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Cameras and secret trackers reveal where Amazon returns end up
- cbanek 6y agoI feel the worst about mattresses getting returned. I'm tempted to buy a new bed (it's just that time), but not being able to try them out, I'd feel bad returning one if I didn't like it. Those things are huge and hard to recycle, and you can't exactly resell them.
- manigandham 6y agoDepending on the company, they are often donated to homeless shelters and other places. But yes they generate a lot of waste too.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mkskm 6y agoIt's possible to resell nicer mattresses on Craigslist. CA also has a mandated recycling fee imposed on their sale now.
- redisman 6y agoBut it’s foam. So what they’ll shred it and put it in a trash bag?
- humaniania 6y agoBean bag chairs, punching bags, who knows what else.
- cbanek 6y agoI'm reminded of the Simpson's lunch lady: "There's very little meat in these gym mats" as she's grinding them into meatloaf. I'm more concerned now since who knows with the virus what the right way of possibly sanitizing a mattress would take that nobody will be taking them for a while.
- ummonk 6y agoI mean bedbugs are gonna live in the mattress far longer than a virus.
- jf 6y agoTo save you the trouble of loading the page: the Amazon returns they tracked for this article ended up in a landfill.
- frereubu 6y agoI'm not sure you actually read the article. They bought 12 items and one went to landfill (which Amazon said was because it arrived damaged). What they describe is pretty egregious, but not all returns go to landfill - some are resold, some are sold in bulk, and some go to landfill.
- jf 6y agoWow. You’re right. Thank you for correcting me!
- sokoloff 6y ago> 30 to 40 per cent of all online purchases are sent back That seems almost an order of magnitude higher than I’d expect. Setting aside kids shoes (which probably do get 50% returned), I can’t imagine sending back even 5% of my online purchases, let alone 30-40%. I think I’ve sent back exactly 1 Amazon order in the last year, out of nearly 100.
- tiku 6y agoHere in the Netherlands it is almost common for girls to shop and fit at home, the sent a lot of stuff back.
- searchableguy 6y agoFew people probably abuse the system too much. There are scamming forums and services for Amazon refunds. Scammers take 10-20% of the item cost for refunding it without giving the original. A trend I observed here among college students is buying clothes for a party or instagram selfie and then returning it. Small sellers get screwed pretty hard. You should check their forums.
- glitchcrab 6y agoWait, people genuinely buy clothes (although this is more like borrowing) just for the purpose of taking a selfie? I can't even begin to comprehend how desperate they must be to look good and fit in.
- adambyrtek 6y agoYes, this is so common that there is a name for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardrobing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardrobing
- glitchcrab 6y agoOh the practise I'm aware of, it was more the application of it which surprised me here. I guess it makes more sense (although that's stretching the definition of sense) when you apply it to influencers (a connection I failed to make initially).
- crazygringo 6y ago> The tactic of enticing customers to buy more than they need and return what they don't want "has had tragic repercussions for the environment and business," he says. That's disingenuous. I've never purchased "more than I need" from Amazon. But probably about 10% of items purchased for the first time simply aren't as advertised -- not Amazon's fault, but the manufacturer's. They don't meet the needs you bought them for, so you have no choice but to return them. And of course clothing is notorious, because manufacturers still insist on making up their own idiosyncratic definitions of S/M/L, when simply providing measurements in inches or centimeters would fix most problems. (Also color-accurate photography, for when the item listed and photographed as red turns out to be orange-pink.) > "You're lucky if half of all returns can still be sold as new, so a huge amount of merchandise has to be dispositioned via some other means — liquidation, refurbishment, recycling, or landfill." Yup, that's just how it works. That's why I buy a lot of stuff "open box" off eBay -- especially things like dongles, adapters, cheap peripherals. They all come from returns from places like Amazon and Best Buy, but are half the price. It's great. This article isn't surprising, except for one data point about a single bag that wasn't resold. But they're probably hiring minimum-wage workers to categorize returns, who make errors. There isn't really anything new in this article.
- saalaa 6y ago> That's disingenuous. I've never purchased "more than I need" from Amazon. My guess is you've never purchased clothes then. Regardless, this is your own individual experience and doesn't represent the trend as a whole.
- navbaker 6y agoLiterally three sentences later they talk about buying clothes.
- dralley 6y agoNo, this is absolutely a "thing", and I know several people who shop clothes from Amazon this way. It is incredibly wasteful.
- loeg 6y ago
- tomarr 6y agoThe GPS tracker technique does not seem foolproof, basic QA on returned goods would likely be trashing the GPS trackers.
- BlueScreenDeath 6y agoExactly, a GPS tracker in the landfill != product in the landfill.
- rantwasp 6y agoyeah. what people don’t understand is that the return has to be processed when it comes back. in an ideal world anything like a GPS tracker would surely be discovered. there are also several issue with how the return may go. amazon may tell you to just keep the item (if the cost of shipping + processing the return is higher that the actual product price / margin on the item). they may decide that the item is in not good condition when it comes back. the packaging may be missing parts or damaged. i would guess that a lot of items don’t make it through the process. also i would guess that because Amazon keeps existing and making a profit they have this baked into their business model. Also I would be shocked if the return rate is 30-40%. Again guessing, I would say it’s probably 1-2%. A lot of people buy shit they don’t need and keep it. As far as “hacking the system” I think that they should have a system in place to track how many things you return (and if they were in good condition/could be resold) and how much money they made on your purchases. If overall you’re a net negative I would not be surprised if your account got suspended/banned. Why would they do business with you if you’re a bad actor?
- 7952 6y agoYou could surely hide it easily enough in the cardboard? Just wrap it over in parcel tape. The people at the other end will just assume you went a bit overboard in packing.
- marketingPro 6y agoGPS emits an EMF, should be easy catch if you are trying. Also, I wonder if you can catch it with batteries. Does amazon make the seller list the type of battery in their product?
- blondie9x 6y agoWe have known for awhile that online shopping is hurting the planet. Alibaba and Amazon are a huge part of the problem as the biggest online retailer in the world. with packaging thrown out and returns often destroyed. There are efforts to mitigate this but they are insufficient and need to be further developed.
- S_A_P 6y agoIf the return rate is truly 30-40% wouldn’t this be easily proven by quarterly income statements? Even at the generous assumption that every item is sold for double the wholesale price if 1 of 3 packages are returned and tossed/recycled or otherwise not resold I can’t imagine Amazon being even close to profitable as a retailer. I know Amazon was famously unprofitable for years but those days are gone now right?
- azinman2 6y agoSo this was a lot about Amazon, but it leaves out comparisons to any other store. What do others do? Is this the common practice?
- chaboud 6y agoI don't know what it's like now, but, when I worked at Best Buy in the 90s, we had a couple of shoulder height palletized bins in the back. If a customer brought something back with a "didn't work" reason, it went in the bin. We threw items in the bin from a distance, so they were definitely unsellable. I'm sure that lots of merchandise that would have been functional/sellable ended up being thrown out.
- bluedino 6y agoDevo!
- kitteh 6y agoI remember as a pc tech (before they did that geek squad stuff) having to validate computer returns. The amount of stuff people would pull daily always amazed me. Putting bricks in a computer box, an old video card for a matrix vga card, the most wild was some video equipment where they replaced it with a two liter bottle of urine. I remember confronting people once I opened it and they would always pull the "well my son packed it and gave it to me" and promptly leave (with their item). They usually worked multiple stores in the area and sometimes we'd chat with the other stores, but usually that was for the bigger scams (people using altered receipts, asking for cash refunds on multi thousand dollar purchases).
- dade_ 6y agoIt is standard practice in the industry, and certainly any by any profitable retailer. In fact it was a story by an executive about how much money it was costing the company to manage returns, and it was far cheaper to just throw them away. It surprised me at first, but I came to learn that this is just how it is done. I am disappointed by CBC making a click bait Amazon story, when it is actually the story of retail that our unconscious civilization ignores. CBC does mention this later in the article.
- decko 6y ago> Fulfillment by Amazon Donations, which Amazon says will help sellers send returns directly to charities instead of disposing of them. So the seller ends up having to take the loss?
- dleslie 6y agoYes, and it's a serious problem.
- winkeltripel 6y agoBut they at least get a tax write off for a percentage of the value of the donation.
- jlokier 6y agoNo. It's not "at least they get a tax write off", because that implies a benefit, such as when paying profits to a charity you want to support anyway. With these returned items, the seller just loses money and has a lower income than if they could resell them. Their tax goes down because of returns, but that's just normal income tax because their income goes down. If they didn't donate the goods, just threw them away, they would pay exactly the same tax. So there is no tax benefit gained from donating.
- nearbuy 6y agoThe seller has the option of taking the item back if they prefer. If they don't want it back, they can donate it.
- TigeriusKirk 6y agoWell, everyone who buys from the seller splits the loss. No doubt it's built into their prices.
- ajharrison 6y agoHow would one go about purchasing the returned goods between the buyer and the wastebasket?
- chrisseaton 6y agoHow do these trackers read a GPS signal from inside these bulky items, plus packaged, plus inside a building?
- ardy42 6y agoI have some GPS data loggers that can do that. The fix isn't great or very accurate indoors, but it's probably good enough for this purpose.
- myself248 6y agoNewer GPS chips are downright magical. Several years ago, I had a 5-series Ublox get a signal when, as a joke, I soldered a trimmed stub of paperclip to its antenna pin. No tuned patch antenna, no polarization sensitivity, no preamp, no SAW filter, just a piece of wire that I eyeballed to be roughly probably something like a quarter-wave at 1.5GHz. Ish. It got a fix in about 3 minutes, indoors, on a workbench, under 2 shelves of equipment and parts, in a part of a building with a double roof. And that was the 5th generation chipset. We're on the 9th now, and they're much, much, much more sensitive. All the habits and assumptions I learned with my 2002-era Garmin eTrex no longer apply.
- ryanmarsh 6y agoJain likes the convenience of online shopping but worries about Amazon's carbon footprint. What is this article about exactly?
- sudoaza 6y agoI guess this means you can buy stuff, return a box with trash inside, get the money back and keep the stuff. Sweet!
- bserge 6y agoThat's like the most common scam on Amazon. Many of the packages are put back on the shelves/on sale without being checked, so some other buyer gets it and either has to (once again) return it or lose their money. It's pretty ridiculous.
- whoisjuan 6y agoWhile this may seem shocking, logistically it makes sense. It’s potentially easier to destroy or dump a returned product than re-preparing it for sale. I went out on a date with a program manager for one of Amazon’s return programs and she told me her job was basically finding out ways to repurpose returns as cheaply as possible. Apparently destroying and dumping it’s the easiest and least resource consuming way to deal with returns. In a similar note, search for Amazon Warehouse. That’s one of their programs for returned merchandise and sometimes I have found insane deals there. But you gotta check often.
- kennywinker 6y ago> Apparently destroying and dumping it’s the easiest and less resource consuming way to deal with returns. Not the least resource consuming - the least costly to amazon. There is a massive environmental cost to the practice - it's just externalized. If the companies involved (amazon, the manufacturer) had to bare the full environmental cost, the calculation would often come out different.
- whoisjuan 6y agoTotally! That’s what I was going for. Least resource consuming but I’m talking about economic resources. Like man hours, packaging, transportation, etc. The environmental impact is big! I hope this is being considered in their Climate Pledge.
- lotu 6y agoIf the environmental cost is dominated by shipping I could see destruction as more environmentally friendly. This is likely the for many small cheap items.
- kennywinker 6y agoFine, but two things are happenings: 1. It’s being hidden from consumers, who might adapt their behavior if they knew a return meant the trash. 2. Stuff is shipped back to amazon and then disposed of.
- henvic 6y agoAm I the only one worried about: * The privacy of consumers who might eventually buy some of the stuff stuffed with their trackers. * The scene at 1:49 where it appears they put a tracker in a plastic bag inside something like a coffee kettle. * Sticking a tracker to a kid's toy. What the hell is wrong with these people? I get they wanted to do a great investigation, but this seems so wrong to me...
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoJournalists tend to get a little more leeway for investigative purposes. And presumably they followed up and retrieved these trackers in some way. And will get rid of any personal information about the people who received the items. Also, note they were expecting most or all of them to end up in landfills, them finding homes is an ideal outcome, but maybe not expected. It also says something about the quality of returned merchandise and inspection of it: Amazon didn't find and remove the tracking devices, the products "looked fine" and were sent on their way. Perhaps that's one reason Amazon prefers to just toss stuff.
- throwaheyy 6y agoYes, you’re the only one. Anybody could put a tracker inside items they’re returning, it’s on Amazon to inspect returned items, which any brick-and-mortar store would do.
- quantified 6y agoThat’s an interesting ethics angle. Certainly a potential issue, but not likely to be an actual problem. They’d know where the item ended up, but not much about who it ended up with. Kid’s toys go to adults first on average. Knowing I bought a backpack on Amazon doesn’t say much, a little weird, but far better than a phone’s location tracking. If the items were sensitive in some way (bondage equipment, say, or doctored home security equipment) then certainly.
- kennywinker 6y ago> The privacy of consumers who might eventually buy some of the stuff stuffed with their trackers. I don't share your concern here. CBC is a reputable org. They can just turn off the trackers if the items appear to be getting re-sold to an end-consumer. Even then, I don't think it would be a privacy violation for a journalist to go and talk to them and say "hey did you know this was a returned item?" etc. If the kids toy made it into the hands of a kid without that tracker being noticed, I'd have deeper concerns. I.e. what's stopping someone from putting razorblades or some toxic checmical in a kids toy and returning it? Someone needs to check over returned items for basic quality, and should DEFINITELY notice the massive tracker.
- marvindanig 6y agoNow compare these lies of recycling goods and plastic with the other lie of harvesting trees for paper pulp. ;-) It's a perfect animal farm!
- drummer 6y agoRhetorical question: if the returns are unsellable, why don't they give them away for free to the poor?
- tinus_hn 6y agoBecause people who get free things don’t buy things. It doesn’t make economic sense.
- bleepblorp 6y agoPeople who are too poor to buy things won't buy any fewer things just because they get free things. They'll just have more things that they can resell for more money, which they will likely use to buy things they actually need. Giving money--even indirectly--to poor people makes economic sense because they'll spend it on goods and services that keep other people employed. Punishing the poor out of some moral imperative is economically destructive.
- dasudasu 6y agoFrom the point of view of manufacturers not having their stuff bought, it doesn't matter if these people spend their money on other things.
- nearbuy 6y agoIt says they have a program to donate the items to charity in the US and UK, but it's not available in Canada.
- msie 6y agoAt this point I assume massive waste in every industry until proven otherwise. Massive waste in the food industry really distresses me.
- neom 6y agoIt's insane to me that ONE of their returns traveled 105 miles around the city of Toronto alone.
- sradman 6y agoIt is unintuitive that an overnight package sent from Mississauga to Milton would go to Atlanta first, but that is the key insight Fred Smith had when he created FedEx. Regarding the CBC returns featured in the video, the 105 mile detour and the denim coveralls going to an electronics recycling facility support FedEx's strategy: exceptions in the normal processing workflow are error prone and expensive relative to the extra transportation costs. The assumptions underlying the criticism of Amazon's and FedEx's strategy is that landfill costs and/or transportation costs do not represent the true cost to society.
- ThePhysicist 6y agoIn Germany there are companies that buy up returns by the kilogram (mostly clothes), sometimes the e-commerce companies even pay them to take the goods off their backs. They then ship them to countries like Irak, Serbia or Lebanon to prevent those perfectly goood items to "flood" the European market. That way especially clothing brands protect their inflated prices.
- baxtr 6y agoI think the alternative would be to destroy the fashion items. I prefer the method you describe. I’m not saying it’s right. It’s just how the world of fashion works.
- TheGallopedHigh 6y agoWhether right or wrong it decimates the destination country’s market place. Food for thought.
- bigwavedave 6y agoI guess I really know nothing about economics... Sincere question: how does paying less for functionally/fashionably equivalent products hurt the economy of the country that's consuming them?
- TheGallopedHigh 6y agoThe local makers of said clothing can’t compete with low prices and therefore go out of business.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoThe same detrimental effects can happen with lots of aid given to Africa. Basically, the majority of Africa is clothed with first world hand-me-downs. The result is that there is virtually no market for home-grown clothing makers in Africa. Think about it, the US has "anti-dumping" laws to protect US manufacturers, but we "dump" into other countries all the time in the form of "aid".
- coding123 6y agoLearning about this, I'm half-way tempted to return an empty box and donate the actual item to charity. I mean, I usually get my refund 5 minutes after the UPS guy scans the label. Do you think they do anything beyond that?
- RandomBacon 6y agoThat's still fraud, even if your heart is in the right place.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoHuh I thought these would be resold as "Amazon Warehouse" returned items. I've bought several of those and they were definitely used.
- dasudasu 6y agoAmazon disposes of it, but how much is the manufacturer involved? Who foots the bill in the end?
- sradman 6y agoNear the end of the CBC Marketplace video, they show a vendor contract and state that the vendor pays either the shipping costs to receive the returned item or the disposal cost otherwise. The reporting seems oblivious to the cost of humans making resell/reuse/repair/recycle/disposal decisions at this scale.
- canada_dry 6y agoEveryone in the chain is complicit... people who carelessly order things, suppliers who decide it's cheaper to just let Amazon handle their returns, and Amazon who is stuck dealing with returns. If we're going to fix something, it really aught to be food waste! The amount of food that gets disposed of daily - while millions go hungry - is humanities greatest issue - not unwanted coveralls.
- malcolmgreaves 6y agoHow long does it take food to decompose versus a pair of coveralls? This is one of those situations where saying "this problem isn't important, look at X," isn't the best strategy. We have to solve _waste_ in general. Different types will have different solutions.
- canada_dry 6y ago> This is one of those situations where saying "this problem isn't important, look at X," It's all about directing (our extremely limited) focus on issues with a higher priority. Food insecurity (even in North America) is a significantly bigger problem than Amazon returns.
- ummonk 6y agoA lot of food ends up in the landfill where it doesn't decompose, which is truly a waste.
- jjoonathan 6y agoSure, but just try telling hipsters that you need to put preservatives on their food to keep it good long enough to get it into the hands of the less fortunate.
- jmnicolas 6y agoWhen I called them last week, they offered to repair a faulty hard drive (clicking noises, SMART errors through the roof) ... If they try to repair an irreparable hard drive but throw perfectly good items like a bag they're quite dysfunctional. And their inability to send all the ordered items in ONE package is irritating too.
- fergie 6y agoTheres a guy on youtube who buys Amazon returns by the pallet and then sells it on. Its quite eye-opening. http://resalerabbit.com/ http://resalerabbit.com/
- pavelevst 6y agoIt could be that tracker was noticed and sent to landfill, not the item
- spcebar 6y agoA Staples by where I used to live threw anything returned away. Used to dumpster dive there and got all kinds of interesting things. Perfectly good stationary, an expensive suitcase, an office chair, a PC (which was on the of cash registers but still neat).
- mensetmanusman 6y agoWith the amount of food and goods wasted (probably approaching 50%), it’s amazing we have an economy where half the people’s effort is wasted.
- hourislate 6y agoAmazon has become an expensive place to shop for everyday items. I've found they typically don't have the best prices anymore and many of my tastes have changed over the years. They are still super useful to find those hard to get parts that would typically be impossible to find locally or at least very expensive. Like a carburetor for a chainsaw or a part for an appliance, bearings for a hood fan motor, monitor arm, etc. A lot of retailers have picked up their game when it comes to online shopping. Places like rockauto.com for auto parts are super competitive and offer a massive inventory (what a great acquisition it would be for AMZN to break into the auto parts sector). Newegg/MicroCenter for PC parts, Costco, etc. But over all I can't remember the last time I had to return anything and my experience over the last 20 years has been a positive one.
- cwoolfe 6y agoWhy not have the customer hold onto the return item until another customer buys it as used on amazon, and the return label ships directly to the new customer? Sure people could send unacceptable returns, but couldn't that be mitigated by losing the privilege to return in that way with amazon? It still seems better than the alternatives of throwing it away.
- rkagerer 6y agoIf you were just dealing with commodity items and trustworthy customers you might be able to get this to work. But I think in the real world it would break down quickly. First problem: When do you credit the refund? If you credit it right away, what happens if the customer subsequently loses the item? Even assuming you can simply rebill them, you've still pissed off the new purchaser who was expecting that item to be available. If you don't issue the refund until the new buyer confirms receipt (which aligns some incentives of your returner) then what happens if it takes months to sell? Defer too long and you've pissed off the old customer and effectively reneged on your return policy (not to mention forced them to store your item without compensation). Next problem: How do you apportion blame if old customer says they sent it in good condition and new customer says it arrived damaged? You have no way of knowing who's right. Do you just write it off? My gut says you'll run into more issues as you flesh this out. e.g. The "speediness" of your brand will tarnish when customers drag their heels to ship things out (sorry, I'm on vacation, will have to wait until i get back). Human nature will tempt people to "borrow" the item while they're holding onto it for you. If you thought inventory control was hard with a bunch of warehouses fully under your control, imagine what it'll be like after you crowdsource it out to a bunch of consumers. Amazon already let's you just keep low-value items that cost more to ship back than they're worth. The upside of your idea to Amazon seems small, and I see so much opportunity for abuse. If you think you can solve the challenges, maybe you can launch a decentralized inventory startup. Would be worth a ton if you do manage to get it to work.
- cwoolfe 6y agoI think you're right there would be huge challenges you mentioned. But I still think that the smarts of modern IT business-logic coupled with the scale of a company like amazon could at least do better than throwing it away in many cases. Amazon is very customer-centric company. Given the huge pain this kind of system could cause for customers is my guess why they haven't rolled-out any attempts at a solution to the general public. It's a fascinating problem to me. I've been buying/selling on eBay for 10 years. I also sell on Facebook marketplace for hard-to-ship items. I've learned that if you buy and sell used, you can essentially rent certain things for very cheap, which is a problem set and solution that has a lot in common with amazon's product return problem.
- clon 6y agoHow did they make sure that the entire backpack was returned, not just the tracker tossed?
- bpodgursky 6y agoAs someone who never, ever returns online purchases (even in the 1/100 cases where I'm genuinely unhappy with what I got), I would love the ability to shop at a 10-20% discount at an online store (or some setting on Amazon) which completely disallows returns. You buy it, you keep it. Always. Would love to stop subsidizing the indecisive, the scammers, the people who can't bother to research products before they buy, etc.
- sjg007 6y agoI think the majority of people don’t return stuff because it is such a pain to find a UPS store.
- blondie9x 6y agoAmazon prime creates bad shopping habits and Amazon needs to be responsible for the extra emissions and returns.
- kleer001 6y agoYes. In a perfect world there would be no externalities. All costs would be charged.
- ComodoHacker 6y agoThe pinnacle of consumerism!
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoI wonder if Amazon will pursue these folks - they ordered items intending to return them. Got to violate some terms and conditions somewhere.
- inopinatus 6y agoLet's take a moment to look at how disingenuous this article is: * Out of twelve returned trackers, one of them went to landfill. The article focuses on that item and does not itemise the fate of the others. * Adding a tracking device to a returned new product is tantamount to damage. If such a device is detected during returns processing, anyone with half a brain should immediately presume a malicious actor and have the item very carefully and securely assessed for disposal. * Did not verify that the tracking device remained within the bag. * "30-40 percent of online purchases are returned" what absolute hoopsla. I've worked in online commerce and this is off by an order of magnitude. A very few segments (e.g. shoes) may approach such return rates. This crap is why journalism is in such disrepute.
- eigenvector 6y agoI completely agree that their methodology is not robust. But Amazon also refused to state what fraction of items go to landfill, despite making subjective claims that it's "on occasion" and the "vast majority" are liquidated or resold. If that was true, Amazon would have the data to back it up and would only benefit them to say so. If we want to know the actual number of items that go to landfill, we don't need to send GPS trackers everywhere, we can just mandate Amazon (and all other companies) to report on that. It's not like they don't have the data.
- Spooky23 6y agoIn fairness, they outsource and sell returns by the pound. It’s a big business - they have no idea what happens to it.
- inopinatus 6y agoThat is a very reasonable public policy idea. Let's add to that list of failures: the article has no discussion of reasonable policy ideas (despite quoting researchers whose life's work is in producing them). NB: don't assume that there's no downside to any given retailer unilaterally disclosing their return rates, because returns are a measurable factor in marginal cost & revenue assessment and partially describe both the elasticity of demand and overall customer sentiment. Every retailer of scale would be interested in obtaining the return statistics (especially segmented) of their competitors; and, as the tone of the article illustrates, there are any number of hacks poised to scribble out mendacious venom on the basis of such data, so no corporate PR lackey worth their communications degree will willingly start that conversation.
- xyst 6y agoI hate to say it, but the decadence of first world countries is truly a burden on this planet.
- ummonk 6y ago> Kevin Lyons, an associate professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey who specializes in supply chain management and environmental policy, says that 30 to 40 per cent of all online purchases are sent back. That number drops to less than ten per cent for merchandise bought at bricks and mortar stores. What the hell? I rarely return either, but find myself returning online merchandise even less often than brick and mortar simply because of the inconvenience of managing packing and shipping. How are people returning 30-40% of everything they purchase online?
- bergstromm466 6y agoI made this comment in reply to another post: The important part of this article is the critique of the powerful monopolistic corporate player, Amazon: "[Amazon] did write the playbook on free returns, says Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at Publicis Groupe, a global marketing and advertising agency. The tactic of enticing customers to buy more than they need and return what they don't want "has had tragic repercussions for the environment and business," he says." It seems to me like the HN community sometimes nitpicks over tiny details and fails to take part in the larger systemic critiques. Are there others who are also frustrated by the lack of larger, systemic critiques?