When an Amazon Return Burns your Business: Beau & Belle and the Dirty Diaper Dilemma

Countless products are purchased on Amazon every single day. Oftentimes, you just want to try something out. You order two sizes and plan on returning what doesn't fit. OR, even worse, you plan on using/wearing something once, then sending it back. Y'know, once that weeklong, Borat mankini phase is over.

First off, gross. But like, okay, you do you. It's not like the item is going right back on the shelves without getting washed or sanitized or something, RIGHT? It's definitely going to be checked before someone else buys, right?

You do remember this is Amazon we're talking about, and evil or not, with the magnitude of items coming in and out of their warehouses, something is bound to fall through the cracks.

And that's where our story begins: something slipping through the cracks, as it were.

But- let's rewind first.

Paul and Rachelle Baron founded Beau & Belle's Littles around a decade ago, selling washable swim diapers on Amazon in a seeming small-business success story. Then, in 2020, came the review.

Someone received a diaper that had been "clearly used" and returned. It was covered in stains. Pictures were attached.

And though the review did admit:

"I am assuming someone returned it after using it and the company simply did not check the item and then shipped it to us as if it was brand new."

The damage was done.

Helpful click by helpful click, this review became more powerful. The user knew Amazon was at fault, the Barons knew Amazon was at fault, but Amazon would not remove the review, though it technically violated community guidelines by punishing the company for Amazon's return inspection process.

The Barons reached out to the user to amend or remove the review, but according to Bloomberg:

"I always meant to go back and revise my review to reflect that, and life got busy and I never did,"

And so sales plummeted and debt soared.

As of this writing, the review has NOW been removed, but the impact crater cannot be filled in. The business has forever been stained.

So while Amazon is at fault, so are the people who returned an irredeemably used product. Look, we all kinda hate Amazon, and we all try to stretch our dollars (that's why we read reviews in the first place!), but returning something that WE have soiled, stained, or otherwise used to the extent that NO ONE ELSE should use it? There's no class in that.