But having to return something is an impact on me, and they know that statistically most of I will probably not bother.
There should be some sort of penalty for inflicting the damage after the sale besides merely nulling the sale.
Now I have to find another tv, and until I finish the return and shop and install process, I have either a defective tv or no tv, which screwed up any plans I made involving it.
Meanwhile, I did not get to mess with the money I paid for the tv after I paid it. It went into the manufacturers posession and I never got to touch it again, take some back, change the interest rate it's earning, change what stocks or equipment it was spent on...
Being able to return for refund is great, but it doesn't actually make you whole, and the damage done to your property and your use of your property was deliberate and unnecessary. (not an accident or honest failure or act of god, but a knowing choice to damage property owned by someone else.)
Getting the money back and no more is like getting punched in the face, and all you get for that is you get to make them stop punching you in the face.
And the damage may or may not be a mere trivial annoyance.
This is a contrived example, but ALL examples are contrived and yet countless real examples exist and happen all the time, so the contrived nature is irrelevant:
What if for example the tv were used as part of a recording process monitoring a long-running experiment that was either very expensive to set up, or whose results are important, not just money important but Important, and can't be replicated except by starting over which may require time no one has like years, and the banner ad obscured a critical part of the image and blew the whole process?
You can't just say "you shouldn't construct something so important with consumer parts". It's true but it doesn't get the property damager off the hook, since it's still a fact that the damage didn't happen by itself as a natural proprerty of the fact that a device was sourced from BestBuy, the damage happened because the manufacturer chose to actively cause the damage.
That's unreasonable, wouldn't be practical, and goes against precedent.
The analogy here is if you buy a vacuum cleaner from a store and it doesn't work because of a defect. You bring it back and get your money back.
The store isn't required to provide you with another working vacuum cleaner. If the vacuum cleaner is no longer manufactured, they're not required to find one in mint condition on eBay that's 10x or 100x the price.
If you got to consume the media you bought for months/years and you get a full refund, I'd say you have nothing to complain about.
It depends. Basically as long as you fulfill corporation's criteria for return you should not have any moral issues with it. For example for digital items there can be zero possible negatives in using returns. The problem arises with physical items - some corporations repackage returned items and sell them as new. So people buy a dress to actually wear it (so the dress was fine and the size was fine) and then return, or buy electronics to use and then return are harming future buyers. Indirectly of course.
Again, it is not incorrect to return electronics in general. I've did it once too, I bought a wifi range extender and after observing that it simply didn't work at all in my setup, I've returned it. At the same time there are people buying TVs just to watch some sport event and then returning it. Are we doing essentially the same thing? Technically yes. But for me personally if feels differently.
Indeed. Sounds good in principle, but how do you prevent someone from repeatedly returning items just to hurt a competitor and/or making frivolous defect/warranty claims against them?
Vendors that have a large amount of returns are often penalized by the store. Returning the product (if possible) would have a much bigger impact than you getting a $10 merchandise credit to cover the value of the “change in functionality”. You’d also have more money to buy a different TV…
> It’s potentially easier to destroy or dump a returned product than re-preparing it for sale.
Why can't returned goods be resold as "open box" or "scratch and dent" products with missing or damaged packaging for a significant discount? Surely making some money is better than paying to dispose of it - not to mention the terrible optics when you get caught.
This starts to make sense to me after reading the sister comments. Within the return period, environmentally it does make sense (CO2 costs of shipping a large TV aren't negligible). I may not be savvy enough, if I see an item I bought on sale I don't think "I should return this and buy the same item" but it does make perfect sense to do so.
If i see an item I bought on sale I think "damn, I missed out", but a rational consumer (economics sense) would think "I should return this and buy another". I just approached the question from my typical viewpoint, which is "you buy it, you own it" and not expecting any additional customer support.
That, and social anxiety means I would be far more comfortable paying the extra $400 than bugging an associate for a refund.
Wow that’s really entitled behavior. When you buy something, the intention is for you to own that item. It isn’t a trial period meant to facilitate an in-home shopping experience. It’s tacky to make it a habit of regularly returning things where the reason for the return could have been prevented.
It costs a lot of money to process returns for a retailer, and that cost is often written down. It’s meant to be an exception during the sales process (not a normal condition) and offered as a curtosey, not a defacto right.
I'm in Australia. Although we're covered by what I consider to be pretty good consumer guarantees, you can still only demand a refund in the case of a "major problem" with the product.
I don't think simply being unhappy with it connecting outside would qualify, although IMO it should.
Returning merchandise should be illegal and allowing returns is basically a privately levied tax on those who make good purchase decisions and a subsidy to the impulse buyer.
It's a real tradeoff. On the one hand, a liberal return policy is great for consumers. But if its abused its a source of enormous fraud and waste. Unfortunately I doubt there any good solution to the problem.
Same. Well, just the first point. I've returned a ton of stuff from many sellers without a problem and sometimes I was not required to return the actual object (I just got money back).
> For example, in Australia there exists laws that mandates that retailers either exchange or refund when products are "not fit for purpose" or "faulty", this simple law has eliminated a whole heap of bullshit products that doesn't work because people simply return them.
Consider the trade off you're making. Without that law, some retailers will have more generous return policies than others, and the first group will have higher prices (because the policy costs them money). If you prefer that, you patronize one of those retailers, and they don't carry those products because they don't want the returns.
But once you pass the law, the second category of retailers goes away. And they had lower prices, even for the items that weren't garbage.
Sure, but in that case, they also have information about whether I've returned the TV or not. If I haven't, it doesn't make nearly as much sense to keep recommending me TVs. Even if your ML algorithm thinks I'm going to return it, it still seems like you'd do better on a percentage basis to keep showing me sound bars, HDMI cables, and other accessories. After all, I bought a TV because I intended to buy a TV. That means I'm probably going to need some of those things to go with it, likely with far greater than 10-15% probability.
I suppose there's a possibility that your ML algorithm could decide that the profit from selling a TV so greatly exceeds that of the accessories that a 10-15% probability of preserving the sale in case of a return might be more worth it, but I don't really know the ins and outs of retail ecommerce to make a judgement there. It still just seems silly to me. ¯\_(?)_/¯
I'm with you to an extent - in that if I've thought the purchase over, and made the purchase in sound mind and then just decided I don't fancy it any more, it's bad form to return the product.
On the other hand, I like liberal return laws because we're getting increasingly good at manipulating people with marketing. Giving people the opportunity to realise that the product doesn't make them feel as amazing as the marketing implied is probably useful.
> the official return policy has little bearing on what the employees are empowered to do.
Employees may be empowered but that doesn't mean they'll help. It's a lot of trouble to take your TV off the wall, get all the accessories together, and cart it in to the store. If the employee on duty doesn't feel like helping, you're out of luck.
So you damaged the item from your own carelessness and then returned it next day to get a new one? Why did they accept it? Mistakes happen, but why should the store be liable for this? Further, is this not fraud?
This is reminding me of my friend who because of the work-from-home orders wanted a standing desk. He buys one, uses it everyday and then returns it a day before the last return day. He’s on his 5th one now. He absolutely has the money (software engineer). To me that’s outright fraud.
People who abuse return policies likely increase the prices for everyone.
I see a few comments going both ways here - punish the returners, etc., but I don’t think punishment is really the right concept. When places like Zappos encourage people to buy extra just to return the excess, you can’t blame people for getting used to online shopping this way.
That said, I do agree with the general idea that serial returners should bear some of the additional costs (just not via punishment). I can’t recall the retailer, but I remember buying something from a brand that had the option of “free returns,” which, if selected, would add a small percentage onto the overall price. If you didn’t select it, returns would be even higher out-of-pocket. I think the idea was that not everyone who selected the option would actually return items, but having the option was a premium lots of folks would pay for.
There should be some sort of penalty for inflicting the damage after the sale besides merely nulling the sale.
Now I have to find another tv, and until I finish the return and shop and install process, I have either a defective tv or no tv, which screwed up any plans I made involving it.
Meanwhile, I did not get to mess with the money I paid for the tv after I paid it. It went into the manufacturers posession and I never got to touch it again, take some back, change the interest rate it's earning, change what stocks or equipment it was spent on...
Being able to return for refund is great, but it doesn't actually make you whole, and the damage done to your property and your use of your property was deliberate and unnecessary. (not an accident or honest failure or act of god, but a knowing choice to damage property owned by someone else.)
Getting the money back and no more is like getting punched in the face, and all you get for that is you get to make them stop punching you in the face.
And the damage may or may not be a mere trivial annoyance.
This is a contrived example, but ALL examples are contrived and yet countless real examples exist and happen all the time, so the contrived nature is irrelevant:
What if for example the tv were used as part of a recording process monitoring a long-running experiment that was either very expensive to set up, or whose results are important, not just money important but Important, and can't be replicated except by starting over which may require time no one has like years, and the banner ad obscured a critical part of the image and blew the whole process?
You can't just say "you shouldn't construct something so important with consumer parts". It's true but it doesn't get the property damager off the hook, since it's still a fact that the damage didn't happen by itself as a natural proprerty of the fact that a device was sourced from BestBuy, the damage happened because the manufacturer chose to actively cause the damage.
reply