrophic. I had to tear apart the stand I built and rebuild it to support it. Manufacturers can be wrong, manufacturers can lie. A microwave might fit your cabinet on a spec sheet, but not when it's delivered. Or something else might make it a poor fit (i.e., it fits, but requires clearance you don't have for the door hinge to swing). Let customers return things.

jinto36 4y ago

REI has a crazy return policy, but attempts to resell everything that comes back. You can buy boots, through-hike the Appalachian Trail in them, and bring them back for a full refund. REI will put them on the shelf in the clearance section at a discount. Not sure if they finally dispose of things if they never sell, or if they just keep increasing the discount until someone finally takes it, but it's probably the latter. I don't go to my local store often enough to try to keep track of how long things have been there (not have I asked an employee, which would probably be the more direct way to acquire that information).

itintheory 4y ago
Don't have one near me, but I've heard tales of the REI dumpsters being absolute treasure troves of usable outdoor equipment.

et-al 4y ago

In your specific example with clothing, there are two good reasons: 1. There's vanity sizing going on (e.g. 30" pants actually have a 32" waist due to vanity-sizing) and measurements provided may not be consistent throughout batches. These are still handmade items, just not artisanal. 2. Fabric drapes differently, so what looks good on a model shots with the clothing meticulously pinned, may look different when you actually wear it. Also, I assume another reason for a lax return policy is that the margins are large enough to support it. Or retailers expect that most customers won't take advantage of it (until they do, like REI).

fortran77 4y ago
> . There's vanity sizing going on (e.g. 30" pants actually have a 32" waist due to vanity-sizing) It's a shame there can't be standard sizing. All this confusion just because we don't want to offend the overweight and obese.
- bsder 4y ago
  You're an ignorant fool. The worst offenders I have known about vanity sizing have generally been fairly small. My grandmother, for example, was without doubt a size 6 but would never buy anything that wasn't listed as a size 4. I have had two girlfriends who were similarly annoying--the clothing I bought them was clearly dead-on the correct size when they tried it on, but they wouldn't wear it because it was a size "too large" (they didn't last long as girlfriends). By contrast, the smallest and largest women I have known simply wanted something that fit correctly regardless of the "labeled size".

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

It's the same reason you see companies advertising risk-free money-back guarantees: Buying something feels less risky if you believe you have recourse if it doesn't work out. Practically speaking, if a company can raise sales by 20% with a liberal return policy but 5% of purchases are actually returned, they may still come out ahead. Long-term, having a return policy also signals that the company is interested in taking care of the customer and building a relationship. This is why you see brands like REI building a reputation on top of their generous return policy. People (on average, not everyone of course) will actually pay a small premium to shop from a company with a return policy.

antiterra 4y ago

Buying 10 dresses to keep one is not a ‘deplorable customer is always right’ tactic. You can’t reasonably purchase a wedding dress via due diligence, you have to try them on. The returned dresses should be able to be resold.

mkeedlinger 4y ago

Others have mentioned market forces, but I don't think that's the only reason. Personally, when buying online there are a lot of things that go wrong at little (or no) fault of the consumer. Some examples are ambiguous (or missing!) info in a description, details or measurements that are slightly (or very) inaccurate, quality that is unacceptable but difficult to differentiate online (often because aggressively positive marketing), etc, etc. If these weren't balanced out with liberal return policies, then I wouldn't buy nearly as much online. Literally anything over a few dozen dollars would start being suspect for me. I think this is also the case for many other people. Really, until Amazon started their incredibly pro-consumer policies and other venues followed suite, I really didn't purchase much online.

torstenvl 4y ago

In addition to what everyone else wrote, note that your proposal is enormously economically inefficient. The businesses that sell microwaves are much better positioned to... well, sell microwaves... than the average consumer. They are the least-cost avoider of the social harm of things going to waste (which is what happens when unwanted item X doesn't get bought off Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or whatever and the original purchaser finally tosses it). If items are going to go unused, it makes economic sense for them to be sold on the secondary market. If they are going to be sold, it makes economic sense that they be sold by an entity that is good at selling them. The original merchant has a significant comparative advantage in selling items it already sells compared to any given consumer.

com2kid 4y ago

> Pants are too large? Use the damn fitting room[1] before buying them! I once bought 3 identically labeled pairs of levis jeans. I tried one pair on, they fit fine. The other 2 pairs fit dramatically different. Same size, same style, but apparently quality control at the factory was dramatically off. > Microwave doesn’t fit your space? Measuring tapes (and AR tools[0]) exist for a reason. I've seen (bought) appliances with mislabeled dimensions. Half an inch, not much, but the door to the laundry room wouldn't shut. Also things like hookup placements for hoses are often not labeled on the box. Love it when those stick out way past the main body of the machine. Heck I bought some picture hooks from Home Depot where the included nails stuck out farther then the hooks did, making the entire product useless given the purpose of it was to distribute weight on a hook and not directly on a nail. (Impressive fail there...) > Such as my coworker, who bought 10 dresses for a wedding and returned 9 of them after a test drive. Having a "try at home" scheme is going to be an effective solution for this problem. Amazon does this for fashion items. "What socks/shoes/bra/necklace/earring combos go with this" is not an easy question to answer w/o having a piece to try on at home. Heck just seeing how clothing looks in different lighting. Fitting rooms would benefit from adjustable color balances in their lighting, an outfit meant to be worn outside in the sun may look very different under a store's yellow or blue lighting. > I just wish we could move away from the “customer is always right” Some customers abuse the rules, but I'd best that most customers just want to buy a product that makes them happy. If stores are not doing a good job matching customers up to those products, then the stores need to adjust their sales strategy.

skciva 4y ago

Surely your coworker is an outlier. Feels like what you're describing is a great opportunity for a small amount of data analysis to allow companies to be gracious with customers who genuinely made a mistake and customers abusing the system.

formerkrogemp 4y ago

It's called the Uniform Commercial Code and it exists to protect consumers and to get us to spend more. I agree that it can get pretty ridiculous with generous return policies. I've worked for 3 retailers, and I've seen some shit. Who returns milk two months later??