As much as 70% of computers and consumer electronics that customers return to retailers as defective are in fact perfectly operational, a new survey of major consumer electronics retailers by Gartner Group Inc.’s Gartner G2 Retail Services Group reveals. “The problem is lack of consumer education or lack of manuals that anyone can understand,” says Geri Spieler, Gartner research director. “There’s nothing wrong with them.”
The cost of taking back an electronic product and examining why it’s not working can cost $35 to $150 per item, Spieler says. “If you’ve got a $3,000 laptop coming back, you need an assembly line of people going over it,” she says. “And they need to do it carefully and know what they’re looking for, so it’s going to cost money.”
Retailers can address the problem simply by providing more information at the time of sale, either by displaying information with the product on the web site or including a take-away at a retail shelf. Spieler cites one retailer who reduced a high rate of return on Linksys routers when it simply provided information telling consumers what cables they needed to hook up the routers. “Their returns dropped by 60% because they took the time to add the education element,” she says.
Interestingly, the problem may not be worse on the web than in the real world. Of the 17 major retailers of consumer electronics and computers that Spieler interviewed for her research, Amazon.com had the lowest rate of returns. Spieler has not completed her analysis of the data yet to determine why. “Maybe people who are comfortable buying that sort of thing online know more about technology,” she speculates.
The 30% that are actually defective present an even bigger problem, she says, because they contain hazardous waste and can’t simply be dumped in the trash. Thus retailers must work out agreements with recyclers to pick up and dispose of the material.
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