How our After Sales team gives products a second life

What’s involved in the dealing with returned products? To find out, I make my way over to our After Sales department in Dintikon. I’m on the second floor when amazement stops me in my tracks for the first time. Next to a returned barbecue, lawnmowers, coolers and loads of other products are heaped on top of a trolley.

Nderim’s work station is right beside it. His attention is focused on a used vacuum cleaner, its filter, dust brush and pipe choked with hair and dust. The repaired vacuum cleaner is due to go back on sale, so it needs to be cleaned – meticulously so. Cloths, tweezers and a steam cleaner all have a place in Nderim’s work toolkit. The steam cleaner snorts as it attacks the course dirt. Nderim spends several minutes skilfully working the yellow, gun-shaped device into even the smallest nooks and crannies. With the most obvious flecks of dirt gone, hair and stubborn dust particles are removed using tweezers and a cloth. It quickly becomes clear that there’s a lot of effort involved in taking a used product and reselling it as «used + tested» lower than the original price. Throwing away a device that’s in full working order, however, would be criminal.

Keeping buyer’s remorse at a low level

The vacuum cleaner’s fate isn’t supposed to befall any other product. The goal at Digitec Galaxus is to sell durable products without warranty claims, while keeping buyer’s remorse at a minimum. We aim to achieve the latter by way of clever filters and good product descriptions. What’s also very important is the work of the editorial team. They put the products in our range through their paces, not hesitating to give criticism or praise where it’s due. And then there’s our Community, where customers share advice and competently answer each other’s questions. These days, 70,000 questions are answered every month. Despite all this, I’m told by Head of After Sales & Retail Lauritz Fricke that around 2% of all the items sold on our shop are returned. However, this is apparently a good figure. On Galaxus Deutschland, for instance, the number rises to 5%. «The online shopping mentality in Germany is completely different to how it is here», says Lauritz. Our neighbours in the north are much more accustomed to returning things.

Alongside Nderim, 50 repair pros work in the After Sales department in Dintikon. The teams work hard to get the products back on to our shop. They’re successful in about 95% of cases, managing to resell the items as «new + tested» or «used + tested». But what about the other 5%?

Reducing waste to the minimum

A small percentage has to be thrown away. Today, there are some old toners, car batteries, two TVs, lamps and a couple of other electronic devices lying around in the disposal room. Despite our best intentions, there’s nothing we can do to restore them. «We’ll send them on to our recycling partner to have them broken down into individual parts and returned to the material flow», Lauritz explains as we tour the building. The quantity of items that accumulates over a week is manageable. Especially when you consider that ten thousand parcels make it out of our warehouse on a daily basis.

Since last week, when they were last emptied, none of the boxes have been refilled. Anyone under the impression that mountains of rubbish pile up here is barking up the wrong tree. «In the past, we had more customers sending back faulty TVs under warranty claims. Screens were often smashed in transport because they were wrapped inadequately. For some time now, we’ve been working with a partner company which collects the devices from the customers directly», Lauritz explains. This way, we can avoid a huge amount of electronic scrap.

Not far from the scrap corner, there are several trollies marked «donations». They’re stacked with items that are no longer worth reintroducing to the shop. Where they certainly don’t belong, however, is the scrapheap. They’re donated to partner companies such as Projekt Restwert, a non-profit which helps people in difficult circumstances with professional and social reintegration. For a certain period of time, Restwert offers service users meaningful work and teaches them the competences required in commercial and logistical fields. Those working for the organisation put a lot of passion into restoring the products Digitec Galaxus donates. They also photograph them, create suitable descriptions and offer them on various resale platforms. Successfully so, as recent years have demonstrated.

The now-clean hoover isn’t destined for the donation trolley. Following a clean-up operation with steam, tweezers, cloths and running water, it’s ready to be resold on our shop. Since it’s already been well used, Nderim describes its condition so that customers know just what to expect from their bargain purchase.