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A Washington Post article claims programs enabling Amazon customers to return merchandise to Kohl’s, Staples, Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh, and The UPS Store locations for free are “turning store associates’ jobs into a retail horror story.”
Store workers told the newspaper that Amazon package returners — reportedly tagged as “Amazombies” by associates — have “become a plague on their working lives, wasting staff time without increasing revenue while creating long lines, fraying tempers, and generating piles of boxes and plastic waste.”
The report detailed the hours spent scanning, labeling, bagging, and boxing returns for pickup, with some locations seeing hundreds of returns a day. Some returnees — known as bracketers — bring over a dozen returns at a time after purchasing multiple versions of an item on Amazon with the intention of keeping only one and returning the rest.
Many store associates feel they’re absorbing the brunt of customer-service frustration for Amazon, a company they don’t directly work for.
The report highlighted a petition that started last year and has been signed by nearly 5,000 Staples workers calling for more staffing or an end to the Amazon partnership. The petition states, “We simply cannot perform our jobs because of lines of Amazon returns. They brought in more foot traffic, but there are ways to do that without strengthening our greatest competitor and throwing away our productivity.”
The Washington Post article also noted that activist shareholders since 2021 have expressed skepticism over Kohl’s partnership with Amazon. The group, led by Macellum Advisors, wrote in a press release, “From an outside perspective, we have seen the program increase SG&A and yet revenue has seen little if any observable benefit.”
Regardless, most coverage of Amazon’s in-store returns program in recent years has highlighted positive traffic benefits for retailers participating in the program.
Kohl’s, which began testing the program in 2017 and rolled it out nationwide in 2019, indicated that at least 2 million new customers visited Kohl’s stores in 2020 due to its acceptance of Amazon returns, with about a third being millennials. Last year, Kohl’s CFO Jill Timm said in an earnings call that accepting Amazon returns continued to support efforts to drive traffic.
When announcing the expansion of Amazon returns to all Staples’ locations in June 2023 after a pilot, Craig Grayson, SVP of services at Staples US Retail, said in a statement, “Our suite of in store services continues to expand. We look forward to offering a fast and convenient return experience while showcasing our evolution to Amazon customers.”
In revealing last October that Petco was piloting an Amazon returns program, GeekWire said that for retailers, “inking these deals with Amazon helps bring customers into their stories — though after they’ve bought products from their retail rival. Some offer in-store coupons to Amazon customers making returns at their store.”
UPS reportedly charges Amazon for the service. Last year, Amazon customers who live near a Kohl’s, Staples, Whole Foods, or Amazon Fresh started being charged a dollar if they returned items via a UPS Store.
Still, the overall practice of BORIS (buy online, return in-store) may be challenging for stores, even for packages bought on a retailer’s own website. A study last year led by researchers at the University of Portsmouth supported by the ECR Community Shrinkage and On-Shelf Availability Group concluded that with the additional staff and space requirements, “returns from online sales, particularly returns to store, are seriously impacting company profits.”