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.
So Amazon charges customers a $1 fee to ship items back to a UPS store if a Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh grocery store, or Kohl’s is closer to their shipping address. (Amazon owns Whole Foods and Fresh and has a partnership deal with Kohl’s.)
The information first reported on Amazon’s fee.
Shoppers have gotten used to endless free returns over the past few years, but Amazon and other companies are trying to curb this customer habit.
Amazon also recently started labeling “frequently returned” products on its website. Amazon adds the badge to product listings for items with “significantly higher return rates for their product category,” a spokesman said.
Zara, H&M, J.Crew, Anthropologie, Abercrombie & Fitch And Other Chains Now Charge Up To $7 For Returning Items Online; Some retailers have tightened their return policies.
According to data from the National Retail Federation, customers returned around 17% of all goods they bought in 2022, totaling $816 billion.
That’s a burden for retailers: For every $1 billion in sales, the average retailer incurs $165 million in returned merchandise, according to the NRF.
Businesses have to pay costly shipping costs so customers can return their products. These items sometimes end up back in retailers’ warehouses or on store shelves. Stores then have to devalue returned goods in order to sell them, which further depresses their profits.
More often, returned products can end up in liquidation warehouses or even landfills, which pose an environmental threat.
Parija Kavilanz and CNN Business’ John General contributed to this article.
