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Is eBay Worse Than Early Sears Catalogs?
prostoalex writes "The New York Times claims eBay can learn a lot from the early Sears catalogs, which promised unconditional returns (postage paid by Sears) in case there is any dissatisfaction with the product even if the product behaves exactly as described. Apparently eBay is doing something right, but with no buyer protection, no seller authentication, and no desire to participate in seller-buyer conflicts, no return policy, can the business model be sustained?"
The closest real life analogy would be the proprietor of an exhibition hall holding a flea market. If you buy something crappy at the flea market from Joe, the building's owners aren't the ones you have a problem with. All they did was rent space and maybe some tables to Joe so he could set up and sell his stuff.
If you can't deal with this, don't shop on ebay.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Yes.
Ebay is not a retailer. It is a marketplace.
Marketplaces do not need to be perfect, they only need to be better than the alternative.
Ebay is so much better than the real-world alternatives - small ads in newspapers - that people are happy to accept its flaws.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Well if another auction site comes along that doesn't use the borderline-fraud service that is PayPal and offers superior customer service, decades of business history dictates that eBay will surrender to it.
The hard part, as Slashdot proves every day with its uncensored comment system, is making people accountable for what they do online.
-JemThe changing policies are a sign of the times. Nowadays, what eBay does is considered OK. I find nothing wrong with what they do. I would not want to be at fault for some seller's junk, either. eBay still does what it did when it started - to use the old saying "one man's trash is another man's treasure"
42
As someone who runs a large and successful (but non-commercial) auction site myself, I have to ask the following question:
What exactly is ebay supposed to do about it?
Seriously - what can ebay do about problem buyers and sellers? If a buyer or seller flakes out on the other party it's the buyer's word against the seller's. Putting aside the massive amount of man hours that would be needed to mediate disputes, how in the hell can you ever know which person is being honest or if they're both being honest and it was the shipper's fault or someone else's fault? At best, you're just listening to two people's stories and judging which one sounds more believable. That's a pretty poor solution if you ask me.
I mean... I know people complain about ebay and they complain about my site too. But just what exactly do people think we CAN do?! I'm not inside either person's head and I am just a distant third party to the transaction. I give people a forum through which to post, buy and sell with each other. That's all there is to it. I don't know them personally, I dont' process their money and I don't ship their item. How is the auction owner supposed to keep tabs on every aspect of every transaction with all of these parameters that are out of their control?
I'd love an answer, but I'll be fucked if I know.
It always seemed odd to me that Ebay wanted nothing to do with the insurance/escrow and buyer/seller protection processes, and allowed third parties to fill in that gap, while Ebay relies on the auction fees and listing fees, and on their massive volume to make a profit. They definitely should have provided a way from the start for a guarantee, but what are they gonna do for those jets and houses that come up for sale? That's probably what they were thinking -- since they can't really refund the money from super-large purchases, it's not really fair for everyone else. However, they could charge some percentage of the final auction price to provide a "guarantee" of sorts, which would be great.
stuff |
Yes.
It's an auction marketplace, for crying out loud. "eBay" doesn't sell product. Comparison with Sears is apples & mushrooms.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Im surprised theyre still there not because of their business model, but because its not really that cheap. Often you see things selling on there for more than you would pay in a shop, with all the extra protection that gives you. Any shop stuff is definitely new.
I've bought plenty of stuff on eBay and sold odds and sods too. Like most people who've done more than a few trades, I've been caught out and I know that some people who've bought from me didn't read the item description properly.
However, how is this eBay's fault? Why should eBay be responsible for my failure to check out the items I'm buying or the buyer I'm buying from? Likewise, why should eBay care if my buyer didn't read the item description?
Nanny bloody society.
Nick.
Look. Ebay *is* working. I don't care if it doesn't work in theory, it *does* and *is* working in practice. Yes, theres fraud, but theres fraud on the highstreet too (where there is also mugging, street robbery and car jacking).
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
At least not for the expensive purchases, where saving money might really matter.
I bought my wife a present of her favorite bubble bath on e-bay. When it came, it was somebody else's favorite bubble bath. I got in touch with the sender, who apologized profusely and offered to send the right stuff. It never came. And, I never got my money back.
My friend, on the other hand, purchased a guitar on e-bay only to have it be in far worse condition than advertised. He never got his money back, either.
My conclusion is to never spring big bucks for anything on e-bay.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
...promised unconditional returns (postage paid by Sears) in case there is any dissatisfaction with the product even if the product behaves exactly as described
So it was basically a free, rental-service for all goods? I can't see how that could be abused.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
I've sold some stuff on ebay and had two returns. One was a 4 disk set of the Alien movies, but the guy returned it about a month after buying it because of "dvd rot". Fair enough.
The second one however, was for an external camera for a mobile phone. They were selling retail for 75 at the time, but I got mine free with the phone. I sold it for 50 (most were going to 35) to a guy. I sent it out, then two weeks after he got it he said it didn't work. I had already tested it, but what can you do? Call the guy a liar? Well, I refunded his money and when I got the camera back, I plugged it in and it worked perfectly. What I think really happened was that he found out he paid too much and that the quality was crap and wanted to "return it to place of purchase for a full refund".
So after that episode, I simply put a disclaimer at the bottom that there will be no refunds and all sales are final. I try to be as honest with descriptions as possible so there *should* be no problems.
Sears makes money off of selling products in their catologs.
vs.
Ebay makes money off of people listing items to sell.
The big difference is that Ebay makes money even if the products don't sell, Ebay has both an excellant business model and a huge market share, plus their just plain usefull
hah! you mean eBay should be like the FAILED business models of UBid, etc. which carried the cost of storage & transactions itself? No, eBay would not survive; it is a forum for auctions, and the buyer & seller are responsible for their own ethics. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
At the same time, however, Wall Street doesn't look at businesses in terms of natural progression - increase, plateau, decline. WS has an unrealistic expectation that companies will continue to have exponential (at at least unchanged linear) growth, which often causes companies to do things which hurt their long-term viability for the sake of short-term gains.
I liked Larry Page's (Google co-founder) take on it: "A management team distracted by a series of short-term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour." Very nice.
However, there are a lot of things I (and many others like me, I'm sure) won't buy on eBay because of the lack of protection from the company. But I'm not sure that eBay should do this - the resources involved are purely losses; no revenue will be gained directly, only indirectly (hopefully) through increased traffic.
I think a better solution would be for a cottage industry to grow up (similar to Paypal or the escrow services already doing well b/c of eBay) offering transaction insurance or seller/buyer disputes for a reasonable price. If this business did well, eBay would probably purchase it the way it did Paypal.
E-Bay has this great ability to avoid the fraud scandals that have hit their community. They always do a great job of getting the public to buy into the fact that they are just a marketplace, and nothing more. I am glad to see some changes coming in the AUTO's area though. It really doesn't suprise me, as the cars I'm sure make them a pretty penny in fee's.
is its very business model: I've always avoided buying things online (and also over the phone) because I dislike not having a real person in front of me to do business with. Buying something over the phone or over the internet is a socially deficient a transaction as it gets, and it deprives you of the all important face to talk to (or to punch) if you were scammed with your purchase.
And don't talk to me about eBay user ratings: these are a joke. These sorts of credentials are a joke even in real-life: as the saying goes, really good con artists can sell you a turd and make you say thank you and beg for more.
On the other hand, eBay brings sellers and buyers from the entire world together, and (more importantly), there's no lower price limit to what you can sell. So if I'm looking for Star Trek paraphernalia for example, I'm much more likely to find that miniature Klingon ship on eBay than from ads in the local newspaper.
So, several years ago, the choice was tough for me: avoid doing business with people online, or be able to find great things? So one day I took the plunge, opened a PayPal account and starting bidding on things. Net result: out of 50-so items I won, I never received 4, and PayPal still owes me $150 of *my* money they just don't want to let go of.
So FUCK EBAY!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
All the while, ebay offers something no bricks and motar person to person broker can offer. (Is there even such a business!?)
Feedback.
It's priceless. Any of the larger sellers have loads of honest feeback from purchasers. You can guage your own risk. It a model that works well when you understand it. Not only does it help the buyer, but it motivates the seller knowing that public feedback about the transaction will be left by the buyer.
It's a system that works quite well, regarless of a lack of a bricks and motar parallel.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
What really cheeses me off about businesses that benefit from a network effect (like ebay) is that once they have their customers "locked in" there is no incentive for them to improve their business because it is very hard for competitors to challenge them.
On a sidenote, check out New Zealand's version of ebay. The interface is so much cleaner and easier to use. I'm surprised how e-bay can have such a crap, ugly interface and continue to operate as a successful company.
I always thought of eBay as more of a venue than a store, sometimes it's a con's back alley and sometimes it's a friend's showroom. Either way the blindfold isn't removed when your package arrives, as described. (Or it's removed when you're alone in this metaphorical place and you start to wonder if anyone is still around.) I think people might be asking too much. I've only won about 35 auctions on eBay in four years, and I haven't been ripped off because I try really hard to research everything before bidding.
I mean, it's a bit like expecting the guy who owns the parking lot to pay for your broken flea market merchandise.
And the submitter is asking if the business model is sustainable?
I personally have had a bad experience with an ebayer recently... Luckilly I only lost 45 ukp.
I wanted a 802.11g card with a specific chipset (PrismGT), so having found a seller on ebay I bid and won the auction. The description of the item in the auction was very specific, quoting the modeul number, etc.
3 weeks later (nice speedy delivery... not) I received a package, which I paid import duty on since the seller was in the states, only to discover that I had been sent an 802.11*B* card worth under 15ukp (and completely useless to me). So I tried to contact the seller to resolve the problem - the seller ignored all my emails. I opened a SquareTrade complaint which the seller ignored. The seller's account had been suspended by ebay shortly after the transaction so they obviously had complaints against him.
However, the auction was paid for over PayPal and had a "PayPal buyer protection" icon on it, so I thought that I was safe... Wrong! I logged a complaint at PayPal, expecting them to refund my money and they said that the seller sending an incorrect item isn't covered by the protection.
So what it comes down to is that if the seller had sent me what I ordered but it wasn't quite as shiny as it was described, I would've been covered, but since the seller sent me something completely different to what I ordered they won't cover me at all.
IMHO the buyer protection scheme isn't worth anything and in the future I will be treating auctions covered by the buyer protection policy with the same suspicion as the unprotected auctions. As far as I could tell from the policy terms, I was covered, but PayPal (who are part of ebay) just weaseled out of it.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
You are incorrect. eBay and Yahoo auctions DO REQUIRE credit card registrations (now) - but that doesn't prevent anyone from multiple registrations. eBay DOES NOT profit from fraud either. It's bad public relations and turns people away. eBay DOES NOT collect ANY fees from an auction that you state you were not paid for. This is why they have the area in the "Non Paying Bidder" section for you to fill out:
Did you receive any money from the buyer: Yes ______ (amount) OR No
eBay then sends a confirmation email to that buyer where they have the opportunity to say yes they DID send money or no they didn't didn't send money. Not responding goes in favor of the seller.
Unauthenticated buyers is usually a SELLER scam and not a buyer scam. Many con artist sellers register their own bidding email addresses as well and schill bid in their own auctions - jacking up the price.
There isn't really a way beyond honesty that this "multiple" registration could be prevented other than by fingerprint. Which actually isn't a bad idea.
Since the post office and UPS receive so much business from eBay - I would think it would be a nice service to provide at both for a fingerprint scan that could authenticate email and registrations on websites like ebay.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
What usually happens in most of the "paypal problems" is this:
Person x puts money into paypal (with credit card usually)
Person x then pays person y.
Person y then (for the sake of this example) takes the money out of Paypal (e.g. to their own credit card/bank account) and sends the goods.
For whatever reasons, person x then decides to do a chargeback for the credit card (for example, if they dont get the goods, the goods are faulty or whatever else). Credit card company asks Paypal to pay back money. Paypal then freezes account of person y so that they can take back the money to pay the credit card company. If person y has transfered the money to someone else on paypal, even more accounts may be frozen until things are sorted out. But if (as in the example above), person y has taken the money out of paypal alltogether, thats when paypal will go to bank accounts, credit cards or whatever they can to get the money back from person y.
What we need is a new service similar to Paypal but:
A.backed by an existing bricks and mortar bank (to provide security and confidence that there is real money in a vault somewhere to back up your virtual dollars)
B.complying 100% with banking regulations
C.provides more ways to put money into your "e-account" (i.e. ways that DONT allow the service to take money from your bank account or your credit card without you specificly making a transaction)
D.provides a better way to handle disputes than "freezing the accounts of anyone who might be remotly involved and moving money around without permission"
E.operates worldwide so that everyone can use it (like PayCrud)
F.would not allow other services to touch the account without permission (so you could have a PayCrud account to pay people who only accept payment that way and have it linked to this account so that if something goes wrong, PayCrud cant touch it). Ideally, you would need to specificly authorized a direct debit (be it once off or recurring) before it was valid.
Course, even if such a service was set up, Ebay would probobly "prohibit" people from using it (to force more people to use PayCrud which they own)
Eventhough Paypal doesn't like it and tells you that you can't - you CAN make a chargeback that is successful 99% of the time.
That is of course if you fund your transactions with credit cards which should ALWAYS do!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
... is the jerk-worthy quality of the lingerie section.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
your part c? netbank, as in www.netbank.com will allow deposits from paypal, rejects withdrwals initiated by paypal..
no minimum balance, free checks, free billpay (with a caveat, if you stop using billpay, they charge you) open an account, fund with a low limit credit card and withdraw to netbank.. you can still get your token two deposits recorded to have the bank account 'verified'
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Excelent article! Will read again! A++++++++++++++++++++++
That's a Big Difference.
eBay is basically the crap you don't want or need anymore or the stuff you stole that you're trying to get rid of. So we all lower our own expectations accordinginly.
Kinda like TigerDirect.com which is the last refuge for old/used/returned/opened equipment sold as new or something quite like that and you wouldn't really know it's crap until you read the fine print.
Anyway, eBay would be a lot better without PayPal which is really just a polite way to steal from you. They take a system that basically works well; credit card sales, and they insinuate themselves into the middle of each transaction in order to suck a few more dollars out of you. Which truly sucks.
Ah well you people made eBay what it is today. Enjoy.
The reporter entirely fails to grasp the most fundamental truth about eBay: eBay was started because Pierre Omidyar believed existing channels for sales transactions among individuals were entirely lacking. And it grew tremendously because he was absolutely right. The last thing in the world eBay wants to do is mimic existing systems. The point of eBay is to let an evolutionary process work things out. This is how PayPal came into existence, which has turned out to be a whole other solution that was only necessitated and made possible by eBay's choice to not address any but the most basic needs of their constituents; this is the whole point of why eBay works as it does. They don't presume to think they have all the answers as to what will work best, and instead trust the user base to help sort it out.
Also worth noting is that ordering from a catalog a hundred years ago is nothing like these days, with lesser amounts of technical information, practically no standards, and nothing but hand-drawn pictures to go by for illustrations. These days, you can be a lot more certain of what you're buying than you were then, and there is no longer any need to overcome the resistance to ordering sight unseen, as was the case then.
Oh, one other thing. The NYT reporter should have a look at what has become of Sears these days when considering how wise it would be to emulate them.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Paypalsucks.com is a scam as well.
Go to the site. Notice the banner ads? They are for competing services to paypal. PAYPAL'S COMPETITION sponsor the site!!
I feel MUCH safer with Paypal than I do with my bank. eBay depends greatly on good press. The days where "bad press" news items come out about eBay - the stock usually takes a 2-3 point hit. Paypal/ebay have stockholder's to please and analysts to appease with tight security. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than average? A resounding: YES!
Read this article on my website about Paypal and PayPalSucks.com where I corresponded with the webmaster.
What is most ironic - is that scammers use paypalsucks.com as a way to say they aren't a scammer! Saying:
"I don't use Paypal - see this website for why"
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I haven't had any trouble.
I have wandered in with damaged and defective Sears screwdrivers and gotten replacements with no receipt and issues.
My wife orders clothes and if it doens't fit returns it without any problems.
The staff is generally a step above much of the competition, both in knowledge, and customer service.
One of the great uses for small country households was to use the Sears and Robuck catalog for various purposes as it was a great deal of free paper..
meh
A year or two ago, I could actually find things on ebay that I was looking for. Hell, no matter what it was, I could find it.
Now, any search just turns up a million hits for people who aren't using ebay for what it was good for, but are instead using it to sell ultra-low quality crap they bought in large volumes.
searching is rougher too - I go to look for anyone with weights for sale in upstate NY, and have to go through a billion diet pill and video things just to find the one item that almost is what I was looking for.
Do I buy it? No...the fact that ebay has a rep for scammers and ripoffs now does help make that decision, too. More and more, that's their rep.
I wish there was a way to filter out professional ebayers...
The New York Times is a publicly traded company which sells advertising and subscriptions. They actually get about twice as much revenue from advertising as they do from subscriptions.
Let's dig into the New York Times finances. I start at www.sec.gov, click on Edgar filings, search for "New York Times", and grab the 10-K, the most recent annual filing.
New York Times 10-K
For the year ended 2003-12-28, their revenus was $3.2 billion. Here's a breakdown:
100% $3.2 billion total revenue
66% $2.1 billion advertising
27% $0.9 billion circulation
07% $0.2 billion other
Advertising revenue is up about 3.5% from 2002, but advertising volume, the number of inches of ads, dropped 3.8% from 2002 to 2003. The Times has been selling fewer ads but charging more for them.
Summary: the primary business line of the New York Times company is selling ads. Internet companies such as eBay are cutting into that ad business. And that's why the New York Times has been trash-talking Google and eBay lately.
>> Is eBay Worse Than Early Sears Catalogs?
As a former out-house owner, I have to say, "Yup". You can't wipe your ass with eBay.
Apples aren't near as easy to peel as oranges...
I have the unfortunate ability to see both sides of an issue, leading to me losing every argument I've ever been in. So here's my take.
All of my transactions on eBay have been efficient and hassle free, even when buying big-ticket items (like a trombone). My dad, however, got burned once and will never use eBay again. So it is in eBay's best interest to make sure that sellers' and buyers' disputes are resolved amicably. And I can't see why they haven't been involved because they (and PayPal) have records of the transactions.
However, I can see that eBay is merely a vector for the transactions, and that they don't have any fault in letting asshats get money out of unsuspecting people. And eBay, being a publicly traded company, has an obligation to its investors to make as much money as possible. Enforcement or arbitration would seriously eat into profits
So a risk/benefit analysis is in order; see if it's more profitable to create a safe environment for both buyers and sellers, or to ignore it and avoid the cost of that service. Or wait for it to get so bad that the government regulates it and everyone ends up paying for their laziness and greed, like a lot of companies.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Seriously, it is not hard to tell the scam artists from the honest retailers on e-bay. I suspect that most gripes come from people trying to get a deal that is "too good to be true".
It is pointless to compare shopping on e-bay with going to a bricks and mortar retailer like Best Buy.
E-bay is the wild west. The onus is on the buyer to look at feedback ratings, look at what elese the guys sells, and make an educated guess about the risk factor involved.
If you decide to pay $250 for new super pentium4 notebook with lots of free software from a guy with no history called "ebaydood675", then you pretty much assume that it will never arrive.
Sure there are scam artists on e-bay. There are also guys who go door to door selling aluminum siding, but I don't insist that the city should roll up the sidewalks to keep them away from my house.
Instead of blaming e-bay or Pay-Pal (who, sure, don't really do anything if you do get ripped off) take some responsibility for your own decisions.
Three Squirrels
With Ebay's acquisition of PayPal they do offer buyer protection if you pay through PayPal. I had a friend that bought WiFi card through EBay that ended up being a broken piece of junk and the seller refused to do anything about it. Although it was not painless he was able to get his money back from PayPal. Once they refunded the money PayPal had him ship the broke card directly to them.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Now, if my CD writer dies, I just go buy another one, and I'm out only a few $10 bills. I don't care (as much) about quality. If my CD writer works for two years, I'm happy.
Also, look at WalMart. They don't usually stock high quality items -- they go for the lowest prices possible (watch out for falling prices). Their whole business model is based on having the lowest price anywhere. This is very appealing to most consumers.
At ebay, you can often find good deals. Sure, the items are used, and since most things made today are made as cheaply as possible, it might fall apart.
I think as long as ebay realizes they are a "low price leader" like WalMart, they will continue to have success.
--
Get rid of everything Micro and Soft: Buy Viagra and/or Linux
I saw a table selling nothing but Childrens Games on CD's that had obviously been stolen from the outside of Cereal Boxes. The CD's even had printed on them not for retail sale or something like that. Only $10 each. I think I told about 15 people that he stole them from Cereal boxes. I don't know what happened after that, but the other people seemed like they would take care of it. :o)
Western Union, a popular Sears payment system, was never a wholly owned ripoff subsidiary.
--
make install -not war
eBay's help file about shill bidding
It's strongly against their policies. eBay does not police itself. It relies solely on customers to report questionable activity. They almost always act on these reports.
The best deals I've come across lately on eBay are "Buy it Now!" items. It's much more convenient than bidding on traditional auctions and worrying about being sniped or shilled. Of course, if you only bid the max you're willing to pay, you won't have to worry about it.
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Even though eBay is the defacto marketplace for selling personal items online, bad service or lack of accountability will eventually erode its business. No business regardless of size or market share is immune from disatisfied customers, especially in such a liquid communal market as eBay - word travels fast.
It's been my experience, and I can see this in my friends who've used eBay that there's a lifespan to using eBay which pretty much follows the bell curve. The steps are basically:
1. Initial awe and amazement
2. Lots of impulse purchases
3. "Hey, I can make great money selling crap"
4. "Hey, I can make great money beating the system"
5. A couple bad experiences either buying or selling
7. Losing interest in buying
8. No items left to sell/effort too large for profits
9. Disillusionment with high eBay fees
10. One really bad experience buying (less so selling)
11. Beginning to hate eBay's policies
12. Realizing anything you want costs more on eBay
13. Almost never using eBay
It's pretty clear to me where the curve starts plunging downward - whenever there's a need to use eBay or PayPal feedback/protection/or dispute resolution.
Eventually eBay will run out of customers to cycle through and another competitor will snap them up. Likely they'll just target experienced eBayers and provide them with a dispute resolution service that introduces accountability. If eBay wants to fix the curve they should do the same for themselves and keep their users for the long term.
Is it costs money. The reason most people buy on eBay is to save money. With escrow you have double shipping charges, since it has to be sent to escrow first, then to the buyer. You also have the cost of maintaining a warehouse and staff to hold the items while escrow is going on (which could be a coupld weeks in some cases). To top it all off, you need to make a profit or it's not really worth doing.
Well for most items, the buyer just isn't going to find it worth it. Are you really going to drop $30-50 in escrow fees on a processor you bought for $100?
Each incoming mail order was opened and read, then assigned a bin number and a 45-minute time slot. Pull tickets, with bin numbers, were filled out for each item and sent by pneumatic tube to different departments all over the "plant", where stock pickers took the item off a shelf and sent the item to the order assembly bins via conveyor. There, this being pre-bar-code, people grabbed the items off the conveyor as it passed the appropriate bin, and dropped the item with pull ticket in the bin.
At the end of the time period for the current orders, all the filled bins were pulled and replaced with empty bins. The filled bins were sent off by conveyor to outgoing order processing, where the contents of the bin were checked against the original order, the appropriate bookkeeping operations were performed, and the order was shipped.
Note how this works. The information moves, in the form of pick slips, and the merchandise moves, but there's little searching for merchandise. The order picking people don't move very far. In any one area, the people in that area know where the items in their area are (and they're all numbered, of course) so they can quickly pick items and put them on their outgoing conveyor. Order binning involves no paperwork; it's just putting items with numbered tags in bins. Order final assembly and checking starts with all the merchandise and paperwork in one place, and the people doing that work on only one order at a time, so that's straightforward. Packing and shipping consists of putting the contents of a bin in a box and adding a label created at order final assembly.
In its day, the Sears, Roebuck center was considered a marvel of commerce.
Order fulfillment operations still work a lot like that. Barcoding and computers have substantially reduced the number of people involved, but everybody still has bins and timeslots.
Uninformed writes, "No store in their right mind these days or a deep pockets will promise unconditional returns in case there is any dissatisfaction with the product even if the product behaves exactly as described."
Actually, that is NOT true. Most retailers WILL accept returns, usually up to 30 days after purchase, no questions asked. (Look at -- and keep! -- your receipt next time you go shopping.)
Why? Quite simple. They keep you as a customer.
The vast majority of customers are honest, and the stores know this. They accept the fact that there are always going to be people who abuse the system, and they also know that the abusers actually LOVE to play the game. The smart retailer tells the clerks to smile and give the customer their money back, so the abusive customer can't play the game.
There ARE some exceptions to this. Pretty much every store that sells big-screen TVs suspends the 30-day money-back guarantee a month before Super Bowl Sunday, for the obvious reason...