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Stamps.com Rolls Out Return Solution

Stamps.com Monday introduced two services to help online merchants efficiently and cost-effectively manage large volumes of merchandise returns.

The iReturn Merchant Service is designed for e-commerce sellers with annual sales of more than $25 million. This customized electronic return management solution can be seamlessly embedded into any major merchant's Web site, allowing the merchant access to the shipping services of private and public carriers.

The iReturn services will be available for the 2000 holiday shopping season.

The solutions were devised to combat consumer dissatisfaction with returning online purchases, according Kim Parks, senior vice president and general manager, Stamps.com e-commerce strategic business unit.

"Many merchants have yet to conquer the costly and frustrating customer experience related to returning and exchanging merchandise," said Parks. "According to a Jupiter Communications survey in which 2,000 Internet shoppers ranked their top 12 sources of dissatisfaction with e-commerce Web sites, the fifth-greatest concern was returning merchandise.

"Jupiter also found that 40 percent of those surveyed indicated they would buy more online if they could return items easily," Parks added. "With the expertise Stamps.com has built around e-commerce and shipping, it is natural to leverage our technology throughout the supply chain and provide Internet merchants with a dynamic solution to one of their growing problems, reverse logistics."

Both services are built on Stamps.com's multi-carrier rating, shipping, tracking and postage engines, which support a complete national footprint of carrier services from United Parcel Service, U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, Airborne Express, Yellow Freight and DHL.