@inhawaii wrote:
@corvettestainless wrote:
It is a MAJOR benefit to the platform, in what is called 'customer retention'. If customers stay, sellers get sales. Customers shop elsewhere, sellers get no sales. Therefore, returns, a "necessary evil" in this day & age, overall is helping sellers more than they realize.
So under your theory, ebay should make it mandatory that you can return anything, at any time for any reason, seller pays the return shipping. Imagine how happy that will make the customers. What a huge help to sellers that would be!
We're forgetting a detail...
When I accept returns (which I do) it costs me money, this may sound like the dumbest thing you've heard but that money has to come from somewhere... I see threads here every day of sellers complaining how these returns are eating their lunch, well they used to eat my lunch too until one day I got tired of it.
Today, the price of my items for sale REFLECT the high cost of "free" returns.
That one deserves repeating:
My items for sale reflect the high cost of "free" returns.
You understand, the way this is calculated is returns per 100 sales (and you can do it per however many but 100 is relatively accurate...) So if buyers return 4 items per 100 I have to figure out my cost on those 4 returns, then tack that cost on to the price of the item / 100.
Which isn't so bad, until we get into items where buyers are returning 20 and 30 and 40 per 100!
That extra cost is not as insignificant as some might believe.
I'm not just out the cost of return shipping, I'm out shipping both ways.
Even a first class item costing $3.50 per each leg of the trip is $7 returned, times 30 = $210.
The cost of the label, the printing, the box, my time, restocking, in some cases relisting oh and I almost forgot...EVERY returned item HAS to be tested (unless it's just obvious that it's functional or not).
How that $12 item now costs $16-$20.
Therein lies the attractiveness of "non returnable" items, the price of those should be lower.
Unfortunately ebay still forces quite a many of these returns on us, but that's another story.
