Posted: 2/8/2010 3:18:56 PM EDT
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Do you believe this is a honest practice in the world of internet shopping. How much work is really envolved with having to take a product back and refund the customers money? I can't believe any vendor would charge a customer a 15% re-stocking fee and expect them to shop with them agian.
So lets hear the hive's horror stories. |
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Return Policy
We want our customers be satisfied with every purchase they make. We will gladly issue credit or an exchange on any qualified merchandise returned within 30 days of purchase. (Please see below.) Any product being returned for credit or exchange must be in new condition with all of the original packing material, inserts, manuals, warranty cards, etc. as well as any accessories included. Customer will be responsible for all shipping charges for returned merchandise. In the event of a defective item, we will replace the item free of charge and cover all shipping costs. Personalized/Custom items are not returnable if a mistake was made by the customer. (This includes engraved, embroidered, or numbered items.) Personalized/Custom ordered items which are not completed properly due to our error (AR15.Com or any of our fulfillment partners) will be replaced at our expense. All returns will be subject to a 10% restocking fee. 
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Have you ever seen all the chainsaws, tillers, etc that are used for sale in Home Depot? People abuse their return policy, buy a new chainsaw, use it for one tree in the yard, then return it bitching about it sucks, etc, and wants their money back. There is a reason for this stuff.
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Quoted:
How much work is really envolved with having to take a product back and refund the customers money? In the best situation, one still has to go through adding the item back into inventory - if it's a larger company, such a task may require overhead in the form of paperwork/signoffs. But what you really have to look at is the less-than-ideal situation: the item comes back, but is no longer in perfect "new" condition. Maybe it has been used. Maybe it hasn't, but the packaging has been damaged. In either case, the item can no longer be sold as "new". This creates two complications - the first and most obvious being that they cannot sell it for their intended price; they may have to lower their price so far as to be incurring a loss on the item, depending on how large their expected margin is and what market value exists for used items of that kind. The other is that the company may not normally deal in secondhand items, which can be handled in several ways - for example, they could hand off the item to a third party to sell as "used" (which would incur additional fees and further lower the revenue generated from any sale), or they could wait until they have enough "used" (incl. factory seconds, blems, etc) to be able to establish a "clearance" or "used" sale section in addition to their normal departments. If a company starts seeing such less-than-ideal cases on anything but a rare basis, the implementation of reasonable restocking fee makes perfect sense, in order to offset their costs in dealing with what have become "used" merchandise. |
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Quoted:
Do you believe this is a honest practice in the world of internet shopping. How much work is really envolved with having to take a product back and refund the customers money? I can't believe any vendor would charge a customer a 15% re-stocking fee and expect them to shop with them agian. So lets hear the hive's horror stories. It, like many rules, exist because a few people abused the system. Some people would go to eletronics stores and buy a TV just for a superbowl party, and then return it, or a digital camera or whatever. Second, at least in the world of electronics a lot of effort goes into a store having 'just enough' as well as redistributing what is not sellng in one area to another area where it is selling. For items that a store only has 1 or 2 on hand, and sells 1 every month or so, a return probably is shipped back to a central hub and then reshipped to whatever store sells a unit, rather than have a store that should carry only 2 of the items have 3 instead. You'd think this wouldn't make a huge difference, but if you figure that 30% of the store's total dollars are tied up in items that they only carry 2 of, then imagine bumping a whole bunch to 3, yea, you can get your inventory skewed pretty badly |
| I can understand this practice in cases where the product comes in complicated packaging or the product was returned in less than new condition. However, in the internet shopping world, where you can't physically pick up the item to make sure that tab "A" will fit into slot "B" you think there would be a little more latitude. My mistake, I'll move on. |
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A lot of companies charge restocking fees because they drop ship a lot of products.
If you order a TV from a store, and they drop ship it from the manufacturer, the manufacturer will not take it back. The seller must take the product, store it, and reship it the next time it's sold. It costs a lot to deal with returns if a large portion of your sales are drop shipped. |
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Quoted: Do you believe this is a honest practice in the world of internet shopping. How much work is really envolved with having to take a product back and refund the customers money? I can't believe any vendor would charge a customer a 15% re-stocking fee and expect them to shop with them agian. So lets hear the hive's horror stories. Re-stocking fees discourage 'Rental' of products using the return policy. |
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About 2.5-5% of that fee is the charge the merchant paid the credit card company. When they refund you, they don't get a refund for the fee that the CC companies charged them- so if they had no other expense, they already lost 3% on that return. Many use web hosting providers that get another 1-1.5% (Yahoo Small Business, who I use, is one example and they are one of the largest hosting compnaies for small and medium online sales companies).
So, right away if you return something I am out 4-4.5% in fees I paid alone. Some people may be out as much as 6.5% if they are new companies just starting out who don't have as good a contract because they don't have a track record to make a better deal. However, somebody had to recieve that order, print it, grab the stock, put together the box, put the item in the box, run the credit card, put the invoice in the box, seal the box, enter the info into the shipping computer, print the label, and apply the label. Then when it is returned they have to receive it, unpack it, inspect it, and put it back. Plus if you order 4 of something I normally stock 10 of, by the time you have returned them I already ordered 4 more, so now I have 14 on the shelf- that is money tied up. Plus the cost of the box, as rarely do things come back in the same box in usuable condition. On a $300 sale a .75 box is not a big deal, on a $15 sale it eats into profit. A 15% restocking fee leaves me about even when people return things because they just changed their mind, once you figure in the fees I incurred and the time invested. If I sold you a defective product or the wrong product, I will take the loss as it is my fault. But if somebody just changes their mind, I can't take a 13-17% loss every time that happens. I won't even get into how many people try to come buy sleeping bags on Friday, go camping, and bring them back Monday. |
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Quoted: That is why I could never be in a retail business. People would get hurt. About 2.5-5% of that fee is the charge the merchant paid the credit card company. When they refund you, they don't get a refund for the fee that the CC companies charged them- so if they had no other expense, they already lost 3% on that return. Many use web hosting providers that get another 1-1.5% (Yahoo Small Business, who I use, is one example and they are one of the largest hosting compnaies for small and medium online sales companies). So, right away if you return something I am out 4-4.5% in fees I paid alone. Some people may be out as much as 6.5% if they are new companies just starting out who don't have as good a contract because they don't have a track record to make a better deal. However, somebody had to recieve that order, print it, grab the stock, put together the box, put the item in the box, run the credit card, put the invoice in the box, seal the box, enter the info into the shipping computer, print the label, and apply the label. Then when it is returned they have to receive it, unpack it, inspect it, and put it back. Plus if you order 4 of something I normally stock 10 of, by the time you have returned them I already ordered 4 more, so now I have 14 on the shelf- that is money tied up. Plus the cost of the box, as rarely do things come back in the same box in usuable condition. On a $300 sale a .75 box is not a big deal, on a $15 sale it eats into profit. A 15% restocking fee leaves me about even when people return things because they just changed their mind, once you figure in the fees I incurred and the time invested. If I sold you a defective product or the wrong product, I will take the loss as it is my fault. But if somebody just changes their mind, I can't take a 13-17% loss every time that happens. I won't even get into how many people try to come buy sleeping bags on Friday, go camping, and bring them back Monday.  |