"Our simplified return policy options will help drive a retail-standard returns experience for buyers and may boost your sales."
First of all, free returns is NOT a retail-standard experience. That part of their statement is easily dis-proven. For every large retailer you list who does it, I'm sure I can come up with at least two who don't. And even the ones you are able to name might have some caveats which don't make it a completely valid example. Plus, they probably have much higher prices than you find in a highly competitive marketplace like eBay. Sure you can offer free returns and no restocking fees when you're charging 10-30% more than the competitive sites, so it's not really a true comparison... In a nutshell, eBay is falsely creating the impression of a 'standard' when this is really just a money-grab which primarily benefits eBay themselves. That's also called lying folks. And it's an insult to our intelligence.
Second, how is this going to boost our sales? We'll all be on a level playing field on eBay, presumably. We'll still be competing against the same sellers, right? Is eBay thinking this is going to send thousands of new customers flocking over from Amazon? I'm highly skeptical... Now, what this WILL boost is the percentage of returns in relation to successful sales. There's already a huge problem with buyers not reading the description (or reading the title... or looking at pictures...) before they purchase something. Now they know they can purchase AND return something with impunity. What is the incentive for ANYONE to actually read ANYTHING now!? What is their incentive to actually work through a problem with the seller before returning something!? We sell electronics. We get a fair number of contacts from people who think they've got a defective item, only to find they were not operating it according to the instructions. (Again with that reading thing...) There are two things which I predict WILL change that are not mentioned in their press release. I predict a DECREASE in the amount of time it will take buyers to hit the 'Buy It Now' button, along with a corresponding DECREASE in the amount of time it will take them to hit the 'Return This Item' button. These are NOT two metrics that need 'improvement'. But seriously, the only business that benefits from more failed transactions on eBay... is eBay themselves. That huge problem I mentioned a few sentences ago? Yeah, it's about to become massive!
What has happened to the concept of accountability in our society? If I buy something in error, I don't expect someone else to pay for my mistake. I know I made the mistake. But it seems a minority (although increasing number) of people always want to blame someone else. So now eBay is enacting a broad, new, seller-be-damned policy based on what is convenient for the minority of people? This just enables even more people to be lazy. This is NOT a trait we should be encouraging. The minority will soon become the majority and, when that happens, we'll ALL be walking around complaining about why NO ONE uses common sense any more. Even the people who used to be in that minority will complain when the situation is reversed... Because, if you put the shoe on the other foot, you KNOW they would not be happy paying for someone else's mistake. So why are we being asked to pay for theirs?? Because they're more important than everyone else?
Now we're actually going to have to raise our prices to account for a minority of buyers who abuse the system. So EVERYONE pays more... when it can be easily identified who the actual 'abusers' are. Why should ALL buyers pay for the few 'abusers', when most of the 'abusers' have no real excuse for not doing a little work (reading, in this case)? Where is eBay dispensing the cool-ade (sic) we're all supposed to be drinking without question...?
