Customer Returns – Expectation vs. Reality

When I first started working in ARLL and in this business, of selling customer returned stocks, it was very hard for me to understand how is this possible…to sell products that have been rejected by customers of a retail store and I could not grasp what “customer returns” really means. It took me 3 months to learn the definition, but the learning was not over.

For the past 5 years I have been acquiring information with every sale of returns I make and with every feedback I get from my customers.

Purchasing and re-selling returned stock is a very tricky business. The fact is our customers have very different expectations for this kind of products. Some of them know that they will get a stock where they will throw some of the items to the bin, they will use some of them as spare parts, they will test, clean and repair a certain percentage and just put on display some others – since they are as good as new. This is the happiest of the expectations and the happiest scenario of the reality as well.

Taking into consideration the fact that these goods are described as untested, the purchaser can get 100% faulty products or 100% working products or a mix of these, but nobody can give any guarantees or percentages as nobody tests them or sifts them.

Usually, the companies that look for this kind of stock expect to get minimum 90% working products and are very disappointed when they receive the stock, up to a point where they start threatening and insulting the sales agent etc – but this is another topic we will discuss in a future article.

Bottom line is ARLL and its agents cannot take the fault when a customer is unhappy for the quality of the returns. The Account Managers present the stocks to the best of their knowledge, offer the formal definitions (Customer returns – Definitions) and all the variables so that the customer can be prepared for the best, but also the worst of possible scenarios.