If a retailer has a return policy that is essentially , we want you to be satisfied , period , and they take things back after being obviously worn, after periods like a year, well then, yes, things are going to be returned in whatever time frame that consumer has an expectation for that item to last, wear a certain way etc.
So I have a few different points here.
If I bought many items from a brick and mortar or online store and had to return them for reasons I felt were legitimate quality issues, I’d would consider looking for a place to shop with better quality items. Returns can be time consuming. And if that store makes returns easy, there is still a quality issue. And if I was banned from returns, because of returning things I felt I had a legitimate reason to, I would have no trouble leaving them behind . I might miss them at first, but if I pay money and the quality /service isn’t there, what’s the point. So if I got banned from any store for any reason, I might not like it, lol, cause it’s still a relationship, but will go find another vender to give me the quality I seek.
I heard a wise young woman say many years ago, we vote with our money with every purchase we make. For example, when I read about the quantity of pesticides that go into cultivating cotton crops worldwide, I made a decision to buy jeans at consignment, thrift shops whenever possible. Not to get sidetracked with my personal views, but you get my point . I refuse to spend my money if I cannot get the service or quality I desire. Or a product that is produced in a way I would rather not support. I will abide by a company’s rules, ie return policy, but if the quality is not there, it’s not there.
So edited to add, if I keep spending money on products from a retailer and the quality is not there, I feel like I am sending them the the message, keep selling me poor quality products.
Another point, I did make a conscious decision I mean, 20 years ago, lol, to buy sweaters and bathing suits specifically from 2 retailers with a satisfaction guaranteed policy (that I saw what I considered an abusive return with my own eyes, that I wanted to lean over to my fellow consumer and say, are you freaking kidding me). Because I was tired of buying cheaply made bathing suits that came undone at the seams after a few wearings (20 years ago, most retailers would not take a used bathing suit back) and washable sweaters that would unravel after a few washes. And I returned 0 bathing suits to them ! And 1 sweater and 1 fleece top that had been worn. (Shout out to the Gap - I miss your knits from the 90’s, machine washed and dried , lasted forever. And then I still gave them to my sister)
Another side note, I kept a trusty portable sewing machine my mom bought when I was 10, if only to make simple seam repairs on new and old items I desired to keep. Delighted a girlfriend gave me a new portable machine she no longer uses.
The issues of consumerism and packing materials have already been discussed.
Just a thought, perhaps something not yet discussed. If one lives in a rural area with few retail choices, online shopping is a Godsend I’m sure. And free shipping/returns is probably very handy. But not really a necessity.
While folks who live in big cities have more choices, they pay dearly for those choices in a higher cost of living. Living in a rural area, I would pay for shipping to get the same choices without having the high cost of living associated. It’s a choice. I pay for shipping to return though I have lots of choices. It makes it less likely I will return, but I do think it is fair.
(This reminds me of people at work who need to leave early bc they have a 2 hour commute. As if I am just lucky with my 30 minute commute, not that I pay more to live closer bc my choice is that time is more important than money.)
I think retail is starting to wise up to revenue versus profit. And online is not as profitable as it is revenue generating. At any rate, anyone offended by any post here is not likely to be the type of shopper
Nordstrom is banning. Those folks are probably oblivious.
Plenty of good points from
@Lake Effect and
@Melissa Ann!
I am quite sure the big retailers are totally wise to the equation as you say,
@Melissa Ann, and are going to work this out one way or another and don’t need me or anyone else to sort it out here, lol! In the meantime it’s an interesting discussion, though, isn’t it, because it eventually leads to the heart of things we’re going to have to wise up to ourselves in terms of ecological concerns?
Interesting comparison, maybe, with what you say about being happy to pay more for shipping and returns, with something one of the resale sites in Europe has just done: I sell my no-longer-wanted designer items on Vestiaire Collective, based in France. Ironically, or appropriately, for this thread, one reason I sometimes end up doing this is the 1 month return window (for unused tagged items only) on most of the European-based retail sites I shop from (returns for faulty items would be accepted later of course). Sometimes it’s not till after the month is up that I realise it’s a bad fit, duplicates something I’d forgotten I had, or something along those lines, generally while the item is still new with tags, and I’m always selling at a considerable loss. But it’s better than nothing and somebody gets to enjoy it for a fantastic price. Anyway, I digress ... They have just completely shifted how they take commission and allocate costs. Shipping sold items to them for quality control and onward shipping from their nearest hub was and is covered in the commission they charge the seller. Commission used to be really high, it’s much lower now, though sellers aren’t earning more, just the same, because they dropped the prices on the site; lower cost to buyer, presumably in hope of increased sales (there’s also a new authentication fee to the buyer but it’s small in comparison to the price drops). For the hub to buyer stage, there used to be a flat shipping fee, or a flat fee based on item cost, I’m not certain which, I think it was worldwide, maybe with minor variations, not sure. Now they’ve changed the shipping fee to reflect the actual cost of shipping to final destination, depending on which quality control hub it’s shipping from after receipt from the seller: Paris, New York or Hong Kong. At the same time they’ve changed the way import duties are paid from choice of flat fee or paying via DHL, which previously could result in higher charges than actual import duties for some, and this will now be calculated and paid at checkout at the true duty cost, or much closer thereto, as I understand it. So ... shipping costs have gone down a little for most people, but up a little for a minority. I think shipping will still be somewhat averaged out for the destination country and item value, but it’s closer to representative of that particular real cost than it used to be. Basically similar to your point,
@Melissa Ann? Some people are unhappy about these changes because they now pay more.
It has obviously been done for business reasons in this case, nothing else. With the retailers, my inexpert hunch about costs (shipping, returns, restocking etc) incorporated into prices or overheads is that this averaging probably makes the business smoother, more profitable and therefore readily available to all customers, and we can probably leave the businesses to work that out, as business conditions change; that it doesn’t matter too much how those costs are averaged out and it’s not as simple a calculation as it appears at first sight anyway, all of which has been previously discussed. That said, I personally would have no problem in principle paying a shipping fee that represented at least something closer to the actual cost and the correct duty, whether it goes up or down, rather than averaging out those sorts of cost, so long as the item price dropped a little to reflect that the customer rather than the retailer was now taking in that cost. So that I’d end up paying a bit more, another customer a bit less by reason of true shipping fees, but the retailer would still be getting the same average money for the item as before. Though to be honest I’m not truly that fussed either about paying more than my “fair share” of other customer’s habits, if it actually does enter the cost very significantly, I really don’t feel it matters all that much unless we’re talking about making essentials unaffordable, which I don’t think we really have been? To an extent, these particular concerns about the possible monetary effects of one customer upon another feel to me like a kind of decadent last hurrah of consumerism.
But ... charging actual costs for shipping and return shipping could also be a model for charging environmental costs, which is something that however you look at it can’t ethically be averaged out, except for where life’s necessities are concerned, because the cost is the actual environmental impact that goes way beyond item prices, and the responsibility for the actual environmental cost may have to be taken by the individual occasioning it if we are to have a hope of turning the situation around. It’s far from being the only environmental cost, of course, it’s only the final stage, or the last stage before some sort of disposal or recycling; the production and pre-sale distribution of the goods is also an environmental cost and a responsibility which needs to be shared evenly among anyone buying the goods regardless of where they are. So, ultimately, it comes back to the real cost of all this consumption, returns being only a piece of the problem. Maybe at some point we will be shifting towards pricing and shipping structures that will truly reflect environmental cost.
My own failing, the environmental cost of my own purchases and resales is far from lost on me. I am cutting back, not, so far, as well as I intended, but going in the right direction and making sure any new purchase is good quality with longevity. I suppose a lot of the stuff I’ve got rid of was older and just no good for me any more (no longer fits, no longer age-appropriate etc) so at least that’s being recycled to a new owner, either via resale or direct to Oxfam or similar, and I’ve always been one to repair and renew things, anyway, like you
@Lake Effect (it’s really satisfying!). Newer stuff other than what I truly need, well, slightly less satisfactory story.
