The joys of online returns

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Recently, some people in town purchased a baby changing table through the swamp's online store. Then for some reason they returned it to my store this weekend. The box was opened but resealed--largely with scotch tape.

I was the one called to haul it back to the backroom. Upon scanning it I noticed its SKU wasn't familiar to me as anything we carried. So I just shoved it on a random shelf.

I checked out our selection of baby furniture on the online store and noticed they have changing tables in finishes my store doesn't carry. I'm guessing this changing table is one of those.

And thus I have no idea at all what to do with it. If we just throw it someplace on the floor in the box, it likely won't sell because nobody will know what it looks like. And even if it does, it'll probably come back if the customer doesn't like the way it looks.

If we assemble it, we cannot sell it, due to a company policy and/or state law that says we can't sell assembled displays of infant furniture. Won't somebody please think of the children, you know.

Frankly, I think the best thing to do would be to open the box and damage the table in some way, and send it back defective. But destroying merchandise just because I don't want to deal with it will get me fired.

This is one of those cases where I wish we didn't offer online shopping. It's not like can tell customers they have to ship items back to the warehouse at their own expense if they aren't happy with them.

[Dreamstalker]

I've read some online return policies that specifically mention that a store must have that item in stock (the barcode has to scan in the local system) to be able to take it back.

Can't you return the item as something your store can't sell because it's not in the system?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Nope.

When we started the online store, we were told all items sold through the online store, including exclusives, would be able to be sold at the physical stores. The barcode on this thing scans just fine.

[Geek King]

Shoot it up the management ladder, with explanations of why you have no reasonable way to handle it. Let someone who gets paid to make decisions make this one. That's why they're there, right?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Called my manager about it today. He told me to throw it in a shopping cart and leave a note for Moon Unit to deal with it.

I'm happy to have that particular dead cat over the fence.

[eltf177]

Of course, this leads to the problem of what Moon Unit is going to do about it. Or more precisely, what she _won't_ do...

[Victory Sabre]

We should do an over/under on how long it'll sit there.

[Mytical]

We should do an over/under on how long it'll sit there.

Put me down for when we finally colonize Pluto. May be giving Moon Unit the benefit of the doubt here, but what can I say..I am a softy.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

This is why High End Home Store now actively discourages customers from returning anything they didn't carry home from the store (even if they had the store place the shipped order for them) back to a store. The brick and mortar stores are just not equipped to deal with returns from the warehouse. I even got a customer on the phone yesterday all pissed off because the store actually REFUSED her return...I was kind of surprised to hear that as the stores often do a lot more to please the customer than we do at the call centers, but hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

If it's our store's fault (or the shipping carrier's fault) that the customer got a no-good item and has to return it, we are happy to send someone out to pick it up at no additional charge. If it's customer preference, per our policy the customer is SUPPOSED to ship it back themselves...unfortunately the instructions on the packing slip are confusing and of course, the EWs get all bent out of shape at having to pay for return shipping. Yeah, I know it's a hassle, expensive, etc., and in a way I feel for you, but our policies are clearly stated in our catalogs and on the website. Nobody ever reads them ahead of time, of course. If I think the customer is worthy I am empowered to send out Brown Truck to pick up the items for them anyway, though we try not to do that too much...but it's better than having them return to a store, so if they ask if they can do that I generally just say fine, we'll come get it.