141–150 of 351 posts
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.
It's possible to resell nicer mattresses on Craigslist. CA also has a mandated recycling fee imposed on their sale now.
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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…
Same here (France). I will actually pay a bit more for Amazon products because I never, ever had any problem. The closest I had to a problem was when I sent an email stating that a product is not functional after a year and a half. They replied that the 30 days return window is over and that I should contact the producer. I replied that according to the law, I have 2 years of warranty with zero costs from my side. Th…
Amazon disposes of it, but how much is the manufacturer involved? Who foots the bill in the end?
The reporting seems oblivious to the cost of humans making resell/reuse/repair/recycle/disposal decisions at this scale.
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…
I wonder why someone couldn’t build a business like this. Basically contract with Amazon to handle all of their returns. That company then salvages and resells anything they can.
Can't do that with e.g. counterfeits though, or with products that may be dangerous.
And not everything is resellable in practice. To resell something you need to 1. determine what you have (not just the product but also the state it is in), 2. have someone who wants it, 3. that person needs to be willing to accept the risk of getting a used/substandard product (higher risk of it arriving broken), 4. you have to find that person, 5. you have to get the product to that person, 6. you have to manage the whole overhead of the process (additional shipping, sorting, testing, ...).
Each of these steps is associated with costs, both financial and environmental (the latter will skyrocket as soon as you start e.g. attributing some of the environmental footprint of the people whose labor you spend on these tasks to those tasks).
It's very unlikely that Amazon wouldn't optimize something so obvious.
Once the returns are generated, there's probably not much of a better way to deal with it. However, if you ban returns, online shopping becomes less attractive - people will use retail stores again. Which also toss stuff that doesn't sell, use a lot more real estate, air conditioning, and again, human labor. There's a reason online is often cheaper, and it may well be "cheaper" (better) for the environment too, despite the waste.
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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…
This is really why I hesitate to buy clothes through Amazon, even though I wear a size that they have in stock easier than Kohl's or any of the other department stores (plus, I'm in the middle of losing weight, so I'm in between sizes). It's quite frustrating, especially with fitting rooms closed currently in my state.
https://www.amazon.com/prime-wardrobe/b/?ie=UTF8&node=148071...
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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.
it’s also probably borderline illegal to do this kind of things
> 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.
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This is the pattern I've seen as well. That and the anti-pattern of using Amazon as a quasi-tool-rental outlet where they buy something for a project, use it, and then return it after the project is done. The 'borrowing' aspect was also an issue at Fry's in the Bay Area where test equipment that they sold would have been used already. Of the two I think the 'borrowing' pattern to be pretty unscrupulous. I see the buy…
The tool borrowing is unscrupulous, but it provides a ready source of “Used-Very good” Amazon Warehouse tools at 15-35% off, which I do appreciate.
Everyone 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.
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.