NEW YORK Amazon is attempting new tactics, such as charging a fee for returning things to UPS shops, in an effort to reduce the number of online orders that customers cancel and return.
Amazon has grown its company over many years by developing purchasing processes that are quick, incredibly simple, and appear to be faultless. Simply send it back if you don’t like it.
But not anymore: With so many consumers returning items or simply discovering they had wider feet than anticipated, managing returns has become a costly burden for the business.
Since Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh, or Kohl’s are closer to the customer’s shipping address, Amazon charges customers $1 to transport things back to a UPS location. (Amazon owns Whole Foods and Fresh, and the two companies are partners.)The information regarding Amazon’s fee was originally disclosed.Over the past few years, consumers have grown accustomed to making limitless free returns, but Amazon and other businesses are attempting to break this habit.
On its website, Amazon has recently started identifying “frequently returned” products. For products with “significantly higher return rates for their product category,” according to an Amazon spokeswoman, the badge is added to product listings.
Some shops have tightened their return policies, and now chains like Zara, H&M, J.Crew, Anthropologie, and Abercrombie & Fitch charge up to $7 for returning items online.
The National Retail Federation estimates that in 2022, consumers will return around 17% of all the goods they purchase, amounting to $816 billion.
That causes difficulty for retailers: Each $1 billion in sales results in an average store spending
