Re: Store returns

According to the the Wall Street Journal, "The US electronics industry
last year spent about $13.8 billion to restock and resell returned
products. Especially galling to manufacturers is that many returns are
preventable - only about 5% of returns were because a product was
truly defective. Most consumers give up on products for other reasons,
such as the device being too confusing to use. Defects aren't even in
the top three reasons for returns."

I heard that The Sharper Image was really hurt by just that,
but then again, they already covered their ass
by issuing (now worthless) Gift Cards for the returned merchandise
instead of refunds, so they got to keep the money paid.

But the fraud goes both ways.
a fair deal:
Best Buy used to sell opened/returned things for 10% off,
but they were often missing critical parts (power cubes, software)
or were totally busted. But at least the mfgr's warranty was honored
(that's how I bought my first Linksys router:
it was faulty out of the box but replaced under warranty).
a bad deal:
But there are reports of stores selling returned items as new
(often in sealed boxes).


There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
Most of these "customer satisfaction surveys"
are useless and biased by design (*1)
so I don't trust their definition of "defective".

For example, I just assisted a neighbor installing a new
HP printer. The install procedure was barely documented
in the manual and the on-screen install
was geared towards advertising more products
instead of helping me get the printer running.
Most aggravating was looking at the alignment printout
and having to figure out what one was "best"
since there was NO clue what I was looking for!
I'd say the installation procedure was faulty, perhaps "defective"
since it was NOT describing what I need to do
nor how to do it better and faster :-(

Since many products are designed out of the USA,
the manuals and support were NOT initially written in English,
so it's often impossible to learn how to use the product!

I rarely return things I buy
(as an engineer, I take it as a challenge to fix it!)
but I had to return a $20 DVD player
because it failed within a week.
Most failed quickly due to a faulty internal cable.
I don't think you see those anymore
because the mfgr cut corners in the design
and cheated their suppliers.


Typical WSJ bull***. By far the biggest reason for product
returns these days can be summed up in one word:
Outsourcing.
But we'll never see the WSJ admit that, or even mention it.
Just about everything I've returned in the past several years,
including electronics was due to it being cheap, poorly designed
and constructed, non-performing Chinese crap. Yet all the WSJ
can tell us is that we're too stupid to figure out how to use
electronics.

Agreed!
Even I, a rather experienced engineer,
have problems setting some of my digital clocks & watches
due to absolutely clueless "user interfaces"
and unreadable (or missing) documentation.

A friend coined the phrase "the race to the bottom"
referring to the way manufacturers
have perverted the concept of capitalism.
Once upon a time, manufacturers made BETTER products at BETTER prices
to do better than their competition.
Now everyone's treading the fine line of
"how much can we delete/omit before the consumer feels cheated"
and "how can we charge as MUCH as allowable
for as LITTLE product as possible".
That's why we have products with no metal reinforcements,
no way to maintain/repair them,
and planned obsolescence where it breaks just after the warranty
(and warranties are getting shorter and shorter).

-- jeffj

(*1)
re: lies and statistics:

In 2000, I subscribed to Bell Atlantic (Verizon) DSL.
There were immense technical difficulties at the beginning.
My room-mate was on the phone for DAYS
to the mostly-useless outsourced tech support.

After the ordeal, we got a "customer satisfaction followup survey"
full of bull*** questions such as
"was the phone answered promptly"
"was the operator courteous" bla bla bla.
All fluffery to give useless statistics for the "clever" manager
who outsourced tech support to get a large bonus for looking good.

NEVER do these surveys ask REAL questions such as
- was the problem completely solved?
- was it solved with just one call?
- was the problem identified correctly within 10 minutes? 20 minutes?
- was the problem escalated properly?
- if you were promised a call back, were you called back?
How quickly? Did it solve the problem?
- were you required to repeat things
or did the operator understand you the first time?
If the problem was not correctly identified
or the troubleshooting can be done better,
please tell us how to do better next time.

The reason I feel strongly about this
is the time I called Gateway about a bad motherboard.
I had the bare minimum setup: power supply, motherboard, CPU, speaker.
No RAM, no cards in any slot.
The beep code clearly identified a motherboard failure.
But the "tech" had a useless problem isolation chart
and had me install, remove and install RAM several times
to prove that the beep code I gave him the first time was correct.
Even if the tech was not personally knowledgeable about the diagnostics,
the troubleshooting flowchart should've allowed him to skip
the useless, time-wasting (for both of us) steps.
There's no useful feedback to correct such problems with tech support.
.