How wading through a warehouse of Amazon returns showed me firsthand the scale of the ecomm returns epidemic

damaged, incomplete, open box, appears new

For every $1 billion in sales, the average retailer incurs $165 million in merchandise returns.

I’m embarrassed to admit just how many hours I’ve recently spent shifting through a tiny fraction of those returns, held in a massive warehouse, hoping to score a good deal. But for the sake of illustration… here we go.

In my own conscious consumerism journey, I’ve come to learn that buying new is not usually the most sustainable option - even if something is marketed as so.

And while I was already an avid second-hand shopper, a practice which diverts products from landfills and extends the life of extracted resources, consuming more consciously has meant that shopping secondhand is my primary means of acquiring objects.

It started at a young age with thrift shopping. My first serious score was a pair of Abercrombie jeans for literally 25 cents at my grandmother’s favorite “rag shop” [sic] in Tennessee. I still find some of my favorite treasures rummaging through aisles at the local thrift: everything from baskets for collecting eggs and veggies to (the now on-trend) wide leg jeans.

Thrift shopping was something once localized by geography. People would pilgrimage to specific sites for “picking” and flea markets and estate sales. They still do. But the growth in secondhand shopping (well, and shopping in general) is coming from the digital space.

And like most everything else, thrifting has been drastically transformed as technology connects people (and the goods they peddle) across geographies. As a millennial who experienced the Limited Too craze in the era of eBay and begged my parents to set up a PayPal account so I could use the platform (remember those days?), I’ve always been comfortable buying secondhand stuff online. Now, through apps like Poshmark and Mercari and ThredUp and The Real Real (or depop, if you’re hipper than me), I can quickly see a shirt in Portland (while living 2038 miles from the one in Oregon and 1642 miles from the one in Maine) and click a button to facilitate a transaction of goods and funds. Conversely, I can also sell the stuff I no longer want —subverting the neighbor-as-customer phenomenon experienced at garage sales¹ — and reach a broader audience of people who may want the stuff I no longer do.

But now I’ve discovered a new way to shop secondhand: rummaging through other people’s unwanted Amazon (and Wayfair and Target, etc.) purchases. A friend recently introduced me to an auction site where you can bid on ecommerce returns and liquidated retail inventory. I was overwhelmed at first but now have my footing underneath me with the entire process.

First of all, there is vernacular to learn: appears new, open box, damaged, incomplete. Really, you should probably stay away from any electronics unless if they are listed as ‘appears new’ - and even then you should check them. If electronics are listed as open box, they probably malfunction, and that’s why they were returned in the first place. But for home furnishings, if something is ‘open box’, that’s likely fine as long as you are willing to live with (or fix yourself) small scuffs, dents, etc. As for ‘incomplete’, I recently discovered it was possible to snag a great deal on individual pieces of a sectional (bonus points if you find a corner piece or an ottoman which are especially useful by themselves and don’t require the other pieces of a sectional to make sense in a room). I stay away from ‘damaged’ as I’m just not that handy. Though, there’s a market here for refabricators and flippers².

The above is a listing I saw on a local selling fb group - coincidentally I saw the same sink listed on bidFTA the week prior.

The website/app I’ve personally been using is bidFTA — and even if only from an anthropological perspective — it is fascinating. But, as a consumer who loves a good deal and the thrill of the hunt (all phenomena explained in the classic shopper marketing book Why We Buy), it has become borderline obsession as of late.

I typically try to keep myself out of the pattern of consuming-as-pastime and save my obsessive deal-seeking for occasions when I really do need something. And as my family prepares to move into our new home addition, I find myself in the market for a few specific housewares; things like a cozy reading chair, curtain hooks, and a mattress cover for my son’s “big boy bed”.

I didn’t end up “winning” (i.e., buying) these chairs

The second thing you have to be prepared for when purchasing from a site like bidFTA is the pickup process. After you win an auction, the company sends you a receipt with a QR code. Naively, I thought one could saunter into the bidFTA physical location, show the code to a clerk, and a cart with merchandise might appear. No. No, no, no… You will be picking your merchandise from heaps of boxes organized on a grid system by auction number, of which there are hundreds. And once you locate the section of your auction number, you must find your item from the other hundred items included in that auction. The process gets easier with time. You learn that auctions are grouped by colored labels that differ from the label colors of the adjacently-placed auction. You learn that sometimes, if you’re lucky, the items within a given auction are organized chronologically. You learn to memorize details of the box you are looking for: tape placement, any telling labels or text.

A recent pickup from the bidFTA warehouse. Baby H is not amused.

Buying online happens at a certain speed. Retailers use nudge tactics to encourage quick, hasty decisions (often drawing on a feeling of scarcity). And on the consumer side, there’s the belief that sort of acts like a purchase protection program: “well, I can always return it”.

And you can. You can return most products you purchase but don’t have a need for. Or don’t like. Or arrive damaged. But that doesn’t mean that the product will return to the retailer’s warehouse to be restocked for other retail-price paying customers to purchase. Often, returned merchandise is sold at outlets for steep discount, liquidated to third party companies (like BidFTA), or worse — tossed in the trash to maintain “brand value”.

As I was writing this post, I opened instagram to be bombarded by a number of advertisements for Wayfair’s annual WAY DAY sale (everyone has to create their own version of Amazon’s Prime Day). I was almost sucked into the vortex before pausing to consider how all those quick, impulse purchases will add up - last year’s sale raked in 80% increased rev over base sales. And if I was a betting woman, I’d wager that 30-40% of purchases from the Way Day sale face a fate of being returned. Envisioning the collective impact of that throughout the supply chain — I’m a little shook.

How many of these flash purchases will end up being returned, contributing to the infamous “returns epidemic”? (image source)

1. Not mentioned in this post but recommended: joining a local “Buy Nothing” group - often hosted on facebook. This is a great way to share/receive from your neighbors without some of the awkwardness (I feel) that comes from garage-selling.

2. I’ve seen several bidFTA “flips” show up on fb marketplace - like the one pictured above. I think it’s brilliant. If a person (“middleman”) wants to do the work of bidding, picking up, and attractively merchandising a product for a profit, essentially acting as a retailer, that’s fantastic. They play a key role in the secondhand goods market.

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Every other Thursday I post a short, low-edited thought about consumer culture and/or conscious consumerism. Thank you for allowing me to share my observations.