Originally Posted by
IamTheGreatest
Any store that sells clothes does not like returns. That simply is not true, and never has been. Even housewares is iffy. After 3 months clothes can not be sold again, even if unworn.. The style is gone. When I worked retail, we gave refunds for items that were old and returned because we were tired of listening to entitled customers whine until they got their way.
One must not always accept "that's the way it is" for the correct way. It's been discussed that the saying "The customer is always right" isn't true.
What happened to people getting shamed for doing immoral things? Have we lost all sense of decency?
Consider this situation:
I am kohls.
I buy a shirt wholesale for $2, I sell that shirt for $20. I sell it to someone. Make $18 that I can use to grow my business now, or earn interest on, etc.
My customers knows that I will accept pretty much anything as a return. Because of this, a customer buys a shirt they might not have bought otherwise because they are SURE that they can return it if they don't end up liking it....
That ALONE is worth it for them, if this allows them to make 10 sales that they otherwise would not have made, even if half return it, they still come out ahead.
10 sales, cost of goods = $20,
profit from initial sales = $180.
If half return it and they have to refund $100 back, they have still made $80 profit and have 5 returned shirts they can throw out or donate and write off as a loss/donation (or 5 more shirts to throw into the pile of shirts that didnt sell that they write off every month, but at least with these 5 that were returned they got SOME use, and the company got $18 to hold and use and gain interest on in the interim, kinda like a loan)
Contrast that to if they had a strict return policy and the 10 people didnt buy the shirt, because they were not sure if they liked it and didnt know if they could return it easily, then the store makes $0 and may end up throwing the shirts out anyways since they didnt sell, and then they are losing money.
There is some non-zero number of people who would not buy something if they don't think they can return it or if they think it will be a fight/hassle to return it. Kohls knows this, and knows their numbers behind it, and knows that they come out ahead accepting the returns.
At a ma and pop store where everything is custom made obviously I agree with you, but with large stores with large inventory, it's all churn and burn and a big math game, and they factor returns and their return policy into it. This guys said he returned to a big box store I think, they know what they are doing, and can make their own choices about return policy.
Originally Posted by
IamTheGreatest
What happened to people getting shamed for doing immoral things?
Immoral is subjective. This doesn't seem immoral to me and plenty of other people. Perhaps if this guy didnt return the yard sale items they would have been wasted and gone into a landfill if it didnt sell at the yard sale and just got thrown out. Perhaps he returned it and the store resold it and it gets to live on and get more use, you don't know.
Originally Posted by
IamTheGreatest
Have we lost all sense of decency?
I think we have, but that has nothing to do with this post.
Edit: just as a disclaimer, I don't actually care about this either way. Is buying something with the sole purpose being to return it and exploit the company be something I would do, probably not, but maybe. I just like arguing on the internet.
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