Product Return from 2 months ago - what would you do ?

[dipmicro]

My Terms of Sale are kind of vague when the return is supposed to be mailed. I had customer from July 25, who got return authorization and I gave it on August 10. It came on Wednesday from 100km away.

eBay and PayPal fees are no longer recoverable, so I had to charge "restocking" when refunding by "Send Money".

Someone advised to toss it out and not refund it. I did not agree with such solution, but it's bothersome. There should be a better defined process for returns.

How about those returns that were never authorized. Should I just toss them and consider the transaction completed ? What does consumer protection legislation say about it ?

[coxengines]

We had one yesterday, actually. The sale was from January (for a model engine) but the fellow only got to running the thing a few days ago.

I just sent him a new one and apologized.

We only get 2 or 3 returns/year and we want happy customers that return to buy more. Also, we sell into a niche market that interacts quite a bit on blogs, etc.

Legally, you do not have to accept returns at all but throwing the rule book at customers is never a good idea at the best of times.

Here, we not only refund purchase price but also the postage they paid. If it's something that we screwed up they even get return postage refunded.

Bernie

[dipmicro]

Bernie, I refund in full if there is a problem with product or we sent something wrong.

None of my regulars returned anything yet. All returns come from one-off customers. My niche is different, high amount of sellers with Hong-Kong/China polluting the product values and service. It got worse when we added batteries for consumer products, now 50% of my problems are with battery orders - and these customers are almost never returning, too many vendors to lock yourself onto one.

[dipmicro]

Well, on the bright side, I am sure the sellers of consumer electronics have much more problems then we do.

I am considering starting another venue with used DVDs. Have stock with over 1000pcs, mostly very recent titles, Block-Buster out of circulation units, etc and good source for them. I watched few, maybe 10-20 between me, my wife and kids, they are all fine. But I am little concerned with target audience, my occasional customer from hell buying integrated circuits is probably heaven to what awaits for a used DVD seller.

[coxengines]

Yeah, it might be different and a bit more quirky with electronics. I guess if the customers are one-off you don't have much to lose by taking a harder stance.

For our business it's over 60% return customers on eBay. The % would be higher but we do our darned best to draw all newbies over to the other store for their next purchase. The other store stats show a whopping 80%+ return ID's.

The above being one of the reasons we have an unconditional return policy.

The thing a seller has to weigh is how much damage can he do with a more inflexible return policy vs. how much can he gain by having a more flexible one. I suppose it varies by industry.

My favourite one is Bootleggers "No sale is ever final". Brilliant!

Bernie

[coxengines]

You sure like the high-risk items, don't you lol.

Bernie

[femmefan1946]

dipmicro -- Are you also considering a second ID for those used DVD sales?

Strikes me as a high dissatisfaction category, especially if the buyer is asked to return the DVD with DC for a refund.

You could comfortably ship the DVD to the USA for under $5, depending on the CP service, but it would cost him $25 to refturn it with DC.

On the third hand, most people are honest... so like a retail store you just have to build shoplifting losses into your prices.

[dipmicro]

femmefan1946, I responded to you privately. There is several points in my reply I do not wish to place on public online board where it will sit for years 🙂