well I did it!

[ymcamom]

Had all my items free returns. Was getting 3-4 rerurns a week. Switched everything to buyer pays return and the returns have dried up.

  Today one of the last holdovers that I forgot to switch to buyer pays..sent a return.

Bottom line: I'm now done with the eBay free rental program and I'm not looking back

[azlovevintage]

Yeah I had a friend who did Free Returns so his listings qualified for the 10% Top Rated Seller discount.  Turned out he was actually losing more money from Free Returns than he gained from the discount.  (For example on an item with $7 shipping, he'd lose $14 since he's losing money on both original and return shipping.)  He switched to No Returns and never looked back.

A lot of major companies were trying super lenient return policies from like 2013-2017 but most of them reverted because it was a money-loser.  EBay doesn't notice how bad the policy is, since sellers are the ones losing the money.  But sellers losing money is terrible for EBay, because it means the sellers move elsewhere.

It's telling that EBay had virtually no competition from 1995-2015, then suddenly when they raise seller fees and implement these horrible policies there are a ton of competing apps.  These other apps wouldn't have had a chance to gain traction if EBay hadn't become so costly to sellers.

[monster-deals]

Across two accounts in two months we lost over $3000 with free returns.

We did not see a $30, 000 increase in sales to pay for it.

[juststuffisell]

No such thing as free returns just like no such thing as free shipping. Somebody has to pay for it.

All the free shipping and free returns does is cost everyone time, invite people to borrow items rather than purchase them, encourage theft of all or part of the merchandise and costs sellers a lot of money in shipping, wear, theft and damage.

Naturally, eBay pays for none of this.

Yes...@azlovevintage you are spot on about eBay driving the success of competition through stupid and greedy policy decisions with no direct immediate costs to them.

Cheers

[18704d]

fwiw

All my listings have 60 day, free returns

I only had 1 return request out of the last 110 sales.

I do sincerely believe dozens of those 110 sales, would not have occured if I hadn't offered free returns.

Free returns have made me exponentially more money, than I've 'lost'.

jmtcw,

Lynn

[myboardid]

It is all about the numbers - it should not be an emotional decision, it should be a mathematical one.

I switched to 30 day free returns  a bit more than a year ago to maintain my 10% FVF discount, which for me is a solid 4 figures annually.  I have had a few more returns than in the past, grumbled to myself about them, but the extra expense wasn't even a tenth of the amount of my discount. 

And one package had sat in a puddle, somewhere, for hours.  The item was ruined.  I'll never know where along the way it happened or even if my buyer did it on purpose.  Needless to say, that one is on my "list". 

[femmefan1946]

In my opinion, if a seller is getting more than 1% complaints, there is a problem.

It might be 'rentals', it might be poor business practices.

My bete-noire is No Returns.

No returns does not mean No Refunds.

And may even lead to Buyer Remorse claims laid as Not As Described because the seller gives the impression of being hard to deal with.

However, I agree that Free Returns is not a good policy for any business smaller than WalMart.

It's not the return, or the refund, it's who pays for the return.

[tryno2]

I've very small EBay (really online) seller.  Online sales is usually less then 2% of my annual volume.  I can't remember when I had my last return (now I'll have a bunch).  I allow returns/refunds for 14 days.  The policy says the buyer pays return shipping BUT I describe an item wrong or it's broke in shipping, I pay for the shipping return.  What I will NOT do is partial refunds or refunds without the return.  

When I first started I got several wanting partial refunds, I decided most of those were scams.  So no more partial refunds.  

I do think that the % of returns is at least partially dependent on the type of item.  For example clothes are more likely to be returned then a tool.  

[vintagecraze50]

The free return stuff has a lot to do with the cost to ship and ship back certain items. If your free returns are generating enough sales to shoulder the costs of these returns then it's a good thing. If the cost of paying for these returns is causing a negative spiral then perhaps you need to think of a better alternative.  Generally speaking the free returns should attract more business, if it does not and the returns are too much. Then it may not work.

[pvcliff]

I do free returns on First Class items only, not on heavier things. When calculated First Class came in I shifted most of my items to either calculate or a flat $3.50-$4.50 shipping price. Guess what? People still buy things with shipping costs spelled out. I might have lowered the price of some so that the total was in line with what I had before, but on others I didn't.