131–140 of 351 posts
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Whether right or wrong it decimates the destination country’s market place. Food for thought.
I 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?
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I've also stopped buying at Amazon after 15 years. Even consumables and small items are problematic. Just in the last year, I encountered many issues including: * Showerhead that came without box, and clearly used. It still had a lot of water inside! * Underwear from a brand that sells items inside a sealed bag and discards returns came used, without bag (yuck!) * A module of Samsung RAM had visible wear signs and di…
I'm always shocked when I read these comments on HN. I swear it must be just the American Amazon that's so shit, because I literally never had any problems nor know anyone with these problems here in UK. Just this year I'm on 108 orders and counting, every single one of them was fine, working, definitely not used, definitely not counterfeit and delivered within 1 day as promised with Prime. Last year I've had 140 ord…
While 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 d…
> 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.
I suspect that cost is a much better approximation of resource consumption than what feels wasteful, especially because it forces you to factor human time as a resource, which many environmental activists like to treat as infinite and free.
> 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.
I have friends who send back nearly everything. Not sure about shoe size? Order 3 sizes, keep the one you like and send back the other two (or return all 3 if you dont like it). Want a shirt? Order 5 and keep the ones you like, if any.
I hope we go back to shopping malls for clothing and fitted purchases.
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.
In 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.
Seems like exactly the sort of competitive strategy I’d expect from the “off-price” stores (TJ Maxx in the US, Winner’s in Canada, etc.).
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I second this. I’ve tried to give other online retailers a shot but nothing beats the customer service and reliability of Amazon in the UK, even if something is slightly more expensive I’ll always go with Amazon
Yep, I recently made a mistake of buying a new Lenovo laptop directly from Lenovo instead of Amazon, and it was a huge mistake - the machine arrived with a broken screen and I waited over 2 weeks for the replacement, their support was generally useless and every time I rang them got a different answer to what was actually happening(they said the replacement is ready, only to say it's not and I'll get a refund 2 days…
I 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.
> 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.
I was very surprised about my own Amazon usage today... For the year 2020 (so far): Amazon Orders: 231 Returns: 38 Return Percent: 16.45 Based on Gmail search: amazon "your refund" after:2020/01/01 before:2021/01/01 For the year 2019: Amazon Orders: 32 Returns: 11 Return Percent: 34.3 Based on Gmail search: amazon "your refund" after:2019/01/01 before:2020/01/01 A couple of things to note, 2019 I was mostly buying an…
Compared to me: I have placed 197 Amazon orders since 2013, and have had 13 returns so far.
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yeah. 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 g…
You 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.
Also, I wonder if you can catch it with batteries. Does amazon make the seller list the type of battery in their product?