alt Hacker News> We are a throw-away-stuff society, and Amazon is not outside of that society.
What Amazon does with returns doesn't have anything to do with what kind of "society" you think we are.
What it does with returns is determined by the profit motive.
And in most cases, the more profitable thing to do is to resell returned merchandise. Yes, return inspections cost money, but usually less money than what is gained by reselling the item.
Returned merchandise has value, and businesses don't make profit by throwing value away when they can make money with it or reduce losses with it instead.
I genuinely don't understand all the people who think it's more cost-effective for Amazon to send a $50 shirt to the dumpster rather than resell it. That's not how anything works.
What individuals do is also motivated by profit or profit-adjacent motives. Saving money is a profit motive; so is saving time and convenience.
> It's more cost-effective for Amazon to send a $50 shirt to the dumpster rather than resell it.
It's not a $50 shirt. It's like a $5 shirt to them, which some sucker is willing to pay $50 for. Used, it becomes a $10 shirt.
A dumpster can be found right in the neck of the woods of where the returning customer lives, whereas it may have to travel far and pass through more processing if it goes to another customer elsewhere.
It needs to be inspected, repacked.
There is a risk in every returned item. Sometimes people return a perfectly good item. But sometimes it's because there is something wrong with the item, such that the next buyer is also likely to return it, even if they get it cheaper.
Basically returned items are entirely outside of the profit-optimized delivery path. They incur costs and risks, at a reduced revenue.
I'd never return an item which matches the description and isn't damaged.
If it isn't damaged in any way but does not match the description, that's a problem; if it is sold with the same description, the next customer will also see that it doesn't match. A new listing has to be created for that product. Not gonna happen, or not in the processing time frame of that particular return.