How Amazon Is Taming Its Customers’ Returns Addiction

Amazon made free returns an industry standard for online shopping, then the pandemic sent return rates soaring. Now, the company is trying to tame its returns beast without sparking customer backlash.

Illustration by Laurent Hrybyk.

When Amazon announced Wednesday that customers could soon start dropping off items they wanted to return at nearly 1,000 Staples stores, it touted the partnership as part of its decadeslong quest to make online shopping as easy as possible for consumers.

In reality, the Staples partnership is the result of a years-long effort by a team inside Amazon to drive down the cost of returns after they soared during the pandemic, one reason why the company’s North America business lost money last year. The mission included discouraging customers from returning items through UPS, which is especially expensive for Amazon.