RTFM: 19/20 returned gadgets work just fine
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Ninety-five percent of electronics returned by consumers are not broken, according to Accenture.
The research consultancy claims that 68 percent of returns either didn't perform as expected, or the buyer can't figure the damn thing out. Twenty-seven percent of returns are buyer's remorse. The remaining 5 percent are lemons.
It's easy to pound the "RTFA" angle, but think of it this way: Accenture says up to 20 percent of all sales get returned, which means that fully 1 percent of some varieties of consumer electronics are broken in the box.
Nearly all returned gadgets still work [The Inquirer]
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The 1% rate is by no means terrible - that's 99% are in a fit & healthy condition. While in an ideal world we'd have every single gadget working 100%, reality is never going to be that nice.
The bigger problem is the 14% or so that are returned by buyers unable to use them. RTFM isn't the answer - interfaces and instructions should be as easy to use as possible and thats a challenge to manufacturers and designers, not the customer.
19/20 with a xbox 360 RRoD? The irony. Tell that to the 9 (nine) consoles I've returned to MS with the RRoD.
In the balance I often don't bother to return when I get a lemon - the hassle isn't worth it unless it's a big ticket item. I will avoid buying from the manufacturer from then on but that's it (hello Sony I'm talking to you).
I bought a power inverter at Fry's. It worked for under a minute, then the alarm started beeping and it never worked again. I returned it, and the new unit performed correctly. I mention this because there was no indication in the instructions about how to correct the alarm problem--the alarm means it's too hot, or the voltage is too high, or a couple other things which were not the case. To this day, I don't know whether the unit was broken, or if there was just a relay or something that needed resetting. I do feel, though, that the percentage of things from Fry's that I return is higher than at other stores. I can't remember a time I have had to return an electronic item to Best Buy or Target, but I can list several returns to Fry's right off the top of my head...
Having recently seen the corporate side of returns, if 19/20 of the items you're getting back from the field as returns are perfectly ok, you're talking major money. You have to test the device/part entirely to make sure that it is indeed functioning, and then, maybe, you can sell it as a refurb (r0x0rz!) at a huge discount. The company I work for is waging a major war against NTF (No Trouble Found) returns.
All of the items I have returned recently (two Roombas and a wireless router) had problems that only showed up intermittently or after a certain amount of use. The router, for example, would stop forwarding packets after an hour or two. This was probably due to inadequate cooling, I think, but if they tried testing it after I returned it (since nobody wrote down what was wrong with it, although they did ask), they probably thought it was fine and put it back out on the shelf.
By the way, the router was a Netgear. The Linksys I got afterwards has worked fine from day one, and only once a month or two seems to stop serving up DHCP registrations (solved by a reset), which is not annoying enough to make me return it (and I'm not absolutely 100% sure it's the router anyway).
I'm with markfrei, in that i don't bother to return faulty electronics unless it was expensive :)
I bought a Sony Walkman MP3 player a while ago that I returned, not because the player itself wasn't awesome (it really was... sigh), but because the software was DRM-laden crap and there was no other way to transfer music to the thing. This was just before the Rootkit scandal. After that, I ended up boycotting Sony until the next Spider-Man movie came out, and then boycotting them again after.
Any other time, it's because I bought the wrong thing or didn't need it after all... or it was actually broken (once or twice).
I live surrounded by 'defective' electronics. Some waiting for repair for pay, some purchased to be rehabbed and re-sold. The vast majority of these items act totally dead but have one or possibly two easily corrected minor flaws. When I do occasionally find one that has to be parted out or discarded, it's a rare event worth remarking on. I can't begin to list the number of items that have gone from dead to perfect with minor scrutiny and effort.
I'm not going to give away all my trade secrets because if everyone could do this I'd need a different job. But here's an important hint in three words: "Any moving part"
My old sig file:
“I’ll RTFM when manufacturers learn to WTFM!”
Have you tried reading the average set of instructions that comes with most consumer electronics? When geeks have problems making heads-or-tails of your instructions, what makes you think that the average consumer is going to find them any less frustrating?
This is the kind of thing that makes it so that every time I go to Fry's I have to return what I buy 2 or 3 times, since what they sold me was previously returned and either actually broken or now missing parts.
Bit of a red-tape thing for some.
Like 'Rossindetroit', I can fix most items like that (either physicaly or software).
But some things I prefer to exercise the warrentee, even though you know it's mearly a loose ribbon, etc, I don't want to find myself returning in 6mths due to a real fault, to get told it's been 'tampered with'.
Also i've been there as 'Aliasundercover', again simple fixes, but still warrenteed. Usually things
that intermittantly die!
Routers are the most comman, one digit wrong (usually set to PPPoE instead of PPPoA, etc [UK]), and voila, on eBay as 'faulty'!
I work for Best Buy, and the next time a customer asks why we charge a restocking fee on a particular item, I'm going to print this article out and staple it to their forehead. Every item that comes back under these circumstances costs us big-time; if we can resell it at all, we can't charge much for something missing parts, without a box, etc.
I have noticed more and more, however, that product packaging will implore the consumer to contact the manufacturer before returning the product to the store. I've mainly seen this on automotive GPS units (as that's what I sell the most of), but it's probably popping up in other places as well. As a result, I am forced to assume that sometimes Best Buy then turns around and attempts to return merchandise to the manufacturer, which is now costing them money as well.
I bought a Sony Walkman MP3 player a while ago that I returned, not because the player itself wasn't awesome (it really was... sigh), but because the software was DRM-laden crap and there was no other way to transfer music to the thing.
You'll be glad to know that Sony has abandoned the DRM on their Walkman. I won a 2 gig as door prize at Project Celebration (after prom party) and it is amazing. Best MP3 player I've ever used, superb sound, very navigable- I like it much better than the iPod.
The severe mistake here is that they're counting devices as gadgets in perfect working order as long as they behave as intended by the manufacturer. But the truth is, a lot of them are defective even fresh from the factory. For example, you might not badly mind having to convert videos with a proprietary Windows application so they'll play on your new portable media player, but when some store clerk tells me the thing plays MP4 and is Mac compatible, and the next day I find out this is not the case, to me the thing is horribly broken and I return it. Same thing with the MP3 player that doesn't actually let you put MP3s on it. The manufacturer might try to save face by calling its customers stupid, but really it doesn't take visible cracks or glitches to make a device broken.