42 ms·

Counterfeits, fraud, and theft: Why Silca changed its return policy

360 points by 762236 4y ago

gambiting 4y ago
Thankfully EU and UK force companies to accept returns within 14 days of purchase(delivery to the customer in fact) for anything sold "remotely"(through internet, phone, by post.....anything where the customer couldn't inspect the item before buying) so companies cannot try to pull this nonsense like here. Refund only for in-store credit? I sympathize with the issues of fraud, but that's not an acceptable return policy for any company selling anything on the internet.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  How common is similar fraud in the UK and EU?
  - netr0ute 4y ago
    It may or may not be similar, but the sellers have to suck it up either way.
- anonAndOn 4y ago
  Thankfully the US doesn't force small businesses to run their business according to lawmakers' preferences for return policies. If a prospective customer doesn't like the return policy they are free to spend their money elsewhere and the market will decide whether the policy is good for business.
  - gambiting 4y ago
    How has the "market will decide" worked out for American society over the decades?
  - 2143 4y ago
    On the one hand your country is so great they don't force small businesses to run their business according to lawmakers' preferences for return policies. On the other hand your own citizens scam the businesses over there. You're in between a rock and a hard place. As long as people have the attitude to commit fraud, they would. Maybe it's time to take a few steps back and try to understand why people do this?
    - tekknik 4y ago
      So you’re trying to regulate morality?
- googlryas 4y ago
  Is the idea that companies should just eat an ever increasing proportion of fraud? I'm thankful that a blunt policy isn't enforced on companies where I'm from - as long as I know what the return policy is, I'm fine to make the decision whether it is acceptable for me or not. The result of that policy will probably just be that European companies are under more fraud pressure and will go out of business sooner than companies that have more tools to combat fraud.
  - netr0ute 4y ago
    If those companies go out of business, then ones willing to follow the rules will fill in the gaping void. :)
    - jonas21 4y ago
      And they'll charge twice as much for everything to make up for the cost of fraud.
      - netr0ute 4y ago
        Then cheaper ones will fill in the gaping void, and they still have to play by the rules too. This isn't the car business where cost of entry is high.
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      Or the business will become unprofitable and no one will do it.
      - netr0ute 4y ago
        Where will the customers go to get their products?
        notch656a 4y ago
        The black market, where the sellers won't give two fucks about the law and they'll force you to pay with something irreversible like cash or crypto.
- nrp 4y ago
  Policies like that harm both dishonest companies and honest customers. Honest customers end up needing to pay more to cover the cost of fraud from dishonest customers. We voluntarily have a 30-day return policy anyway instead of the required 14-day in the EU, but a lot of what the interviewee brings up rings painfully true.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    I can't imagine 30 days makes much difference than 14 days from the perspective of a fraudster. Assuming they meant to do the fraud anyway, they probably want as fast turn around time as possible.
- gaius_baltar 4y ago
  Same thing here in Brazil, but for 7 days. That's a law from 1990, written when "remote buy" mean buying stuff by phone or catalog, but also generically written to allow future technologies. That's up for almost 32 years and have neither prevented online selling from happening nor made stuff unusually expensive nor made the e-commerce environment unprofitable. I have returned items twice in the last five or so years (one was an obvious packaging error and for the other I'm was never sure if it was an innocent mistake or if the seller tried to scam me ... but the law worked as intended). And I buy online a lot and have no reason to believe other people's experiences are too much different from mine. It just seems the law worked in a societal level. But I always try to be safe on my side: when receiving expensive products, I always record the unboxing in a full Dogme 95 style, filming from the labels on the sealed box down to serial numbers on the product. I never actually needed to use any of these videos, but if I got scammed for real I will have enough evidence for a lawsuit and stand my ground in the card company questions my chargeback.
- minutemad 4y ago
  > Refund only for in-store credit? They changed their policy, but this won't prevent chargebacks. Anyone in the US who buys online with a credit card basically has up to 90 or even 180 day free returns. They just need to say the magic words. Product misrepresented/defective, merchant won't respond, or I don't recognize the charge. For example, they can poke a hole in the shirt they want to return and do it 1000% legally.
  - tekknik 4y ago
    > Anyone in the US who buys online with a credit card basically has up to 90 or even 180 day free returns. Except the average consumer rarely reverses charges. Someone doing this regularly is going to stand out and will get legal attention. > For example, they can poke a hole in the shirt they want to return and do it 1000% legally. Except now they’ve damaged the good. Will they wear the shirt with the hole?
throwaway81523 4y ago
This is a fantastically good article for people interested in online retail or in payments. I lost the url but there was another article I've been wanting to find and link to, about how the US payment system is so completely screwed up. From a seller perspective, Alipay (used for everything in China) is much better than what we have here. They have an actual dispute resolution process before a transaction can be reversed, instead of reversing at the push of a button.
- metadat 4y ago
  What difference does it make if the reversal happens at the beginning or end? The process should account for this and see things through either way.
  - throwaway81523 4y ago
    The US system purposely disfavors the merchant. Imagine being arrested and having to prove your innocence at trial, instead of the other way around. Alipay from what I understand tries to have a more neutral process. And it means the buyer can't exploit the asymmetry of one button click (to get a refund unless the merchant deals with a mountain of bureaucracy) vs dealing with the bureaucracy. It is better that if there is a disagreement, both have to deal with the bureaucracy.
    - metadat 4y ago
      Clearly you've never been arrested. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a fantasy in the USA, especially if you're a part of a minority group. 90-95% of cases settle with a plea bargain, because the punishment will be disproportionately severe if you lose the case. Regardless, any system which inherently favors businesses over individuals is wrong. Businesses have the option of building the known cost of fraud into the products, whereas individual customers can easily get screwed without any recourse. What good is a gift card if the store turns out to be a bad actor? Ideally neither side should be favored and the process should be impartial and difficult to game. Dunno how to make such a system though, humans are a crafty bunch. "Better a thousand guilty people go free than imprison an innocent."
metadat 4y ago
Super informative article, with a lot of little insights, claims, and customer blames. Some are exceedingly fair, others are shirking responsibility on the seller's side. Still a great read! 1. > If an item is in good shape or really is new and just unwanted, the packaging is almost always damaged beyond what could be considered a new item, so at best we might be able to sell it in a damaged package sale, which we do twice per year. It's generally difficult to open products without damaging the packaging. This is an intentional design with consumer packaged goods, likely for a variety of valid reasons. Doesn't seem like the customer's fault (and shouldn't be the customer's problem), as long as the customer is being honest and not pulling a fraudulent return. 2. > but the Pista has two little screws that you have to remove take the thing apart and when we looked, all of these returned pumps have had those screws unthreaded which you can see as deformation in the screw head, whereas a new in box pump has only had them installed. Does this suggest the manufacturer is using sub-par zinc screws instead of stainless steel? So many products have cheap screws that basically can't be removed without stripping or deforming the head, it makes the product unserviceable and dooms it to eventually land in a landfill, prematurely. Seems unacceptable to call a product top-notch with these kinds of components inside. Fraudulent returns are still bad, as are shoddy products falsely marketed and sold as top-notch gems. 3. > Folks think they’re pulling one over on Jeff Bezos but don’t understand Amazon doesn’t own that inventory, it belongs to companies and when you think you’re screwing Amazon you’re actually screwing directly with some smaller company behind the product. This is 100% on Amazon, due to marketing things as "Amazon Prime" and "Sold and Fulfilled by Amazon". Nasty, because the customer signals get to be ignored by Amazon as they reap the profits and offload the problem downstream onto Little Companies.
- slaymaker1907 4y ago
  I had to use the warranty on my phone and they sent it in a small, no nonsense box that I also used to send the old one back. All it had was a little plastic slip and some cardboard to keep the phone from moving too much. Companies could absolutely design things with reusable packaging.
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deltree7 4y ago
- elteto 4y ago
  - Pakdef 4y ago
    You are being a bit dense maybe?
jackmott 4y ago
Josh is a great person and the internet is also full of in depth aerodynamic and rolling resistance information thanks to him.
Zaheer 4y ago
Wow - was not expecting this level of depth. This is a masterclass in retail / payments from end to end. The title just doesn't do it justice. Thank you for sharing.
- bambax 4y ago
  Yes it's a really informative interview, and fun too. Great read.
ilamont 4y ago
We put a report together for Amazon showing what has happened and if approved, they will allow us to keep the payment as if the item had not been returned and then they are now supposedly putting customers on a three-strike system where Amazon will potentially cancel their account for repeated misbehaviour. This does not scale. It also isn’t worth it for low margin or low cost items. While it’s nice to hear this brand has a positive experience with Amazon, my experience as a third-party brand much lower down the totem pole is Amazon seldom investigates or respects such reports, and inevitably sides with the customer. ‘Customer delight’ is the dogma they preach 24/7, even though customers make mistakes or sometimes commit fraud.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  It doesn't scale if you do it for every item, but it can work as a deterrent, as in people may think twice about it if they know they can end up in court over some stupid item. Also, as an honest customer, I absolutely hate to receive a clearly used / defective / wrong item when ordering new. Sure, Amazon will accept my return and send me a new one, but I still have to go through the hassle of sending it back and waiting for the new one. There's nothing delightful about that. Making it not worthwhile to engage in shady returns is actually beneficial to "customer delight".
js2 4y ago
> Essentially, people buy something, put something else in the packaging and return it for full refund. I purchased a open-box Apple Pencil from Best Buy a couple years ago. What I got was someone else's returned pencil with totally shot battery. I took it back to BB and showed how the S/N on the pencil didn't match the box and they believed me, but I guess they could've thought I was the one pulling the scam. Anyway, they gave me a new opened Apple Pencil. Now here's the weird part. The brand new pencil didn't work. I was sure BB was going to think I was scamming them, so when I returned it I asked them to verify the S/N matched the box and that it didn't work, but they didn't care, they gave me another new un-opened Apple Pencil which I verified worked there in the store. Last year I purchased a 65" Hisense from Best Buy. Got it home, opened the box, before I even get it out of the box I see the upper-right corner of the screen is shattered. Take it back to BB, they swap it out for me. They have nothing but my word that I didn't drop it myself (I hadn't). Last month I purchased a Westinghouse inverter generator. I was nervous it would be damaged during shipping, so I purchased it from Home Depot and had them ship-to-store. It turns out that they just FedEx it to the store. It doesn't go on a truck or pallet with a bunch of other items, so this doesn't reduce the chance of shipping damage. I pick up the generator at the store and notice the box is pretty beat up, but I bring it home anyway. Take it out of the box and it looks okay outside, but I pull the maintenance panel off and sure enough, the plastic air filter housing is cracked. Back in box, back to Home Depot. They order me a new one, no questions asked. When the new one arrives, I take it out of the box and inspect it at the store. Fortunately, no damage. Which is all to say: yes, sometimes it's customer fraud. But sometimes the customer, like me, just gets unlucky. Most bulky goods I purchase these days are not adequately packaged. I'm sure my "customer returns too much" rating has gotten dinged lately. Edit: on the other side of the equation, customers have to deal with fraudulent merchants: "8TB External SSD" for $89: https://www.amazon.com/External-Solid-State-Drive-Portable/dp/B0B65FDTXL?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/External-Solid-State-Drive-Portable/d... https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/wgepyv/im_assuming_ssd_in_this_case_stands_for_super/ https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/wgepyv/im_assu... Fake 5 TB drive: https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/wh1s9z/fake_wd_black_5tb_from_amazon_more_info_in/ https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/wh1s9z/fake_wd_bla...
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voakbasda 4y ago
Reading this excellent article has made me decide to stop taking credit cards (or any electronic payments) for my small farm business. The card companies and their online cohorts are bad enough to deal with as a customer, and this story shattered the last of my trust that using these systems is safe as a merchant. I am already losing money on every sale anyway, because my family eats our potential profits (literally). Sales will be cash only from here on out, because these risks are not worth the potential costs.
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- tlogan 4y ago
  Yesterday, I was talking with one guy doing home inspections. He also refuses to accept CC. The main reason is that after deal does not go thru the people who hire them will file a chargeback.
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  - dawnerd 4y ago
    Had to hire two inspectors in a short time and they both were cash or check only. Same reason.
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    It would be "fun" if those people that put the chargeback gets sent to collections and a nice entry gets put on their credit report for payment failure I bet the bank providing their mortgage would love to have that information
    - acdha 4y ago
      So much small scale fraud relies keeping the losses below the level where someone is willing to risk getting sued. The kind of people who are doing this would be highly likely to try things which would end up with you needing a lawyer - even drafting a letter, much less showing up in small claims court would cost more.
ericbarrett 4y ago
Here's the original forum thread from the article head; it was an interesting read as well: https://forums.thepaceline.net/showthread.php?t=284547 https://forums.thepaceline.net/showthread.php?t=284547 Owner's first reply (joshatsilca) is page 2, more detail about credit card transactions for direct sales on page 3.
danuker 4y ago
One idea: require invitations from other, trusted by some criterion, customers. But this would severely slow scaling.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  You could scale it by sharing it between businesses to help them identify the small minority of customers screwing everyone they deal with. I'm sorry sir we can't take your order because our records show that you already ripped off 6 other merchants in the last 5 years and we aren't willing to deal with you.
  - benlivengood 4y ago
    We could call it a social credit score and force everyone to positively identify themselves with government identification for every financial transaction.
  - tlogan 4y ago
    There is a company for that: https://www.theretailequation.com/ https://www.theretailequation.com/ They track customer’s returns and calculates a “risk score.”
    - michaelmrose 4y ago
      I'm familiar from dealing with the employee side of this situation but I mean refusing to sell to the customer in the first place not merely refusing their refund.
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    That would be illegal in some countries.
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chevman 4y ago
A good example of the "reverse logistics" space in real life! Some interesting rabbit holes to explore if you google that phrase. One of my favorite small(er) Saas ERP vendors has a good 101 on the topic: https://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/inventory-management/reverse-logistics.shtml https://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/inventory-...
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michaelmrose 4y ago
This isn't merely crass and dishonest its a crime. The solution is honestly to start making examples of people. If someone stole all the parts of a thousand dollar bike start by suing them for the thousand bucks and then add all the employee time burned dealing with the matter. If they don't want to settle burn them for the entire cost of the litigation to recover those funds. If they can't pay then go to court and take absolutely anything that the court will late you take and attach their wages for eternity. Publish their names on a fraud page along with evidence of the crime and how much they paid you this month until its paid off. Threaten absolutely every person who commits an obvious crime against your company and pick 1 a year and ruin their lives. The obvious fact is even a small crime like a $50 fraud is a multi thousand dollar bill if a lawyer ends up being a required step to collect. Change the expectation that you will trivially get away with crime to an expectation that you will likely be hit with bill for your misbehavior.
- lmz 4y ago
  I'm surprised this comment is still visible, considering what the mainstream American opinion is on making examples out of criminals.
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    Mainstream America is absolutely vindictive and cruel towards criminals.
    - abalashov 4y ago
      In weirdly asymmetrical, lopsided ways, where both extremes are simultaneously true. In part it depends on what one has in mind when speaking of "mainstream" America; it seems people have very different ideas of this. But I've been here almost 30 years, and seen both for-the-top run-amok police-state law-and-order in the red states, AND a passion for doing anything possible to avoid imprisoning repeat (felony!) offenders in many blue-state urban jurisdictions. The official explanation for the latter relates to penal system overcrowding and lack of capacity, and of course, there's something to that. But somehow this doesn't doesn't hinder the law-and-order "red" jurisdictions from "throwing the book" at some poor fellow who had a few too many ounces of weed on him or whatever. Here in Georgia, that's the difference between, say, Fulton County (which encompasses inner-city Atlanta) and one of the Metro ATL suburban counties, or for that matter, just about any other random county in Georgia. The outcomes vary immensely. You can find both extremes, allowing one to say in the same breath both that the state is cruel and vindictive toward criminals, and has let them run amok. It doesn't quite make my top 5 list of "things most maddening about America", but it's probably in the top 10.
powerhour 4y ago
> The other behaviours that they normalized and now all of us deal with are what they call ‘serial returns’ where you buy maybe one of everything and return what you don’t want. My wife and I do this, although not with small retailers. Very few brick and mortar companies carry clothing in our sizes, so if we want something we have to order a few options to find the right one. It's worse for my wife because she, according to clothing manufacturers, shrinks a full size every couple of years, making it nearly impossible to predict what size to buy. Do the kids still say sorry not sorry?
- MBCook 4y ago
  He spells out the pay of this later in the article. It’s about 5 sales to 1 kept. The example he used is if person A buys three things and return two, they have to sell two more things to others just to make up for the loss caused by person A. That’s a huge drain. Especially with something like clothing that can’t be refurbished and re-sold or stripped for parts.
- hollandheese 4y ago
  Yeah, this is a giant problem with clothing. I entirely blame the manufacturers and online stores for not having proper measurements for each article of clothing. Just that alone would ensure a lot fewer returns. There are several brands that I can't even trust that a 38/32 will be the same in two of the same "exact" pair of pants.
- bloggie 4y ago
  I was under the impression that online retailers encouraged this practice, because the alternative is placing one order at a time until you find the right size.
- jwilk 4y ago
  > she, according to clothing manufacturers, shrinks a full size every couple of years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_sizing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_sizing
supernova87a 4y ago
I wish there were a similar story to read about at an even more "previous step" level, to learn about all the complications and issues that start arising as soon as you begin accepting credit cards for payment, and how to protect against those. Is anyone aware of such a tutorial for people selling software, online services? It would be nice to be able to accept payments without having to just take as a cost of doing business all the fraud, customer service headaches, etc. that come with it.
rmatt2000 4y ago
The clothing company LL Bean dealt with this same sort of issue. It used to be that if you weren't happy with a purchase, you could return any item you bought from Bean, at any time, for a full refund. One day, the CEO of the company donated some of his old LL Bean clothing to a charity that accepts used clothing. One of the shirts he donated had his initials embroidered on it. In less than a month, that same shirt had been returned to Bean, stating the person was unsatisfied with his purchase, and requesting a full refund of the purchase price.
- SnowHill9902 4y ago
  Interesting. Reference?
  - valleyer 4y ago
    https://apnews.com/article/north-america-lifestyle-business-me-state-wire-us-news-4e20f82acbc948969a98e7151b4d1622 https://apnews.com/article/north-america-lifestyle-business-...
    - aardvarkr 4y ago
      OP delivers! Thanks :)
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Walmart did something like this for many years. They were required to satisfy customers and would accept almost anything as a return to exchange. Like LL Bean, the internet kinda ruined it and when the management turned over to newer people who didn’t share the commitment that the founder had, it went away.
  - bfuller 4y ago
    Sears used to take clothing back and replace it if it had any wear on it. In the 90s I bought a couple pairs of jeans at sears and just kept replacing them until they stopped doing that.
PebblesHD 4y ago
The returns fraud issue is a difficult one, and still very much an ongoing issue particularly with Amazon, as recently as yesterday when I ordered a used copy of a video game listed as returned to Amazon, and received an amazon warehouse sealed package containing a completely different game with the sticker replaced, so clearly not tested at all during the returns process to ensure it did actually work. Now, as for a solution, is it too much to expect Amazon to test goods they then go on to sell again? I would previously have assumed they did this, but apparently not. Luckily, the returns process is quite easy, which both leads to this issue in the first place but makes it easy to resolve.
- rmatt2000 4y ago
  I think the problem is that Amazon returns are not inspected by someone associated with the manufacture of the product. I suspect that return handlers have to handle thousands of products and can only give a returned product a cursory inspection. I once bought some expensive eyeglass frames from Amazon. When they arrived, it was pretty clear that they were not factory new. I returned the product and gave the company a bad review. The CEO of the company actually sent me an email apologizing, saying that this was an on-going problem. He said people order new frames identical to ones they currently own, swap out the lenses, and return the old ones. Amazon will often accept these returns, repackage them, and ship them as new, and the company which sells the frames has not control over this.
  - PebblesHD 4y ago
    Absolutely, I really feel for the brands impacted by these practices that they have limited control over, just as the brand in the article ends up wearing the costs for returns via Amazon and co. It would make me think very hard before deciding to start a hardware company needing to deal with the small section of the population acting in bad faith here.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    I saw some video or something and it's the typical hyper optimized process. With the allowed time spend on item including data input being less than a minute or two if not even that.
gizmo686 4y ago
> The other behaviours that they normalized and now all of us deal with are what they call ‘serial returns’ where you buy maybe one of everything and return what you don’t want. At least for clothing, this behaviour is officially supported by Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GCQDLMG7C2YEXSM4 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
- loeg 4y ago
  It’s the only way to buy clothing sight unseen on the internet. If you don’t want to sell sized goods on the internet, don’t, but otherwise people need to try multiple sizes and return some.
  - rgmerk 4y ago
    Silca sells the odd bit of branded merch but the vast majority of their business isn't in clothing. They sell a variety of high-end bicycle accessories including pumps, bottle cages, fancy lubricants (including chains pre-treated with hot wax lubricant). It's quality stuff with a pricetag to match.
    - loeg 4y ago
      I’m familiar with Silca’s products (I have some of their wax) but this thread is more generally about shopping for clothing online.
  - alpaca128 4y ago
    I wish we had a way to just enter all measurements and filter out clothes that won't fit. Clothing sizes are still in the middle ages, with the same unit meaning something different with each manufacturer and not everyone even uses the same units.
    - vladvasiliu 4y ago
      Oh man, it's even worse than that. I mainly buy Levi's jeans, model 511. A few years ago I needed a new pair, checked my size from my current pair, and ordered the exact same off Amazon. My old pair still fit, maybe even a tad big at the waist. Then, perusing the catalog, I figured I'd also spice things up a bit, and ordered a 501 in a color I don't usually wear, for variety. When I received them, the sizing was a complete joke. It was absolutely impossible for me to put on the 511. My upper thighs would not fit inside the jeans without pulling on them, and after that it was impossible to button them. The 501 was the opposite: much too big, could have probably went two sizes down. I sent them both back, ordered a single 511 one size above, which was, you guessed, too big. Frustrated, I sent them all back and went to my local brick and mortar store and ended up with a pair of 514s – one size below my regular one.
tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
Isn't 3DSecure supposed so solve CC fraud (in the sense of not making the seller be out of money if it does happen)?
- minutemad 4y ago
  It adds liability shift, which is what the merchant needs. The card company will eat the loss if you meet the criteria. It's better than not having it, but their criteria isn't without holes, and when it's a feature on the customer's card, you can't expect them to always have it.
denimnerd42 4y ago
this + theft at retail drive me nuts as an honest consumer I'm the one paying that 5-10% on their loss!
aimor 4y ago
Recently my credit card has been validating my purchases via SMS OTPs. I'm not thrilled by that, but after reading the article it sounds like an effective way to cut back on a lot of the credit card fraud.
WalterBright 4y ago
This is a must read for anyone who is thinking of starting a business that sells online.
BSOhealth 4y ago
Only here to support Silca (as a consumer) but hopefully relevant to HN as it’s just to highlight their product design. After tracking their American “rebirth” I dove in for Silca’s top-of-the-line $500 pump ~5 years ago and the quality and durability is exceptional. If you are, or claim to be, someone who appreciates mechanical watches, “The Design of Everyday Things” type stuff, unboxing and inspecting Apple products, etc. etc., _and_ you are a cyclist, I totally recommend seeing if you have a friend with a Silca pump to check out. The push-on chuck, beautifully braided and flexible hose, and general height and ergonomics combines for a nearly a zero-to-one improvement over the rest of the market. It removes almost all cognitive and physical friction to getting the job done (filling a tyre), short of just automating it with an air compressor — which has its own complications for filling bike tyres. Off-topic (but on-topic): REI also has a notoriously forgiving return policy. Generally, just about anything can be returned after years of use, abuse, wear, and tear, and it typically ends up getting sold. I know many REI shoppers who first run upstairs (or wherever) to the “Returns” racks to see what they can find at a discount. Granted, it’s a hit REI is taking, but it’s clearly not a total loss as the “Returns” section turns over pretty quickly.
- redelbee 4y ago
  Actually the current REI return policy has a time limit of 1 year. It changed in 2013: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/rei-now-limiting-returns-to-one-year/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/rei-now-limiting-retur... Before that there was no time limit though. I remember becoming a member in 2011 when I moved to a city with a local REI and that was one of the main benefits they pitched. I don’t miss it because I never returned anything after a year (or even a few weeks). REI started a trade-in program that serves a similar function and probably manages to foil most of the people who would have abused the system in the past. I think it goes well with their overall “earth friendly” ethos and brand identity as well. https://www.rei.com/used/trade-it-in https://www.rei.com/used/trade-it-in
pwned1 4y ago
I get a web page with the company logo and nothing else.
- Neil44 4y ago
  Me too, I was just about to disable ublock but then I realised there was stuff below the page of whitespace.
- chedabob 4y ago
  Scroll down a bit. There's a space for adverts that is set to take up the whole height of the window, and only gets resized when the advert loads in. If you've got an adblocker on, it never gets resized.
WalterBright 4y ago
> The bad actors who really know how to work the systems Time to bring back retailers sharing a list of names of those bad actors and just refusing to do business with them. For the people who buy one of each color and then return all but one, a solution is to only ship one at a time. I'm surprised that Amazon doesn't have (or perhaps has it in secret) a "score" for each customer, and certain kinds of transactions are simply rejected for them.
- 9dev 4y ago
  I’ll bet my last shirt they have in invested big time in fraud risk scoring. That’s stuff Amazon is set up to do perfectly.
  - VBprogrammer 4y ago
    Not that it really disproves your point but a friend recently received a new camera from Amazon, except what was actually in the box was a container of pool chemicals.
- rmatt2000 4y ago
  > For the people who buy one of each color and then return all but one Amazon's "try before you buy" encourages people to do just this, so I'm guessing Amazon has figured out how to make this shopping pattern profitable.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Try before you buy is not quite the same as buy a spread in order to pick one.
    - tekknik 4y ago
      Actually in this case it is, you choose a box of items to get shipped to you and ship back what you don’t want. You can get an identical shirt in 5 different colors, or sizes, and ship back all but one.
- 4y ago
exabrial 4y ago
Wouldn’t load for me: https://archive.ph/zeykZ https://archive.ph/zeykZ
exabrial 4y ago
I once was shipped a _very expensive_ server motherboard from Amazon by mistake when trying to buy something cheaper. The customer service agent (Indian non native speaker) failed to understand that Amazon didn’t ship the correct item, and refused the return. I spoke to another agent and they thanked me and I got the correct item exchanged. I previously posted about this on HN and one of the responses was “who cares? Az makes $100k/min” You know what? It matters. Doing the right thing fucking matters. Have some integrity, don’t take what isn’t yours, give back what was a mistake. Don’t fall into the trap of relativism. You don’t know the whole story either... I’d like to think by returning that item I saved someone from getting fired; or a saved a small low margin retailer from losing their shirt. I’ll never know, but at the end of the day I can sleep with a clean conscience.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  You've got it right. Nice to see a post like yours.
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    ^
- ffhhj 4y ago
  On the other side of things, search for laser safety goggles on Amazon, there are lots of cheap ones that won't provide real protection, and comments of people being hurt by using them. Should Amazon remove those products and affect many low margin retailers?
  - bathtub365 4y ago
    Yes, and the retailers should be sued.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    I refused to buy any of those solar eclipse goggles from Amazon. No amount of "sorry" and $millions is worth losing eyesight over.
2143 4y ago
Isn't there a way to legally move against people who dupe companies like this? Maybe don't chase everyone, but go after just a handful of fraudsters, and once you've won get your PR department to ensure everybody on Earth realizes this is one company not to be messed with.
mhb 4y ago
Great article. Interesting: With Amazon, it’s amazingly a bit easier, as Amazon has massive leverage with the credit card companies, and they also know that this is a big problem. Up to half of our returns through Amazon are fraudulent or at best unethical, and so when fraud does happen at Amazon, they are actually great about it.
liminalsunset 4y ago
From the customer side of things, there is one upside to people returning things - Amazon sells the returned stuff as Warehouse Deals, often at a great discount. Unless it is a gift, I don't usually (ever) care if the box is gone/damaged or if the item is slightly used, as long as it is cheap. So far, in Canada, I've never had to return a Warehouse Deals item.
SergeAx 4y ago
(I am not an American and was in America only as a tourist). Why the company don't go to the police and press charges against clear fraudster? If people knew that would be a consequence - they will think twice before pulling a stunt like this.
sylvainr65 4y ago
I think I'm the average Amazon customer. If I buy something cheap and it breaks or doesn't work as expected, I just throw it away. If it's expensive, then I ask for a return, but I really take care to return it as new. If I command something and change my mind afterward, I just keep it and take it as a lesson.

360 points by 762236 4y ago

Thankfully EU and UK force companies to accept returns within 14 days of purchase(delivery to the customer in fact) for anything sold "remotely"(through internet, phone, by post.....anything where the customer couldn't inspect the item before buying) so companies cannot try to pull this nonsense like here. Refund only for in-store credit? I sympathize with the issues of fraud, but that's not an acceptable return policy for any company selling anything on the internet.

Rebelgecko 4y ago
How common is similar fraud in the UK and EU?
- netr0ute 4y ago
  It may or may not be similar, but the sellers have to suck it up either way.
anonAndOn 4y ago
Thankfully the US doesn't force small businesses to run their business according to lawmakers' preferences for return policies. If a prospective customer doesn't like the return policy they are free to spend their money elsewhere and the market will decide whether the policy is good for business.
- gambiting 4y ago
  How has the "market will decide" worked out for American society over the decades?
- 2143 4y ago
  On the one hand your country is so great they don't force small businesses to run their business according to lawmakers' preferences for return policies. On the other hand your own citizens scam the businesses over there. You're in between a rock and a hard place. As long as people have the attitude to commit fraud, they would. Maybe it's time to take a few steps back and try to understand why people do this?
  - tekknik 4y ago
    So you’re trying to regulate morality?
googlryas 4y ago
Is the idea that companies should just eat an ever increasing proportion of fraud? I'm thankful that a blunt policy isn't enforced on companies where I'm from - as long as I know what the return policy is, I'm fine to make the decision whether it is acceptable for me or not. The result of that policy will probably just be that European companies are under more fraud pressure and will go out of business sooner than companies that have more tools to combat fraud.
- netr0ute 4y ago
  If those companies go out of business, then ones willing to follow the rules will fill in the gaping void. :)
  - jonas21 4y ago
    And they'll charge twice as much for everything to make up for the cost of fraud.
    - netr0ute 4y ago
      Then cheaper ones will fill in the gaping void, and they still have to play by the rules too. This isn't the car business where cost of entry is high.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    Or the business will become unprofitable and no one will do it.
    - netr0ute 4y ago
      Where will the customers go to get their products?
      - notch656a 4y ago
        The black market, where the sellers won't give two fucks about the law and they'll force you to pay with something irreversible like cash or crypto.
nrp 4y ago
Policies like that harm both dishonest companies and honest customers. Honest customers end up needing to pay more to cover the cost of fraud from dishonest customers. We voluntarily have a 30-day return policy anyway instead of the required 14-day in the EU, but a lot of what the interviewee brings up rings painfully true.
- notch656a 4y ago
  I can't imagine 30 days makes much difference than 14 days from the perspective of a fraudster. Assuming they meant to do the fraud anyway, they probably want as fast turn around time as possible.
gaius_baltar 4y ago
Same thing here in Brazil, but for 7 days. That's a law from 1990, written when "remote buy" mean buying stuff by phone or catalog, but also generically written to allow future technologies. That's up for almost 32 years and have neither prevented online selling from happening nor made stuff unusually expensive nor made the e-commerce environment unprofitable. I have returned items twice in the last five or so years (one was an obvious packaging error and for the other I'm was never sure if it was an innocent mistake or if the seller tried to scam me ... but the law worked as intended). And I buy online a lot and have no reason to believe other people's experiences are too much different from mine. It just seems the law worked in a societal level. But I always try to be safe on my side: when receiving expensive products, I always record the unboxing in a full Dogme 95 style, filming from the labels on the sealed box down to serial numbers on the product. I never actually needed to use any of these videos, but if I got scammed for real I will have enough evidence for a lawsuit and stand my ground in the card company questions my chargeback.
minutemad 4y ago
> Refund only for in-store credit? They changed their policy, but this won't prevent chargebacks. Anyone in the US who buys online with a credit card basically has up to 90 or even 180 day free returns. They just need to say the magic words. Product misrepresented/defective, merchant won't respond, or I don't recognize the charge. For example, they can poke a hole in the shirt they want to return and do it 1000% legally.
- tekknik 4y ago
  > Anyone in the US who buys online with a credit card basically has up to 90 or even 180 day free returns. Except the average consumer rarely reverses charges. Someone doing this regularly is going to stand out and will get legal attention. > For example, they can poke a hole in the shirt they want to return and do it 1000% legally. Except now they’ve damaged the good. Will they wear the shirt with the hole?

throwaway81523 4y ago

This is a fantastically good article for people interested in online retail or in payments. I lost the url but there was another article I've been wanting to find and link to, about how the US payment system is so completely screwed up. From a seller perspective, Alipay (used for everything in China) is much better than what we have here. They have an actual dispute resolution process before a transaction can be reversed, instead of reversing at the push of a button.

metadat 4y ago
What difference does it make if the reversal happens at the beginning or end? The process should account for this and see things through either way.
- throwaway81523 4y ago
  The US system purposely disfavors the merchant. Imagine being arrested and having to prove your innocence at trial, instead of the other way around. Alipay from what I understand tries to have a more neutral process. And it means the buyer can't exploit the asymmetry of one button click (to get a refund unless the merchant deals with a mountain of bureaucracy) vs dealing with the bureaucracy. It is better that if there is a disagreement, both have to deal with the bureaucracy.
  - metadat 4y ago
    Clearly you've never been arrested. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a fantasy in the USA, especially if you're a part of a minority group. 90-95% of cases settle with a plea bargain, because the punishment will be disproportionately severe if you lose the case. Regardless, any system which inherently favors businesses over individuals is wrong. Businesses have the option of building the known cost of fraud into the products, whereas individual customers can easily get screwed without any recourse. What good is a gift card if the store turns out to be a bad actor? Ideally neither side should be favored and the process should be impartial and difficult to game. Dunno how to make such a system though, humans are a crafty bunch. "Better a thousand guilty people go free than imprison an innocent."

metadat 4y ago

Super informative article, with a lot of little insights, claims, and customer blames. Some are exceedingly fair, others are shirking responsibility on the seller's side. Still a great read! 1. > If an item is in good shape or really is new and just unwanted, the packaging is almost always damaged beyond what could be considered a new item, so at best we might be able to sell it in a damaged package sale, which we do twice per year. It's generally difficult to open products without damaging the packaging. This is an intentional design with consumer packaged goods, likely for a variety of valid reasons. Doesn't seem like the customer's fault (and shouldn't be the customer's problem), as long as the customer is being honest and not pulling a fraudulent return. 2. > but the Pista has two little screws that you have to remove take the thing apart and when we looked, all of these returned pumps have had those screws unthreaded which you can see as deformation in the screw head, whereas a new in box pump has only had them installed. Does this suggest the manufacturer is using sub-par zinc screws instead of stainless steel? So many products have cheap screws that basically can't be removed without stripping or deforming the head, it makes the product unserviceable and dooms it to eventually land in a landfill, prematurely. Seems unacceptable to call a product top-notch with these kinds of components inside. Fraudulent returns are still bad, as are shoddy products falsely marketed and sold as top-notch gems. 3. > Folks think they’re pulling one over on Jeff Bezos but don’t understand Amazon doesn’t own that inventory, it belongs to companies and when you think you’re screwing Amazon you’re actually screwing directly with some smaller company behind the product. This is 100% on Amazon, due to marketing things as "Amazon Prime" and "Sold and Fulfilled by Amazon". Nasty, because the customer signals get to be ignored by Amazon as they reap the profits and offload the problem downstream onto Little Companies.

slaymaker1907 4y ago
I had to use the warranty on my phone and they sent it in a small, no nonsense box that I also used to send the old one back. All it had was a little plastic slip and some cardboard to keep the phone from moving too much. Companies could absolutely design things with reusable packaging.
- deleted 4y ago
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deltree7 4y ago

elteto 4y ago
- Pakdef 4y ago
  You are being a bit dense maybe?

jackmott 4y ago

Josh is a great person and the internet is also full of in depth aerodynamic and rolling resistance information thanks to him.

Zaheer 4y ago

Wow - was not expecting this level of depth. This is a masterclass in retail / payments from end to end. The title just doesn't do it justice. Thank you for sharing.

bambax 4y ago
Yes it's a really informative interview, and fun too. Great read.

ilamont 4y ago

We put a report together for Amazon showing what has happened and if approved, they will allow us to keep the payment as if the item had not been returned and then they are now supposedly putting customers on a three-strike system where Amazon will potentially cancel their account for repeated misbehaviour. This does not scale. It also isn’t worth it for low margin or low cost items. While it’s nice to hear this brand has a positive experience with Amazon, my experience as a third-party brand much lower down the totem pole is Amazon seldom investigates or respects such reports, and inevitably sides with the customer. ‘Customer delight’ is the dogma they preach 24/7, even though customers make mistakes or sometimes commit fraud.

vladvasiliu 4y ago
It doesn't scale if you do it for every item, but it can work as a deterrent, as in people may think twice about it if they know they can end up in court over some stupid item. Also, as an honest customer, I absolutely hate to receive a clearly used / defective / wrong item when ordering new. Sure, Amazon will accept my return and send me a new one, but I still have to go through the hassle of sending it back and waiting for the new one. There's nothing delightful about that. Making it not worthwhile to engage in shady returns is actually beneficial to "customer delight".

js2 4y ago

> Essentially, people buy something, put something else in the packaging and return it for full refund. I purchased a open-box Apple Pencil from Best Buy a couple years ago. What I got was someone else's returned pencil with totally shot battery. I took it back to BB and showed how the S/N on the pencil didn't match the box and they believed me, but I guess they could've thought I was the one pulling the scam. Anyway, they gave me a new opened Apple Pencil. Now here's the weird part. The brand new pencil didn't work. I was sure BB was going to think I was scamming them, so when I returned it I asked them to verify the S/N matched the box and that it didn't work, but they didn't care, they gave me another new un-opened Apple Pencil which I verified worked there in the store. Last year I purchased a 65" Hisense from Best Buy. Got it home, opened the box, before I even get it out of the box I see the upper-right corner of the screen is shattered. Take it back to BB, they swap it out for me. They have nothing but my word that I didn't drop it myself (I hadn't). Last month I purchased a Westinghouse inverter generator. I was nervous it would be damaged during shipping, so I purchased it from Home Depot and had them ship-to-store. It turns out that they just FedEx it to the store. It doesn't go on a truck or pallet with a bunch of other items, so this doesn't reduce the chance of shipping damage. I pick up the generator at the store and notice the box is pretty beat up, but I bring it home anyway. Take it out of the box and it looks okay outside, but I pull the maintenance panel off and sure enough, the plastic air filter housing is cracked. Back in box, back to Home Depot. They order me a new one, no questions asked. When the new one arrives, I take it out of the box and inspect it at the store. Fortunately, no damage. Which is all to say: yes, sometimes it's customer fraud. But sometimes the customer, like me, just gets unlucky. Most bulky goods I purchase these days are not adequately packaged. I'm sure my "customer returns too much" rating has gotten dinged lately. Edit: on the other side of the equation, customers have to deal with fraudulent merchants: "8TB External SSD" for $89: https://www.amazon.com/External-Solid-State-Drive-Portable/dp/B0B65FDTXL?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/External-Solid-State-Drive-Portable/d... https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/wgepyv/im_assuming_ssd_in_this_case_stands_for_super/ https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/wgepyv/im_assu... Fake 5 TB drive: https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/wh1s9z/fake_wd_black_5tb_from_amazon_more_info_in/ https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/wh1s9z/fake_wd_bla...

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voakbasda 4y ago

Reading this excellent article has made me decide to stop taking credit cards (or any electronic payments) for my small farm business. The card companies and their online cohorts are bad enough to deal with as a customer, and this story shattered the last of my trust that using these systems is safe as a merchant. I am already losing money on every sale anyway, because my family eats our potential profits (literally). Sales will be cash only from here on out, because these risks are not worth the potential costs.

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tlogan 4y ago
Yesterday, I was talking with one guy doing home inspections. He also refuses to accept CC. The main reason is that after deal does not go thru the people who hire them will file a chargeback.
- deleted 4y ago
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- dawnerd 4y ago
  Had to hire two inspectors in a short time and they both were cash or check only. Same reason.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  It would be "fun" if those people that put the chargeback gets sent to collections and a nice entry gets put on their credit report for payment failure I bet the bank providing their mortgage would love to have that information
  - acdha 4y ago
    So much small scale fraud relies keeping the losses below the level where someone is willing to risk getting sued. The kind of people who are doing this would be highly likely to try things which would end up with you needing a lawyer - even drafting a letter, much less showing up in small claims court would cost more.

ericbarrett 4y ago

Here's the original forum thread from the article head; it was an interesting read as well: https://forums.thepaceline.net/showthread.php?t=284547 https://forums.thepaceline.net/showthread.php?t=284547 Owner's first reply (joshatsilca) is page 2, more detail about credit card transactions for direct sales on page 3.

danuker 4y ago

One idea: require invitations from other, trusted by some criterion, customers. But this would severely slow scaling.

michaelmrose 4y ago
You could scale it by sharing it between businesses to help them identify the small minority of customers screwing everyone they deal with. I'm sorry sir we can't take your order because our records show that you already ripped off 6 other merchants in the last 5 years and we aren't willing to deal with you.
- benlivengood 4y ago
  We could call it a social credit score and force everyone to positively identify themselves with government identification for every financial transaction.
- tlogan 4y ago
  There is a company for that: https://www.theretailequation.com/ https://www.theretailequation.com/ They track customer’s returns and calculates a “risk score.”
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    I'm familiar from dealing with the employee side of this situation but I mean refusing to sell to the customer in the first place not merely refusing their refund.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  That would be illegal in some countries.
  - deleted 4y ago
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chevman 4y ago

A good example of the "reverse logistics" space in real life! Some interesting rabbit holes to explore if you google that phrase. One of my favorite small(er) Saas ERP vendors has a good 101 on the topic: https://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/inventory-management/reverse-logistics.shtml https://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/inventory-...

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michaelmrose 4y ago

This isn't merely crass and dishonest its a crime. The solution is honestly to start making examples of people. If someone stole all the parts of a thousand dollar bike start by suing them for the thousand bucks and then add all the employee time burned dealing with the matter. If they don't want to settle burn them for the entire cost of the litigation to recover those funds. If they can't pay then go to court and take absolutely anything that the court will late you take and attach their wages for eternity. Publish their names on a fraud page along with evidence of the crime and how much they paid you this month until its paid off. Threaten absolutely every person who commits an obvious crime against your company and pick 1 a year and ruin their lives. The obvious fact is even a small crime like a $50 fraud is a multi thousand dollar bill if a lawyer ends up being a required step to collect. Change the expectation that you will trivially get away with crime to an expectation that you will likely be hit with bill for your misbehavior.

lmz 4y ago
I'm surprised this comment is still visible, considering what the mainstream American opinion is on making examples out of criminals.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  Mainstream America is absolutely vindictive and cruel towards criminals.
  - abalashov 4y ago
    In weirdly asymmetrical, lopsided ways, where both extremes are simultaneously true. In part it depends on what one has in mind when speaking of "mainstream" America; it seems people have very different ideas of this. But I've been here almost 30 years, and seen both for-the-top run-amok police-state law-and-order in the red states, AND a passion for doing anything possible to avoid imprisoning repeat (felony!) offenders in many blue-state urban jurisdictions. The official explanation for the latter relates to penal system overcrowding and lack of capacity, and of course, there's something to that. But somehow this doesn't doesn't hinder the law-and-order "red" jurisdictions from "throwing the book" at some poor fellow who had a few too many ounces of weed on him or whatever. Here in Georgia, that's the difference between, say, Fulton County (which encompasses inner-city Atlanta) and one of the Metro ATL suburban counties, or for that matter, just about any other random county in Georgia. The outcomes vary immensely. You can find both extremes, allowing one to say in the same breath both that the state is cruel and vindictive toward criminals, and has let them run amok. It doesn't quite make my top 5 list of "things most maddening about America", but it's probably in the top 10.

powerhour 4y ago

> The other behaviours that they normalized and now all of us deal with are what they call ‘serial returns’ where you buy maybe one of everything and return what you don’t want. My wife and I do this, although not with small retailers. Very few brick and mortar companies carry clothing in our sizes, so if we want something we have to order a few options to find the right one. It's worse for my wife because she, according to clothing manufacturers, shrinks a full size every couple of years, making it nearly impossible to predict what size to buy. Do the kids still say sorry not sorry?

MBCook 4y ago
He spells out the pay of this later in the article. It’s about 5 sales to 1 kept. The example he used is if person A buys three things and return two, they have to sell two more things to others just to make up for the loss caused by person A. That’s a huge drain. Especially with something like clothing that can’t be refurbished and re-sold or stripped for parts.
hollandheese 4y ago
Yeah, this is a giant problem with clothing. I entirely blame the manufacturers and online stores for not having proper measurements for each article of clothing. Just that alone would ensure a lot fewer returns. There are several brands that I can't even trust that a 38/32 will be the same in two of the same "exact" pair of pants.
bloggie 4y ago
I was under the impression that online retailers encouraged this practice, because the alternative is placing one order at a time until you find the right size.
jwilk 4y ago
> she, according to clothing manufacturers, shrinks a full size every couple of years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_sizing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_sizing

supernova87a 4y ago

I wish there were a similar story to read about at an even more "previous step" level, to learn about all the complications and issues that start arising as soon as you begin accepting credit cards for payment, and how to protect against those. Is anyone aware of such a tutorial for people selling software, online services? It would be nice to be able to accept payments without having to just take as a cost of doing business all the fraud, customer service headaches, etc. that come with it.

rmatt2000 4y ago

The clothing company LL Bean dealt with this same sort of issue. It used to be that if you weren't happy with a purchase, you could return any item you bought from Bean, at any time, for a full refund. One day, the CEO of the company donated some of his old LL Bean clothing to a charity that accepts used clothing. One of the shirts he donated had his initials embroidered on it. In less than a month, that same shirt had been returned to Bean, stating the person was unsatisfied with his purchase, and requesting a full refund of the purchase price.

SnowHill9902 4y ago
Interesting. Reference?
- valleyer 4y ago
  https://apnews.com/article/north-america-lifestyle-business-me-state-wire-us-news-4e20f82acbc948969a98e7151b4d1622 https://apnews.com/article/north-america-lifestyle-business-...
  - aardvarkr 4y ago
    OP delivers! Thanks :)
Spooky23 4y ago
Walmart did something like this for many years. They were required to satisfy customers and would accept almost anything as a return to exchange. Like LL Bean, the internet kinda ruined it and when the management turned over to newer people who didn’t share the commitment that the founder had, it went away.
- bfuller 4y ago
  Sears used to take clothing back and replace it if it had any wear on it. In the 90s I bought a couple pairs of jeans at sears and just kept replacing them until they stopped doing that.

PebblesHD 4y ago

The returns fraud issue is a difficult one, and still very much an ongoing issue particularly with Amazon, as recently as yesterday when I ordered a used copy of a video game listed as returned to Amazon, and received an amazon warehouse sealed package containing a completely different game with the sticker replaced, so clearly not tested at all during the returns process to ensure it did actually work. Now, as for a solution, is it too much to expect Amazon to test goods they then go on to sell again? I would previously have assumed they did this, but apparently not. Luckily, the returns process is quite easy, which both leads to this issue in the first place but makes it easy to resolve.

rmatt2000 4y ago
I think the problem is that Amazon returns are not inspected by someone associated with the manufacture of the product. I suspect that return handlers have to handle thousands of products and can only give a returned product a cursory inspection. I once bought some expensive eyeglass frames from Amazon. When they arrived, it was pretty clear that they were not factory new. I returned the product and gave the company a bad review. The CEO of the company actually sent me an email apologizing, saying that this was an on-going problem. He said people order new frames identical to ones they currently own, swap out the lenses, and return the old ones. Amazon will often accept these returns, repackage them, and ship them as new, and the company which sells the frames has not control over this.
- PebblesHD 4y ago
  Absolutely, I really feel for the brands impacted by these practices that they have limited control over, just as the brand in the article ends up wearing the costs for returns via Amazon and co. It would make me think very hard before deciding to start a hardware company needing to deal with the small section of the population acting in bad faith here.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  I saw some video or something and it's the typical hyper optimized process. With the allowed time spend on item including data input being less than a minute or two if not even that.

gizmo686 4y ago

> The other behaviours that they normalized and now all of us deal with are what they call ‘serial returns’ where you buy maybe one of everything and return what you don’t want. At least for clothing, this behaviour is officially supported by Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GCQDLMG7C2YEXSM4 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

loeg 4y ago
It’s the only way to buy clothing sight unseen on the internet. If you don’t want to sell sized goods on the internet, don’t, but otherwise people need to try multiple sizes and return some.
- rgmerk 4y ago
  Silca sells the odd bit of branded merch but the vast majority of their business isn't in clothing. They sell a variety of high-end bicycle accessories including pumps, bottle cages, fancy lubricants (including chains pre-treated with hot wax lubricant). It's quality stuff with a pricetag to match.
  - loeg 4y ago
    I’m familiar with Silca’s products (I have some of their wax) but this thread is more generally about shopping for clothing online.
- alpaca128 4y ago
  I wish we had a way to just enter all measurements and filter out clothes that won't fit. Clothing sizes are still in the middle ages, with the same unit meaning something different with each manufacturer and not everyone even uses the same units.
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    Oh man, it's even worse than that. I mainly buy Levi's jeans, model 511. A few years ago I needed a new pair, checked my size from my current pair, and ordered the exact same off Amazon. My old pair still fit, maybe even a tad big at the waist. Then, perusing the catalog, I figured I'd also spice things up a bit, and ordered a 501 in a color I don't usually wear, for variety. When I received them, the sizing was a complete joke. It was absolutely impossible for me to put on the 511. My upper thighs would not fit inside the jeans without pulling on them, and after that it was impossible to button them. The 501 was the opposite: much too big, could have probably went two sizes down. I sent them both back, ordered a single 511 one size above, which was, you guessed, too big. Frustrated, I sent them all back and went to my local brick and mortar store and ended up with a pair of 514s – one size below my regular one.

tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago

Isn't 3DSecure supposed so solve CC fraud (in the sense of not making the seller be out of money if it does happen)?

minutemad 4y ago
It adds liability shift, which is what the merchant needs. The card company will eat the loss if you meet the criteria. It's better than not having it, but their criteria isn't without holes, and when it's a feature on the customer's card, you can't expect them to always have it.

denimnerd42 4y ago

this + theft at retail drive me nuts as an honest consumer I'm the one paying that 5-10% on their loss!

aimor 4y ago

Recently my credit card has been validating my purchases via SMS OTPs. I'm not thrilled by that, but after reading the article it sounds like an effective way to cut back on a lot of the credit card fraud.

WalterBright 4y ago

This is a must read for anyone who is thinking of starting a business that sells online.

BSOhealth 4y ago

Only here to support Silca (as a consumer) but hopefully relevant to HN as it’s just to highlight their product design. After tracking their American “rebirth” I dove in for Silca’s top-of-the-line $500 pump ~5 years ago and the quality and durability is exceptional. If you are, or claim to be, someone who appreciates mechanical watches, “The Design of Everyday Things” type stuff, unboxing and inspecting Apple products, etc. etc., _and_ you are a cyclist, I totally recommend seeing if you have a friend with a Silca pump to check out. The push-on chuck, beautifully braided and flexible hose, and general height and ergonomics combines for a nearly a zero-to-one improvement over the rest of the market. It removes almost all cognitive and physical friction to getting the job done (filling a tyre), short of just automating it with an air compressor — which has its own complications for filling bike tyres. Off-topic (but on-topic): REI also has a notoriously forgiving return policy. Generally, just about anything can be returned after years of use, abuse, wear, and tear, and it typically ends up getting sold. I know many REI shoppers who first run upstairs (or wherever) to the “Returns” racks to see what they can find at a discount. Granted, it’s a hit REI is taking, but it’s clearly not a total loss as the “Returns” section turns over pretty quickly.

redelbee 4y ago
Actually the current REI return policy has a time limit of 1 year. It changed in 2013: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/rei-now-limiting-returns-to-one-year/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/rei-now-limiting-retur... Before that there was no time limit though. I remember becoming a member in 2011 when I moved to a city with a local REI and that was one of the main benefits they pitched. I don’t miss it because I never returned anything after a year (or even a few weeks). REI started a trade-in program that serves a similar function and probably manages to foil most of the people who would have abused the system in the past. I think it goes well with their overall “earth friendly” ethos and brand identity as well. https://www.rei.com/used/trade-it-in https://www.rei.com/used/trade-it-in

pwned1 4y ago

I get a web page with the company logo and nothing else.

Neil44 4y ago
Me too, I was just about to disable ublock but then I realised there was stuff below the page of whitespace.
chedabob 4y ago
Scroll down a bit. There's a space for adverts that is set to take up the whole height of the window, and only gets resized when the advert loads in. If you've got an adblocker on, it never gets resized.

WalterBright 4y ago

> The bad actors who really know how to work the systems Time to bring back retailers sharing a list of names of those bad actors and just refusing to do business with them. For the people who buy one of each color and then return all but one, a solution is to only ship one at a time. I'm surprised that Amazon doesn't have (or perhaps has it in secret) a "score" for each customer, and certain kinds of transactions are simply rejected for them.

9dev 4y ago
I’ll bet my last shirt they have in invested big time in fraud risk scoring. That’s stuff Amazon is set up to do perfectly.
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  Not that it really disproves your point but a friend recently received a new camera from Amazon, except what was actually in the box was a container of pool chemicals.
rmatt2000 4y ago
> For the people who buy one of each color and then return all but one Amazon's "try before you buy" encourages people to do just this, so I'm guessing Amazon has figured out how to make this shopping pattern profitable.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Try before you buy is not quite the same as buy a spread in order to pick one.
  - tekknik 4y ago
    Actually in this case it is, you choose a box of items to get shipped to you and ship back what you don’t want. You can get an identical shirt in 5 different colors, or sizes, and ship back all but one.
4y ago

exabrial 4y ago

Wouldn’t load for me: https://archive.ph/zeykZ https://archive.ph/zeykZ

exabrial 4y ago

I once was shipped a _very expensive_ server motherboard from Amazon by mistake when trying to buy something cheaper. The customer service agent (Indian non native speaker) failed to understand that Amazon didn’t ship the correct item, and refused the return. I spoke to another agent and they thanked me and I got the correct item exchanged. I previously posted about this on HN and one of the responses was “who cares? Az makes $100k/min” You know what? It matters. Doing the right thing fucking matters. Have some integrity, don’t take what isn’t yours, give back what was a mistake. Don’t fall into the trap of relativism. You don’t know the whole story either... I’d like to think by returning that item I saved someone from getting fired; or a saved a small low margin retailer from losing their shirt. I’ll never know, but at the end of the day I can sleep with a clean conscience.

WalterBright 4y ago
You've got it right. Nice to see a post like yours.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  ^
ffhhj 4y ago
On the other side of things, search for laser safety goggles on Amazon, there are lots of cheap ones that won't provide real protection, and comments of people being hurt by using them. Should Amazon remove those products and affect many low margin retailers?
- bathtub365 4y ago
  Yes, and the retailers should be sued.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  I refused to buy any of those solar eclipse goggles from Amazon. No amount of "sorry" and $millions is worth losing eyesight over.

2143 4y ago

Isn't there a way to legally move against people who dupe companies like this? Maybe don't chase everyone, but go after just a handful of fraudsters, and once you've won get your PR department to ensure everybody on Earth realizes this is one company not to be messed with.

mhb 4y ago

Great article. Interesting: With Amazon, it’s amazingly a bit easier, as Amazon has massive leverage with the credit card companies, and they also know that this is a big problem. Up to half of our returns through Amazon are fraudulent or at best unethical, and so when fraud does happen at Amazon, they are actually great about it.

liminalsunset 4y ago

From the customer side of things, there is one upside to people returning things - Amazon sells the returned stuff as Warehouse Deals, often at a great discount. Unless it is a gift, I don't usually (ever) care if the box is gone/damaged or if the item is slightly used, as long as it is cheap. So far, in Canada, I've never had to return a Warehouse Deals item.

SergeAx 4y ago

(I am not an American and was in America only as a tourist). Why the company don't go to the police and press charges against clear fraudster? If people knew that would be a consequence - they will think twice before pulling a stunt like this.

sylvainr65 4y ago

I think I'm the average Amazon customer. If I buy something cheap and it breaks or doesn't work as expected, I just throw it away. If it's expensive, then I ask for a return, but I really take care to return it as new. If I command something and change my mind afterward, I just keep it and take it as a lesson.