Parcel carriers are helping e-tailers handle returns

By Staff -- Logistics Management, 11/1/2000

Last year, many Web merchants were overwhelmed with packages when droves of consumers began returning goods purchased online after the holidays. Now, just in time for Christmas, two of the nation's leading parcel-shipment carriers are offering new programs to help e-tailers handle returned merchandise more efficiently. Both programs ease the return of products ordered online by allowing consumers to print return labels on their home computers.

FedEx Express of Memphis, a subsidiary of FedEx Corp., has upgraded its NetReturn program to provide for consumer-generated labels. A customer who needs to return a package receives an authorization label via e-mail from a participating merchant, or downloads and prints a label from the merchant's Web site. Customers then drop off these packages at one of FedEx's 44,000 U.S. locations. A FedEx representative says that more than 150 e-tailers currently are participating in the NetReturn program.

United Parcel Service of Atlanta offers customers the option of printing an on-screen label from their home computers and then either returning the item to a UPS drop-off location or handing it to a route driver. Company spokesman Steve Holmes says UPS's service differs from FedEx's because it automates the returns process for online merchants. At its returns center, a merchant can tell from the bar code whether the item should be returned directly to the manufacturer. A merchant can also select a shipment-service level, such as ground or second-day air. Although UPS is limiting its returns program this year to a selected group of online merchants, it plans to roll it out on a broader basis in the first quarter of 2001.

In providing consumers with online return labels, FedEx and UPS join the U.S. Postal Service, which launched "Returns@ease" two years ago.