News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on You might literally be buying trash on Amazon. Parent comment

Re:You might literally be buying trash on Amazon by danShumway on Tuesday December 17, 2019 @02:34PM (#21817725)
> Returns are the absolute worst - every experience I've had is at least a 10+ minute wait.

> The shopping (and return) experience at Amazon is so far superior

I don't get it.

An Amazon return process will also take me 5-10 minutes to complete online, and then it requires me to have a printer and packaging on-hand to ship the item back to Amazon. Then to get a replacement I need to wait multiple days for both the return to process, and the replacement to ship.

I live in a suburban area, so for a physical store I drive 15-20 minutes, wait 10 minutes for the return to process, and then get in my car with the replacement and drive back home. I can get the entire thing done in less than an hour. I don't need to print anything, I don't need to box anything up. I can go from noticing a part is defective to having a replacement in my hand in an hour.

You seem to be optimizing for different metrics than me, or you live way farther from most physical stores than I do.

It's annoying to type in a pin, I guess, but I'm happy to take that ~15 second loss if it means I can save 2 days of waiting for a package to arrive.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:You might literally be buying trash on Amazon by turtlebits on Tuesday December 17, 2019 @02:58PM (#21818031)
Maybe you don't have Amazon dropoff locations, but essentially I walk in the door, walk to a staff member handling returns, and they scan a QR code on my phone and I hand over the item. Never encountered a line and am always out within a minute.

It doesn't need to be packed in a taped box with a label on it.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:You might literally be buying trash on Amazon by rootusrootus on Tuesday December 17, 2019 @04:21PM (#21818968)
That's kind of cool, good to know. Unfortunately in my small metro area of 2.5M people, there are exactly three locations to drop-off, two of which are downtown and not easy to drive in and out of.

Hopefully they are planning to expand those options.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:You might literally be buying trash on Amazon by danShumway on Tuesday December 17, 2019 @03:13PM (#21818229)
That might explain the difference. I've never taken advantage of the dropoffs, I'm not sure if there are any near me.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:You might literally be buying trash on Amazon by acdha on Tuesday December 17, 2019 @09:45PM (#21821297)
For a while now, you can just bring the item to a UPS store and scan a QR code on your phone. You don’t even need to wrap it. This is so much better than the old hassle.
[ Parent | on HN ]