Holiday Buying Season Hangover! It’s the Time of Year to Kick Yourself Over Online Shopping

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Most of us probably spent the 2023 holiday season  helping to break a record. Online shopping hit a new high, raking in $222.1 billion from the start of November to the end of December. And there is no sign of e-commerce slowing down. The ease of scrolling through websites at any time of day continues to trump the hassle of the in-person shopping experience: commuting, long lines, lugging around shopping bags and poor customer service — just to name a few annoyances. Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that online shopping will make up 33% of retail sales in the US in the next three years and that 60% of the increase will be driven by digitally native shops such as Amazon.com Inc. and SheIn Group Ltd. 

But as online-only retailers become more popular, a huge drawback is becoming more apparent: the inconvenience of returns. It's that time of the year, just after the holidays when droves of shoppers make the pilgrimage to shipping centers to send back  unwanted items. The original rush of making an online purchase is quickly replaced with irritation, as shoppers come to terms with the reality of not having a brick-and-mortar store where they can go to exchange or return holiday purchases. Instead, they have to repackage air fryers and sweaters and find time in their busy schedules to lug them to their local post office, FedEx Corp. or United Parcel Service Inc.

We are now on WhatsApp. Click to join.

Added to this headache is free returns becoming rare, which forces consumers to pay to have an unwanted item shipped to wherever it needs to go. For instance, the online-only thrift store ThredUp Inc. raised its restocking fee from $1.99 to $3.99 last year, Amazon introduced a $1 fee on some returns made at UPS stores if shoppers