Is the customer always right?

There’s been a lot of discussion on a couple of my author loops lately about a petition started by some self-pubbed authors that’s reportedly signed by 2000 or more authors and (small?) publishers. The petition is asking Amazon to change its policy over returns of digital books.

Opinions are heated on the pro-petition side, and IMHO well-reasoned and thoughtful on the anti-petition side. (Can you tell which side I’m on? Yes, you’ve guessed it. I haven’t signed and don’t plan to.)

The authors organizing this are asserting that Amazon customers are downloading books, either reading them or stripping the DRM and copying them, and then returning them for full refunds. And the thing is, because e-books are sold on commission, when the customer returns a book to the retailer, the retailer also returns it to the publisher. (Whether that publisher is what we traditionally think of as a “publisher”, or an “author”. )

So, when author sees her kindle book sales, she can see a deduction for returns.

Unscrupulous people have always been able to consume certain goods (including books) and then return them. Yes, in the digital world, such unscrupulous behavior is much easier than it’s ever been. But I think most people are honest.

And the thing is, easy returns have been a common business practice in retail, especially in “bargain” retail, for decades. No questions asked return policies are common in most big box stores and so it’s obvious to me that Amazon had to adopt such a policy when they started in order to compete. In fact, such policies are even more important for online retailers, because customers can’t touch or flip through or feel or try on goods purchased online until they’re delivered. Because of this, I’d assert that Amazon wouldn’t have survived past a few months or years if they hadn’t allowed customers to return goods.

Long before I started to write, I was a fan of Amazon as a customer. Did I guess that I’d ever buy a purse or shoes from them when I made my first purchase? No. But I have. Did I guess that I’d have a problem and have to fight with them to get my money back? Yes. But I was wrong. Not about having a problem. About having to fight… I’ve returned goods to Amazon a few times without hassle. And once, when a package arrived empty, obviously opened by a box-cutter, I prepared myself to have to send photos of the damaged envelope and argue my case, but all I had to do was report that the package had arrived empty, and I had a replacement book within a few days. No questions asked. Yes, I could have been lying. But I wasn’t. And I fully believe that I’m in the vast majority of how people deal with them.

I admit that I was nervous (back in the 90′s) the first time I pressed that “buy” button for a book on Amazon and gave them my credit card number. But the immediate feedback that they’d received my order; the notification when my order had shipped; the fact that the book arrived when they said it would; the easy-to-spot information on how to contact customer services if I had a problem, gave me confidence to click that buy button again and again. And once I started ordering books online, I admit, I was hooked. Don’t even get me started on buying DVDs that way. Or e-books…

I still love browsing bookstores, and I don’t think anything will ever replace that–and I hope we never lose indie bookstores, in particular–but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about whether or not Amazon should let customers return e-books.

And I say yes. My publisher gives me access to my detailed kindle sales numbers. Do I hate it when I see that a reader has returned my e-book? Sure I do. It hurts both my feelings and my pocketbook. And I have no way of knowing whether they returned it because they clicked buy by accident, or read it all the way through and returned it, (rubbing their hands together in nefarious glee), or started to read it, hated it and returned it… I have no way of knowing.

But I also believe that while an easy return policy opens the door for dishonest people to read my books for free–basically stealing from me–I also believe that the easy return option increases all customers’ confidence, increasing the chance that they’ll buy in the first place.

And Amazon isn’t dumb. They flag accounts that have an unusual number of returns and contact the customer with a polite letter that doesn’t accuse, but suggests that the customer contact someone in customer services to clear up whatever problem they’re having that’s causing them to buy and return so many books. I’ve seen a copy of this letter at Digital Book World.

And we know from the fake-review scandal that Amazon can’t be fooled by someone having multiple accounts. They can track customers by IP address. Yes, criminals can find a way around any of these safeguards (the same way that shoplifters can find a way around security systems at physical stores). But I still assert that criminals are in the minority and that if Amazon stopped letting everyone return books because of the criminal behavior of a few, then customer confidence to buy would go down, and thus, total book sales would go down. Which would hurt us all.

Is the customer always right? No. But the modern retail business is driven by this philosophy. And since retailers haven’t all gone bankrupt from consumers abusing this policy, the truth must be: The customer is almost always right.