Retail Wars - Amazon Returns

With 2-sided marketplaces becoming the norm for online retailers, operational efficiency is the name of the game. Marketplace leader Amazon prides itself on customer service with their vision to be the “earth's most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” But returns are costing Amazon. Returns used to be heavily automated with the assumption that hassle-free returns would not only engender customer good will, but reduce the amount of money spent on customer service agents. While most returns are still automated, there is now more gatekeeping to ensure that the only ones Amazon are paying shipping for are defective items, not ones that the customers simply don’t like. Want to speak to an agent about something that doesn’t strictly fall into a “defective” category? The chat client is now buried several levels deep, making it easier to use google to find than to navigate from Amazon’s logged in flow. Nor is Amazon alone in trying to recoup some operational dollars. Other customer service heavy brands such as Anthropologie have had to follow suit, recently changing their open-ended return policy to a mere 60 days to reflect this.