Society

The returns policy that big stores in the UK follow must be causing them all sorts of headaches.

Once a couple of the big-name department stores started offering long return dates, the others had to follow, or risk going under.

Any retailer that didn’t want to offer 35-day, or a 60-day, or a 90-day, no quibble returns was going to become less popular in the eyes of those shoppers who love to return stuff.

Rohan don’t have a cut off return date. You can return goods to them a year later, if you want.

And with long return dates came free returns. Now customers expect free returns ‘as standard’. If returns aren’t free they are less likely to buy online from that store.

If the customer fails to spot that returns for a particular store aren’t free, and they have to pay return postage, then that customer is less likely to buy from that retailer again.

Once bitten, twice shy.

Think of the consequences of long return dates and free returns for the retailers. Think about the consequences for cash flow or for seeing how well they did in a given period. Think about re-ordering stock or orders already placed for similar stock to a line that seemed to have sold well.

Suddenly, half the sold stock is returned. Then what? What was the true turnover in the previous period? What does the bank think of the current lending? Where is the retailer going to put all the returns?

How many work hours have to be devoted to the paperwork, to examining the returns for faults, to steam cleaning, re-boxing, checking labels? What about the stuff that cannot be resold?

How are the buyers going to know what to buy for the next season or later this season?

How much was spent on shipping costs to send the goods and for returns? How many boxes were sealed, how much wrapping paper was folded, how many labels were printed?

UK Consumer Legislation

UK consumer legislation says that in remote sales (as in a sale online or over the telephone) the customer can return the goods for any reason within 14 days of receiving the goods. The customer has to bear the cost of returning the goods (unless the goods are faulty), so that’s a disincentive if the seller does not offer free returns.

In fact, the cost of returns is what gives small sellers the edge in not having large numbers of returns stacking up ‘just because the customer changed their mind’.

£7 Billion

The latest figures from Opinium cited in a report by Barclays, says that under the current UK returns policy, shoppers in the UK return £7 billion worth of goods a year to big stores, with fashion having the highest number and value of returns.

The biggest reason cited for fashion returns is inconsistent sizing across different brands.

That may well be true.

But behind the figures I wonder how much is in fact because it’s easy to do, so why not, just to be on the safe side.

Order three of one item – one that’s probably a bit small, one that’s probably the right size, and one that’s (hopefully) too big.

Then send two back and say they were the wrong size.

Simple.

Fortress Europe.: It may not seem like it sometimes, but compared to life outside fortress Europe, it is heaven. It is heaven at least in terms of the daily grind.

Don’t make light of other people’s troubles. Of course I don’t. But I live in the privileged world.

Of course the modern world brought in the death of community and the birth of ennui. That’s what we are told. When we are far from the harsher realities of life, we risk sinking into meaninglessness.

Every day we balance our feelings and find our equilibrium between the haves and the have nots.

I don’t want to pretend to myself that I am the humblest of creatures who would share his last crust with a stranger.

Actually, I would. It would be easier. To be down to my last crust would make it an easier decision. Then there would be almost nothing to hold on to.

The better question would be whether I would give up a lot of what I have to share, not with one stranger but many, many strangers? Because that is what is happening. People are clamouring at the gates of fortress Europe and fortress North America. They risk their lives to cross the sea to reach their dream. And we inside have to deal with feeling guilty and resentful.

We in the UK give huge amounts of charity to people abroad. When RedNoseDay comes around and the TV presenters ask for money, we give – millions. My wife gives – she gives a lot.

Why don’t we collectively share our last crust and give half of everything we have to those beyond the fence.

But we don’t. And we don’t all say – come, come, share – what is mine is yours.

Tell me I am wrong – tell me that if a vote was taken tomorrow that people would open the gates.

In an article about the pending trade war between the USA and everybody else, the writer mentioned the sixty million tonnes of wheat that the fields of Kansas produce.

I looked up the density of wheat seeds: It’s 0.79

So that tonnage of wheat would occupy 76 million cubic metres. (60m/0.79)

Let’s spread that out two metres deep. Two metres makes sense to me; it’s just fifteen centimetres (six inches) over my head.

Now we’ve got an area of 38 million square metres, two metres deep. That’s 6,000 metres square.

That’s six kilometres.

All that wheat would occupy a space two metres deep in a square six kilometres down each side.

Or in yards and miles, that’s two-and-a-bit yards deep and nearly four miles square.

A lot of wheat.

I read in the Guardian that Amazon has been accused of treating its staff like robots. There are some numbers in the article: 566,000 employees, 600 times an ambulance has been called out to warehouses in the past three years., 200 union members who say they suffered pain as a result of their workload.

Let’s assume that the number of employees was the same for each of the past three years and that the number of ambulance callouts was evenly spread over the period. That’s 200 callouts per years for 566,000 employees, or one callout per year for every 2,830 employees.

Is that a lot? Is it out of line with other similar firms? What similar firms are there, in fact? Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, the Post Office?

And what were the ambulances called out for? Were they all work-related accidents? Did some people fall ill for reasons unrelated to their jobs?

Without context the figures are meaningless other than to persuade me emotionally that there is something wrong at Amazon. I am not an apologist for Amazon, but this ‘news’ needs context.

Here’s some context from the article.

A Freedom of Information request to ambulance services from the GMB union revealed 115 call-outs to Amazon’s site in Rugeley, near Birmingham, including three relating to pregnancy or maternity problems and three for major trauma.

There were also two call-outs to the site for electric shocks and eight for people who had fallen unconscious. At least 1,800 people work year-round at the Rugeley warehouse and more than 2,000 more can work over the peak Christmas period.

That compares to only eight calls in total to a nearby Tesco warehouse of a similar physical size and where about 1,300 people work, over the same period, according to another FOI request by the union.

Amazon said it was “simply not correct to suggest that we have unsafe working conditions based on this data or on unsubstantiated anecdotes. Requests for ambulance services at our fulfilment centres are predominantly associated with personal health events and are not work related. Nevertheless, ambulance visits at our UK fulfilment centres last year was 0.00001 per worked hour, which is dramatically low.”

A spokesman said that, according to the Health and Safety Executive’s method of reporting injuries, Amazon had 43% fewer injuries on average than other companies conducting transportation and warehousing activities in the UK.

This article is trying to persuade me emotionally that there is something wrong at Amazon. I am not an apologist for Amazon, but without more context this ‘news’ looks more like a hatchet job.