5 Big Questions About Online Shopping

More online shopping means more returns. If you can’t see, try on, or try out an item in person, you’re more likely to end up with something that isn’t what you want. Experts estimate that shoppers return about 25 percent of what they buy online, compared with about 8 percent of what they buy in stores.

Returning online orders has gotten easier. Many online sellers don’t charge customers for sending back unwanted items. The problem is that many returned items never go back on sale. Instead, they’re often thrown out, even if they’re still brand-new.

It comes down to cost. When you send back a product, the company already owes you a refund. It costs the company even more to ship the merchandise to a warehouse to have workers determine if it can be sold again.

“At this stage, every person that touches that item is adding cost, but the company doesn’t earn any value,” explains Gad Allon, a business professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Because of those extra costs, Allon says, most brand-new items that get returned are never sold again as new.

If you want to make a difference, consider returning items to a store rather than mailing them back to a warehouse. Experts say those products are more likely to go back on a shelf. 

In some cases, online retailers tell buyers to keep their unwanted items rather than send them back. Donating those goods to charity can prevent them from going unused.

Even better, Allon says, is to stop and think before shopping online. If we buy only products that we really need or want, we’ll be much less likely to return them.

“Everything boils down to us as consumers at the end,” he says.

1. In the answer to question 1, why does the author put the word trillion in italics?

2. What details do you notice in the cartoon? What message do you think the cartoonist is sending?

3. Why do online retailers often decide to throw away returned products?