Unless you are saving this column like a bottle of fine wine or stack of New Yorkers to savor and enjoy the brilliance within when you finally have some time, you are likely reading this on the days immediately following Christmas. And if you are like most people, odds are that during that same time period you have a growing pile of merchandise by your back door. Maybe it's some socks, maybe a smart phone accessory, maybe a small kitchen appliance that is somewhat unique. It was bought as a gift for someone, selected without being really sure that's what they wanted. But it gave you one more notch in your Xmas tree belt to give and be opened. And since the size/style/reaction was wrong, it now needs to be returned. That means it gets shipped back from whence it came, with a 70% chance or better that the origin was Amazon.
There is no doubt that Amazon has been one of the main drivers in the reshaping of the retail landscape. Far removed from its 1995 origin as "Earth's Biggest Bookstore," it is now the second largest retailer of all things behind Walmart, and far and away the largest player in e-commerce sales. The number of innovations and improvements that they have promoted has shifted the entire industry, so much so that experts refer to the "Amazon Effect." From its fast delivery to its recommendation engine, from its customer-centric shipping and tracking to its massive forward warehousing, from its enablement of multiple third-party sellers to its expanding private label business, there is almost no aspect of the shopping experience that hasn't been turned on its head.
Perhaps one of biggest changes has been in its complete reinvention of the return process. BA (Before Amazon) you hesitated to buy anything you weren't absolutely sure of because of the possibility that you might have to take it back. (The one exception to that was Sears, which "back in the day" seemed to take back anything with their name on it.) If the item was bought from a physical store that meant schlepping there, then standing in an endless line with but one clerk handling the processing. Likewise if you had to send it back, with the added headache of having to get an authorization number via phone or email, then packing it back up in an acceptable box and doing the same schlepping, just to the post office. And heaven forbid you had opened it and tried it on or cut off the tags. Then it was better than even money that the return wouldn't be accepted.
But with Amazon, all that has changed. The sweatshirt is too baggy, the color of that tablecloth is too green, it's the wrong plug for your phone? No matter. Just go online and like the Chef of the Future, "Zip, Zip, Zip, Finished. Amazing." (Just substitute "click" for "zip.") No need to wrap it or pack it or invent a story about how the box came ripped open. True, you do have to drive to one of their return centers, be it Kohls, Stapes or Whole Foods. But there the clerk scans your QR code and zip, zip... well... you get the idea. Done.
And so we order anything and everything, including stuff we have no intention of keeping. Maybe it's a placeholder until the real present gets off backorder. Or perhaps you get multiple sizes or colors of the same item, just to try on at home, and return the others. I have to assume that someone back at Bezos HQ has done the math and figured out that even with returns rates that can hit 40% in certain categories they are still making money. Sure, they have tried different strategies to mitigate that, including just telling you to keep some cheap items, and lately even offering you a discount to keep the slippers rather than return them. But it's just so damn easy to send it back... and so that pile by the back door grows.
In the spirit of the season, and at the risk of being sacrilegious, in Acts 20:35, Paul quotes Jesus as saying, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." If BA and BC had aligned, he might have added a corollary: to return is simply divine.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford finds it too easy to just hit "place your order". His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.
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