Is bloody stupid sales personnel who often know even less about the products they're selling than the folk trying to buy them.

Even if you are a stupid git, if it takes more then 20 minutes to get a DVD player working it IS defective.

I've had no less than five Asus motherboards fail in the last eighteen months and a similar number of PSU's which also managed to trash three AMD CPU's.

Consumers too "lazy" to set up gadgets properly? How about manufacturers that are too lazy to get proper instructions written and too mean to employ people who are competent to write instructions in the target language? And who don't update the instructions when they make changes to the gadget, and direct users to web sites that don't exist any more. Etc. etc., etc.

How many reviews do you read where the reviewer had some trouble in setting up the equipment properly? And these are (I suppose) experts. What hope do ordinary people have?

Is this a study for the UK, Europe, the world or the US?

If the US, it is no surprise. One would assume that returning goods on whim is written into the Constitution, seeing how often it happens.

I highly doubt that other countries suffer from comparable rates of return.

"Lazy consumers blamed for most product returns" -- This is more about poor user interface design than consumers being lazy.

Say what you like about apple but at least their consumer products are usable by real people with better things to do that read a 1000-page instruction manual.

Sounds to me as if companies need to pay more attention to the description they give their products, ensuring no false expectations; and to the ease at which it can be instinctively set up by the non-technically minder punter, to achieve their desired result.

Imply your gadget does everything and leave the buyer with an indecipherable manual and 24 hours of head scratching / failed attempts, and what can one expect?

Presumably this could also be taken as an indication that many gadgets are pretty shoddy when it comes to ease of use. Maybe gadget manufacturers would spend more time and effort on such matters if it can be shown to have a significant adverse effect on the bottom line.

The number of times I've had to explain in depth what the problem with the device is, and then go round the loop again when I get 'no fault find'.

I've had a clock that had 12 hours in am and 10 in pm. The mouse that couldn't go rightwards and many more. Essentially obvious faults that have not been found. I wonder if the report accounts for the number of false negatives likely to occur?

The mouse was from W*tf*rd El*ctr*n*cs and they never did refund me for it.

I wonder how many people get home with a cool new MP3 player that won't work because they're still running ME and it's not compatible, or buy a nifty new wireless router only to find their home is made from solid lead so it can only be used line-of-sight?

Granted, products do tend to be labelled better nowadays (I find, at least) but to those not in the know the limitations of some gadgets may not always be apparent.

Then there are the products sold by implication -- like the (not particularly technical) friend of mine who bought an iPod touch, and was mislead by the adverts and such into thinking she could use the internet and email on the move (as it happens, she likes it anyhow). I'd have wound her up about it, but I've heard that kind of thing happen before.

I think the number of "faulty" returns due to customers having buyer's remorse is more like 80%.

I owned part of a PC clone making shop 15 or so years ago. For our own use (personal and in-shop) we would buy returned merchandise from our suppliers at about 25 cents on the dollar. About 75% of that was OK, and that was from a wholesaler. People would order stuff then just not want it, or not understand how to use it, or decide it didn't do what they wanted, and claim it was 'defective'.

We never sold any of the stuff, that wouldn't have been honest, but we got some great deals ourselves that way. Heck, I got a 200 MEGABYTE hard drive for only a couple hundred bucks! It was HUGE!

the article says:

> in actual fact, 68 per cent of gadgets returned by buyers do work properly - they just don’t meet the customer’s expectations or were set-up incorrectly.

Er, no:

If they don't meet the customer's expectations (eg because the marketing is a pack of lies),

or they're not set up correctly (because the customer can't work this out),

then you can maybe still claim that they work "as intended" but - repeat after me -

THEY DO NOT WORK PROPERLY.

Bah, spoilt brats that spend days setting up Tamagotchi/Sims/WoW characters yet don't have the patience to put the batteries in the right way round.

Setting up a new box like a DVD player is fairly easy - it's getting all the SCART leads in the right places and not falling out that takes time. That and the new bit of kit won't work with the Freeview box plugged inline with the TV and it wants the AV input that the games console is in. Now it's all in place (and the SCART connectors that started easing out back in again) there's a new hum on the audio side.

BT gave me a new Freeview box with a pair of them 'network through the mains' boxes. Now I've got to put a filter on the hi-fi to stop the noise from the network coming from the mains. Bah!

Surely if a DVD player still "doesn't work" after 20 minutes fiddling then it should be returned as malfunctioning. Just because the hardware isn't broken doesn't mean that it's actually fit for purpose.

Good user interface design is key as to whether your product is a success or a failure.

If a manufacturer is getting a high rate of returns even though the hardware is still working, it suggests that they need to look at how userable their product really is!

Especially over the internet, but returns of a product that doesn't do what the sales blurb says is a PITA unless you call it a product failure.

Other reasons that I've had to return products:

1) no way to ask it if supports what I want (Linux)

2) it doesn't work properly (a 3D graphics card that does 2D fine but glitches on 3D), declared "not faulty" because it boots to the 2D desktop...

3) defective manufacture on software CD (CD substrate has a hole in it so doesn't install, but "we don't accept software returns").

I strongly believe that the customer is being an idiot more often than not. Fair enough with the Car example yeah you expect it to work. But if on your 17th Birthday you were given the keys to a car and asked to drive 200 miles you would probably struggle, assuming you have never had any driving experience. But seeing as you have had the months of practice learning how to drive then the car does work for you But Clearly you have never had experience with BMW's idrive. If you are technically minded then setting up a DVD player will not be a problem.

Anyway I digress. Customers need to have a certain level of patience when it comes to these things, they should not gove up. Most people have the Internet so search for help there. as much of an idiot you are being there is someone else out there being just as stupid and forums usually can come up with the answer.

But Buyers remorse is a a big factor too.

The problem with saying RTFM, is that you can't until you've bought the product! :)

Often there is no way to tell whether it will do you want, or what you expect, without getting it home and trying it out.

Never mind peripheral issues: if I buy a washing machine that washes perfectly, but is very noisy... well, no way I could have found that out without buying it. Same as a DVD recorder with a crappy interface, or a TV with a low sound volume.

My firm has been conducting professional usability testing for world-class clients since 1975. We have NEVER seen a case of the customer being the problem. We are talking about thousands of testing sessions exploring how customers interact with high technology products. Accenture is totally out to lunch. Their report is beyond embarrassing.

Robin, take it back to the nice Apple people - They will give you a new one. Generally they accept broken stuff, even when you have done it yourself, providing you are reasonable about it...

I suppose it's one excuse for unloading junk on those who can't afford it.

Al these people saying that if you cant figure it out in 20 mins then its design is flawed....

Its utter rubbish. tell me, when you learnt to drive... how long did it take?

When learning to use a PC... more than 20 minutes?

How about the first time you tried setting up a network...

What I'm getting at is that i work in retail and the line i end up having to repeat to people is:

"when you buy a car, do they teach you to drive it?"

You are not entitled to a refund of a product because you are incapable in using it. There's a reason that "techies" exist, and why people will set up a product for you at a cost.

Don't be stupid guys, i know most of you are intelligent and generally can handle most things, but just because you can't use something doesn't mean its faulty!

I have worked as a repair tech for many years and have seen a lot of things other commenters have mentioned. Yes, there are poorly designed products, oversold products and just plain stupid people trying to use them.

But the last 20 years' worth of electronics products seem to suffer from a surprisingly large number of intermittent problems. Some caused by heat, others by physical poor connections within components and a great number of simple poor solder connections.

Yes, I have fixed a lot of stuff simply by resoldering a lot of connections. Very often, a 5-minute test will not show a faulty product. Is that what Accenture are doing, performing a simple 5-minute test?

Very often, a returned product will be tested briefly, labled "remanufactured" (I didn't know that was possible) and sent out to be resold at a discount. The product is bought by another unsuspecting person and then the whole process may start over again.

I find the way that we are measuring "quality" to be lacking. If it works at the end of the assembly line, it is considered "good quality". Never mind that it will fail after an hour of operating time.

In other words, what to you expect for the cheap price? The people that make and sell this stuff know this, and "have our number".

I used to have a Motorola mobile.

Took 1 minute to boot up and then my contacts were listed alphabetically from B-Z, A.

Were these faults? To me that is an eternity to boot and there was clearly no software testing so it looks like there was an array indexing problem.

I'm abnormally tolerant of these things so lived with the phone for a year then upgraded back toa Nokia and swore never to touch a Motorola again.

Others might have returned the phone as faulty.

Don't just blame the customer. It isn't enough for something to be in working order; the customer also needs to have a fighting chance of getting it going. I've lost count of the number of times I've bought hardware, only to find out, say, that the "manual" is minimal, or generic for several models and with instructions/diagrams that don't match the one I have. Or that install software for computer hardware isn't as per the manual, and I'm left to guess at some of the steps. Frankly, if I'm not given simple, clear and, most of all, accurate instructions that I can follow to get something working, then I'm not remotely interested in whether or not a technician who's more familiar with the piece of kit can then look at it and discover that it's in perfect working order - as far as I'm concerned, it's junk, and any supplier that wants a hope of my future business had better be prepared to take it back without a fuss. Oh, and, yes, in the process I've had time to take a good look at it, and spot things I don't like, and maybe even to have second thoughts about whether I need it. That's neither my fault nor my problem.

@Daniel: You can easily teach the average person to drive a car in 20 minutes; that is, how to go forward and backward, how to turn, when to change gear and what the buttons do. The hours of driving lessons are to teach you the rules of the road and how to drive confidently.

Some products are complex and some learning time should be expected, like computers; some are not, like electric toothbrushes. DVD players somewhere in the middle but tending towards the toothbrush end of the scale.

Who's gonna believe anything they put out as "fact"?!

in what's called a "rental". Buy something, use it for the day/two days, then return it for (in most cases) a full refund. Stores that have "restocking fees" have much, much lower return rates.

Plus, you can blame it on the "instant gratification" crowd. Media crams adverts into peoples' heads every waking moment. Psychologically designed campaigns to program people into buying something-something that doesn't add any value to their life-and once the purchase is made, the program is complete, and another "buy buy BUY" campaign is trying to take over mindshare.