According to the management consulting firm, product returns cost U.S. consumer electronics retailers and manufacturers nearly $17 billion this year, an increase of 21% since 2007.

Included in the $17 billion are costs associated with “receiving, assessing, repairing, reboxing, restocking and reselling returned products,” Accenture reports. Product return rates over the past three to five years have increased for 57% of the retailers and 43% of the manufacturers surveyed by Accenture.

If there’s any positive news for the industry, it’s that just 5% of returns are related to actual product defects, Accenture says. Indeed, 27% of returns reflect “buyer’s remorse” and 68% of returns are characterized as “No Trouble Found.” Accenture calculates that just a 1% reduction in the number of “No Trouble Found” cases could save a typical large manufacturer about $21 million in return and repair costs or $16 million for an average consumer electronics retailer.

“These high consumer electronics return rates are unsustainable in a sector with brutal competition and thin margins,” said Mitch Cline, managing direction of Accenture’s Electronics & High-Tech group in a press release. “Manufacturers and retailers would do more to differentiate their customer service by helping consumers understand, set up, use and optimize the products they purchase.”

Along those lines, Accenture recommends that companies attack the problem by measuring the impact of returns, developing customer product-education classes, offering delivery and set-up services for consumers, creating simpler product designs, investing in customer service, and providing multiple service options.

By Edward C. Baig, USA Today

The first story is about connecting the dots.I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

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