This week I’m working in another warehouse. Warehouses always fascinate me. They’re basically really big metal tents erected in car parks which lorries drive into. The lorries, which thunder past you when you’re cycling to work, suddenly seem really small. In fact everything seems really small. It’s really hard to conceive of anything else being in a warehouse other than forklifts, pallets, wire cages and other miscellaneous things to do with the distribution of goods. I often look at a room and think how I might live in it or turn it into some kind of studio or gallery or something but a warehouse is just on such a massive scale that anything normal, anything to do with living, just doesn’t fit.
Anyway, again I’m doing a job which sits on the periphery of the consumer society. This time it’s the arse end of catalogue shopping where the returns come in and are sorted before going back to wherever they come from. The lorry’s that make the deliveries come in with bags full of stuff from three major catalogues (and their subcontracted clients). These nicely correspond to three social stratas of society. The first is pretty lower class and accounts for the minority of returns. The second is kinda lower-middle and has a fair number of returns. The third is of the classy middle class high street variety, the sort where if someone said “where did you get that shirt” you’d say “oh I got it from catalogue” with a slight sense of pride. These accounted for the vast majority. Either this third catalogue has a massive market share, and to be honest I don’t know but I suspect it doesn’t, or its customers are quite happy to abuse the returns policy and game the system to their own benefit.
So the poor abuse the benefits system, the rich abuse the tax system and the middle class abuse the retail system. All are as bad as each other but the middles do produce a lot of waste (plastic packaging, trucks on the road, my time).
Why is sending lots of stuff back abusing the system? You could read a lot of things into the levels of returns – about the suppliers themselves, and their customers’ demographic. Stuff like education levels and knowledge of consumer rights; disposable income and a demand for value for money; maybe the orders placed on the company with most returns are larger in the first place, so the actual sales/returns ratio could be lower. Maybe it shows that the more expensive the goods, the poncier the catalogue and the less representative its images become? I’m thinking about this far too much now I know.
I’m probably thinking about it too much myself, but my logic is the returns system is there as a fail-safe. if there’s a problem then you can return it. If you treat this fail-safe as part of the actual shopping process itself (ie, order three things, return the two you don’t like) rather than using it for special circumstances then that’s abusing the system in my book.
I’m just trying to draw a parallel with the greedy dole-scum who a vilified for cheating the benefits system. Everyone does it to some extent.
Of course the returns system is blatantly condoned by the catalogue companies for reasons best known to themselves. The whole thing is rather odd…
I get your point – I’m sure my attitude has changed over the years from ‘return as a last resort’ to ‘buy a bunch of stuff and send most of it back’ – I think Next Directory have a box marked ‘did not suit’ on their returns form.
What happens to the returned stuff? Does it end up at bargain outlets, or is it repacked and resold?
One of the drivers asked me what happened to the returns. I have no idea. It all goes into one of three (very) big boxes, is covered up with celophane, and is sent off to somewhere else. I imaging once the returns have been checked and registered for credit it’s all sorted to see what’s resellable, what’s soiled and what’s faulty and then either returned to stock, written off or returned to the supplier for credit. That’s a lot of work.
I have tried mail order clothes shopping and have always been disappointed. A pity as I don’t relish the thought of going anywhere near a shopping mall unless I can help it!
My sis does that with Next Directory – orders a couple of things she thinks she might like, and returns the one she doesn’t like.
I’m not sure that its abusing the system – I suspect that if their returns system wasn’t there, people would be a lot more reluctant to order from the catalogue, and you don’t really know if that shirt you ordered is going to fit / look good until you’ve actually tried it on.
Okay, it’s not abusing the system because that is the system, but something’s definitely amiss here. Maybe it’s another example of having seen the enormity of it all for the first time (all the returns for the Midlands in one depot) makes me think there’s a problem where there isn’t one. It’s just in the book trade we used to get a fair few customer returns but never on such a blase scale. Maybe Amazon get substantially more returns than Waterstones, I dunno.
In the Book Trade, the customer gets to look at the book before buying, so they are not buying blind.
I have a friend who used to work for HomeBase. They had such a monopoly (along with B&Q) that they could return whatever they wanted regardless of condition and it would be credited: they never turned down a returns request from an end customer, because they knew they would get the appropriate credit from the manufacturer. Presumably this economy of scale works for, for example, Black and Decker, even though they had to fund the return: the returns were costed into the price of the goods in the first place. In other words, those people who kept the goods paid for those who returned them.
Maybe that’s what’s wrong: the honest customer who buys a product in good faith pays for it all.
well life is life n alot of peeps just order to wear then send it back but me , im lookin for a container full of tents that have been sent back . where do i look for where the return gear gets sent to
hope i aint gotta wait 10 yrs for a reply
You never know, but I suspect the answer is a big warehouse somewhere far far away where they’re either put back into the supply chain or sent to a land fill.
I once got a very nice rucksack for free via a friend at a camping shop. It had a very minor defect and had been written off, ready to be binned. I think your best bet is to befriend someone in the tent industry.