Omnichannel retailers in heated competition with Amazon have loosened many of the traditional restrictions on product returns, from time limits to requiring reasons (e.g. damaged or defective items) for the return. But these retailers may not have reckoned with the true costs of instituting such ultra-liberal returns policies.
The New York Times recently spotlighted the impact of unexpected returns on the paychecks of commission-based store associates, while MarketWatch discussed the negative effects of easy returns for online purchases on the entire retail organization, calling them a major contributor to the “ghost economy.”
