unexpected incompatible

I've returned at least a couple of things (this is directly to the shop, not parcelled returns), not because they didn't do what I thought they would, but because they did it, but not with the stuff I already had.

1. returned a digital tv box, because while it did recieve digital tv, it couldn't pick up all the channels due to my TV reception (e.g. no Channel 5).
2. returned a router, because while I did have a ADSL modem, it was a USB modem.

95%

Thats because 95% of people can't be bothered reading the manual. So a fat lot of good making better instructions will do. It means you need more skilled sales people who can also do a bit of trouble shooting, guiding the customer to a better product or thru the issue. Which means companys need to pay more to specailised tech sales people.
Oh and manufacturing is also to blame cause nobody likes talking to another person in another country that can't string a sentence of english together.

Trying things out

One of the issues is that shops and manufacturers have got very good at promoting why their product is whizzy or desirable or whatever, but we've really moved away from the full retail experience, being able to 'test drive' the product in the store to confirm that it is suitable.
As a result, particularly with distance sales, it's difficult for the consumer to know whether they 'get on' with the product, regardless of whether it's basic functions meet the checklist of required or desired features.
It's why the UK has Distance Selling Regulations, to give consumers a chance to establish whether a product is suitable through personal inspection, while still having the option of a full refund.
In a way, though, it's a strong case for physical, bricks-and-motar shops over the completely hands-off experience of shopping online.

Maybe we just need to consider holding off on those purchases until a friend gets one and then try theirs out... though obviously I'm meaning gadgets, not certain other things, that would be tacky ;)

u

Marketing, backfired.

DISSATISFACTION GUARENTEED.

Unfortuneately Manufacturers Encourage this State, as Retailers Simply Have to PAY Out of revenues ALL False Claims.More For Crummy Manufacturer & Less for Retailer.

States One customer Sevice representative: If i Could Shove Customers Back Into Womb, i would.
Another Religious Pundit cried. There IS NO Life-AFTERBIRTH.

In fact thats what Glut of Crushed Up Equipment is: Mere, AFTEBIRTH.Expensive Afterbirth at that.

Worse Most Normal people Find Good Useage For what Once Desperately wanted to return, Once head Became Sensible again.
Drashek

Not so fast...

In my experience, many consumer electronics gadgets have significant bugs in the firmware. Typically, by the time I purchase it, there is updated formware available. But I have no idea how they would expect some pensioner to know how to reflash his gadget to fix all the horrid bugs.

what do you mean "defective"?

I just picked up an "open box" wireless phone set at the local electronics megamart -- obviously returned as faulty and then placed right back on the shelf. For a slight discount, I took this home and found that one of the two handsets did not work. Having an IQ greater than that of a summer squash, I tested the batteries and discovered one of the four rechargeable batteries was dead. Replaced with spare AAA NiMH and all works well. Was it "defective"? Yes, but only a little bit....

Heaven forbid....

"consumers cost the electronics industry $13.8 billion in the United States in 2007 alone"

Those Pesky consumers...you make it sound like they are a blight... need you be reminded that without them these products would not be made?

Could we see a total figure for gaditry sales along side the returns cost? so get an idea of how much those evil consumers are really costing the saintly businesses?

Well...

These are Americans we're talking about here, after all. You really can't expect them to know what to do with all the useless crap they buy just to keep their economy "strong".

piece of crap

How many people buy stuff because of the marketing hype, discover that the piece of crap doesn't lead to a perfect life, and toss it into a closet?

Surely they don't want to lose those sales which they would if marketing only
hyped the devices actual capabilities. Marketing sells lifestyles, not devices. Apple/Mac for a shining example.

Accenture needs to do a new study balancing the number of unused unreturned devices with the number of returned devices to get the true cost.

Of course that might imply that the company was at fault and not the consumer. Can't have that now can we?

This is so true

Most things you buy these days do not have a complete specification list available before you buy - you basically have to shell out the readies before you can find out, unless you have a mate who already owns one.

Not enough pre-sales support is basically the culprit. I don't want an idiot-friendly feature list - I want an exhaustive technical brief that tells me what music formats my music player will play, what standards it supports, and so on.

Manuals

I believe some, maybe a large percentage, of the problems are in the manuals themselves. It is obvious that many of them have been poorly translated into English, possibly from several different Asian dialects.

But.. I wonder

"Fickle (or just plain stupid) consumers cost the electronics industry $13.8 billion in the United States in 2007 alone"..... how much of that was returned because of poor or nonexistant support on the part of the manufacturer.

a rather ignorant statement you have made... methinks

It's not just the consumer

It's also the companies. Electronics manufactures should have customer support reps that at least have a basic knowladge of how the product works and SHOULD work, as well as troubleshooting experience. I'm sure most of those customers who got a replacement or returned their product because they *thought* it was broken, but they didn't want to even try and fix it because it's "Oh so hard to do it myself."

Excuses Excuses

Frankly, I agree that most consumers don't take the time to read the manual. Products put on the market today are far more complex than 10 yrs ago, so to think that by just plugging something in and fiddling around til you get the response you expect won't work anymore. These devices aren't TVs or DVDs they require instruction.

Being a design engineer I know for a fact that consumers don't read the manual and it would be naive to think that this only happens in my industry(automotive). I have personally seen vast amounts of returns that do not have anything wrong , and no they were not returned without being opened.

If you're going to pay some absurd amount of money for the 'newest technology' at least have the common sense to read the manual before you declare something faulty or broken.

You people are the reason I can't get that raise and promotion I covet.

Is that only in the US and Western states?

In other countries usually consumers make sure they know what's what before even buying so there are less fickle consumers because it's hard to return items. Because of that they demand that manufacturers make good products or buyers really know the good from the bad.

It works almost as advertized

I have several dj controllers with built in sound cards. They work for a few minutes and then lock up the program. The company cannot fix the problem. The software included is not working with the controller. Why would I keep a product such as this and not return it. No support no updates.

And now, the rest of the story...

What they obviously failed to take into account are all of the sales people telling their customers, "You can buy it and return it anytime in the next 30 days if you don't like it!" And hell, that's what I do! I have purchased 5 Bluetooth devices all at once planning on returning 4 of them. And I don't feel bad at all because the sales person encouraged me to do it!

Maybe instead of looking at these bad consumers, the retail industry should be looking at these bad employees promoting this to happen!

No extensive testing

I'm sure the manufacturers don't extensively test the products sent back. When it comes to hardware like motherboards, the guy in the shop might think everything is fine if the board POSTs; however, some bugs and problems are far less predictable and found deep-down in places where only normal usage can find them. I've often had the urge to microwave or bake some electronics just to make sure the manufacturer sends me a new one, not just a "fixed" one that is the same piece of hardware.

ironc that the article is misrepresentative as well

seems like the article forgets a key fact: faulty products are not the only reason for returns. Furthermore many times a faulty product will only be replaced with a "non faulty" replacement of the same exact item.

Many items have a "satisfaction guarenteed" or stores will accept returns within X number of days to acknowledge the fact that you can't always try before you buy.

That said; there are plenty of cases where the industry wins; I got tired of returning a faulty integrated stereo system whose 3 Disc cd changer refused to acknowledge it was loaded with any discs or play them after several months; these were not CD-R' or rw or anything like that; this was back in '96-'98. I tried a lens cleaner but it wouldnt even spin the thing, We had even purchased the "extended warranty" but we got tired of the reourse of driving it to the repair shop over and over. wrote a letter to ceo, store manager, district manager on how great they were for ripping off a 13 year old. But life improves; I'm not 25 I have a GOOD working stereo with 0 components from that company (Aiwa) and the store I bought it from is out of business and bankrupt (The Wiz). The only thing that stereo did well was make a great fodder for a PC LOAD LETTER attack with a baseball bat. this almost made the whole thing worth it.

Sounds more like no due diligence is being done by the customer service reps to actually determine that said product is broken. (in the case where they are).. I don't see why they dont determine that it works, and then void the return or bill the user for fraud. They do have you sign the return after all.

this is also forgets that many things are returned un-opened. But what this really misses that someone else highlighted is how out of context this is. If you make significantly more money by KEEPING a client than you lose by his exchange its a no decision. Furthermore if it werent for us customers youd have no sales. Whats 14 billion if you rake in a 1 Trillion collectively? not a lot.

Better question; how much did they waste on having accenture figure out this for them only to do nothing with the information?

Instead of trying to blame the consumer blame yourself for allowing it to happen. Downright misleading marketing, shoddy manuals, cruddy support, and no effort on the part of those approving and allowing the returns. I've heard from more than one place that employees love to make open box purchases esp on the heavily discounted items that were things they verified as working... wouldnt be surprised if there werent scams involving people returning something so that a friend can buy the now "open box" item.

Customers ARE IDIOTS

I work in a retail store and I hear about every excuse in the book for items not working. This article IS true that it is such a waste of time for stores to handle returned items that are not even broken !!! If people would research what they are buying before just blindly buying something cause the box looks pretty or it was on sale then we would have less returns. Oh and if you dont know how to get something to work 99% of these companies have technical support lines to call or to email FOR FREE help so why dont people take advntage of this ?? Oh wait I know why !! because customers ARE IDIOTS

How to fix the World

We all know that to make a decent product means doing two impossible things:

1. Printing a manual written by a person who once lived in and spoke the local language.

2. Give the product to a normal person living in that country so they can get the bugs squashed which normal folk tend to come across within 5 minutes of using the device.

Impossible I know. But I can dream.

Americans

Of course we have the standard "those Americans" attack. Depending on what part of the world you are in, you could be speaking a language other than your native tongue, not by choice, but by force. But thanks to "those Americans", you are free to speak whatever you language you want to. Think past your own lifetime for once and be thankful for what you have. We may not be the best examples of financial responsibility, but when the going gets tough, we are the first to give of our finances to help those in need.

"Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave."

I have another explanation

How this: 90% of the returned stuff really is broken. But the store just doesn't bother to find out what's wrong, they put the box back on the shelf and wait and see if it comes back again. It happened to me several times that I bought a device that turned out to be A) unpackaged before and B) defective.

Bad statistics

I think those figures are an indication of the quality of the repair shops, and not the stupidity of the buyers. In my experience the manufacturers' repair shops are often incapable of identifying the problem within the short time they have to examine it. And it's in the manufacturers' interest to nudge their quality stats up by claiming a low failure rate. For example it took me 18 months to convince a major manufacturer that my DVR had a bad power supply, causing it to crash & even then they couldn't fix it. My multiple trips to the shop must have generated a high number of "no fault found" reports and only one "fault".

You got the wrong direction

Whenever I want to try some stuff @store, they said you cann't try it there. Instead of that, why don't you buy it back and if you are not fully satisfied, just return it!

There is several times I am just too lazy or not fully disappointed, I kept the item I don't really want.

You got the wrong topic

If it doesn't work it is broken.

The manufacturer may think it is fine. But there are so many bullshit products out there that don't do what they say. If the product doesn't do what it says it does on the box, engineering spec or not, it is broken. Just because it turns on doesn't mean everything is OK.

An MSI TV tuner card that has a driver that won't work with a very popular Via chipset is BROKEN. Take it back. Don't bullshit me. You said it would work, it doesn't.

Usb HDD's that send bad data.
Any Brother PC peripheral product.
Any Creative Labs sound card.
Take your broken ass shit back and give me my money back.

but for some time...

I bought two sansa e250 MP3 players sight0unseen as refurbs for half of what they go for. Why those and not ipod? expandable memory... a biggie to me. so, I paid an extra 12.99 for a microSD expansion card and sure enough - nobody, and I mean NOBODY at Sansa or realnetworks (the"itunes" for the sansa)- american or not - could tell me how to load songs onto it using the expansion benefits. Sure enough - I plopped the card directly into my pc, loaded it up with mp3s and voila there they were. I still hitthe bottom line at BAD untrained database-driven, assemply-line support... no oneis trained on how to help you. Frankly, I l;eanrned what I do know about PC hardward/sopftware because I was always told by one dept that it was a problem withthe other. No one can take a problem through to the end anymore. Can you imagine asking your aging aunt to learn the ins and outs of a pc to be able to send pics?