After the consumer electronics industry spent $13.8 billion last year on re-boxing, re-selling and other processing of returned goods, both retailers and manufacturers of electronics have begun pushing back, according to an analysis in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
Such steps have included Vizio’s policy of including more information on packaging to avoid mistaken purchases, the “consumer concierge services” introduced by Best Buy and other retailers that sometimes charge a fee, and just plain making the products easier to use and install, as Seagate Technology and others have done.
The consulting firm Accenture Ltd., which provided the $13.8 billion figure, added that only about 5 percent of those returns came on products that were truly defective, and that between 10 and 20 percent of electronics products purchased are eventually returned.
