
Online Retailers Are Desperate to Stem a Surging Tide of Returns - tim_sw
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-03/online-retailers-are-desperate-to-stem-a-surging-tide-of-returns
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quuquuquu
I don't know if I'm wired weirdly, but I vert rately return things. I really
don't like dealing with customer service, and I kind of live by a "buyer
beware" motto. One time amazon shipped me a broken AmazonBasics mouse. For
$6.88 I said screw it, literally not worth my time, and just stopped doing
business with Amazon.

On larger problems, I would issue a chargeback with my credit card company. I
have won 4 of those for between $25 and $1500!!!

I used to have an Amazon seller account where I would ship video games and
books. People who tried to return items and complain to Amazon were literally
the death of my business. One chargeback wiped out the profits from 100
successful sales.

So like I said, I'm not sure if I'm wired differently, but I don't like this
phenomenon and avoid it 99.99999% of the time.

~~~
smt88
> _I really don 't like dealing with customer service_

Most online retailers (including Amazon) require zero interaction with
customer service to return something. Some clothing stores actually send
retail labels in the package itself.

> _On larger problems, I would issue a chargeback_

> _One chargeback wiped out the profits from 100 successful sales_

It's really wrong to issue a chargeback when the seller is willing to work
something out, and it seems like you were bitten by the same type of behavior.

~~~
quuquuquu
Amazon requires zero interaction? I didn't know, it's been a few years since I
have interacted with them, and I always remember my friends and family having
to call Amazon to fix some issue, which, good on Amazon for handling that
process efficiently.

Any seller who is willing to automate returns and eat costs is good in my
book. Sadly, as a small shop, I couldn't automate that process and couldn't
eat many costs whether I was in the right or in the wrong. So it was a big
problem when Amazon would just automatically side with the customer, no matter
how hard I tried to work with them and prove my credibility.

Like I said, I try to avoid issuing chargebacks wherever I can, 99.9999% of my
purchases are just fine. But I've charged back 2 plane tickets and 2 parking
tickets, believe it or not, and my credit card company was just absolutely
stellar in handling the situation for me, since the companies involved were
totally corrupt and non responsive.

So the net net of all of this is, unless you have deep pockets to fund your
customer service ops (an increasingly large cost center), you will probably
get burned on chargebacks and returns.

This will only increase the centralization around Amazon and Walmart, which I
would define as "not always a good thing".

