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Comment by mchusma | Hacker News Reader

I agree, returns are where amazon crushes it. I feel like there should be some startup just focusing on making the perfect returns product for small brands. Just do anything including at home pickup and then figure out how to optimize later.

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Fwiw, Amazon also offers sellers return as a service. Sellers do not need to onboard to Amazon logistics to use the return service. Ofc someone has to pay for that.

Taking returned items from customers is only the beginning of the process. The real difficulties show up after that. Which of the returns can be sold as new, which can be sold as-is, and which can be repaired / refurbished. What if a unit is returned once again? Did the customer return counterfeit? How to detect bad-faith actors (which may be the seller)? Who is to blame for damages? What if the item requires special handling (household chemicals, batteries, etc.)? And how to safely dispose / liquidate inventory while being compliant to all the regulations? And, imagine adding taxes, revenues, fees, on top of all that.

A lot of these questions are very labor-intense. It may be possible to automate some bits here and there, but the complexity is inherent to the problems.

It'd be really hard to imagine a random startup can handle returns half as well. Amazon's regulatory compliance team is probably many times larger than a random average startup. Here the economies of scale is really in favor of the big players.

Staples is now directly selling Amazon returns, essentially unsorted, in "win bins." It is SUPER strange and makes me wonder if they are on the verge of closing. They load the bins on a certain day of the week, and everything is priced the same ($15?). Each day the "bin price" goes down.

That model started in South America. They're called Bin Stores.

One day a week the bins fill up with returned/liquidated goods from Amazon, Target, etc etc. Everything in the bin is the same price and the price drops every day until they fill up again a week later.

Search "bin store" on youtube or tiktok and you should get a million videos about the craze.

That's exactly what I explained in my post, just Staples is now doing it; a formerly reputable office supply store has turned the center of the store into a flea market.

Staples worker here.

We're not closing. Amazon Returns are terrible for us.

We get absolutely nothing out of it. Our stores pay for everything; the boxes, tape, shipping, etc.

Nobody got a pay raise out of it either.

> We get absolutely nothing out of it.

Except from compulsive shoppers like me that can't walk into a Staples without buying $100 worth of stuff.

If the store is taking extreme measures like putting a flea market in the center of the store, and you're telling me that's still not profitable, what makes you think Staples is a healthy business? I'm super confused by your response.

The “everything is a casino” economy in action

> Which of the returns can be sold as new, which can be sold as-is, and which can be repaired / refurbished. What if a unit is returned once again? Did the customer return counterfeit? How to detect bad-faith actors (which may be the seller)? Who is to blame for damages? What if the item requires special handling (household chemicals, batteries, etc.)? And how to safely dispose / liquidate inventory while being compliant to all the regulations?

They just sell it in bulk and leave it to regular folk to buy pallets or containers and sell the shit on WhatNot.

By necessity. They sell so many counterfeit items, items sold as new but are used, items sold with misleading pictures or descriptions, various other scams to tolerate if not encourage. They’ve managed to normalize that and to do so they had to make returns frictionless. It’s a failing strategy. People just buy less and less from Amazon, unless they have cognitive issues.

Amazon does not equally crush it with returns as you may discover when facing issues with things like televisions or expensive clothing

Those were never easy to return ever

Time was, you took them back to the store.

TVs returns came with a hefty restocking fee though, and designer clothes could be returned only with tags on (must be PRISTINE tags) for store credit or not at all. You may be too young to remember?

Oh wow, my bluff has been called. Boy do I have egg on my face. How can I subscribe to your newsletter of these old fashioned anecdotes of the distant aughts? Do you actually have gray hairs? Do you remember what malls were? Hey, I heard someone mention Heelys, were those real?

Last time I returned a TV on amazon the first thing the website did was offer me a no question asked $100 back if I decide to keep the TV anyway. But I returned it and after weeks of back and forth with probably LLMs I got it sorted out. They came to take the TV away and I got my money back eventually.

Safe to say I ended up buying my next TV (actually a monitor this time) from amazon, too. If they struggle with that kind of return then what would anyone else do? I don't have a car, I need someone to come and pick it up.

My anecdata: Amazon makes the first N of your returns easy. They ramp up the difficulty as you continue being a customer.

I'm with them for over two decades already, but then I do not abuse their return policy, either.

There are a bunch, like ups & happy returns which I used for GAP recently.

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