DigiTimes is reporting that Wal-Mart is considering whether to stop selling stand-alone GPS devices in the face of high customer returns. On average, vendors are seeing 25 percent return rates but Wal-Mart is seeing rates as high as 40-percent. These rates are much higher than they are for other electronic devices.
Other vendors such as Best Buy and Circuit City have implemented stricter return policies in an attempt to reduce return rates.
No reasons for the unusually high return rates were provided. It would be interesting to know if customers are finding the devices too difficult to use, not delivering on their promise, or if they are using them for a particular purpose (eg, holidays) and then returning them.