I would LOVE to buy furniture online, but the kickers are that quality is so hit or miss (usually miss), and there are expensive penalties in the form of return

I would LOVE to buy furniture online, but the kickers are that quality is so hit or miss (usually miss), and there are expensive penalties in the form of return shipping fees. So I usually avoid it because I'm not ok paying $50-$100+ just to find out the photography was misleading so the colors are all wrong, and the built quality is exceptionally cheap. I don't mind buying online as long as there are free in-store returns, but that tends to limit me to things like Target, Bed Bath, and a couple others. Some, like West Elm are really sneaky here. A lot of their items are just in a warehouse and are "web only." If it isn't a local warehouse, they don't do free in-store returns, so you again get hit with the ridiculous fee. I hope to god Amazon does something with free in-store returns with all the Whole Foods real estate they purchased. If you could drop something off (and not worry about packaging it up for return shipping with FedEx), have them handle the return and be done with it, that would save me a lot of headaches AND make me spend a lot more for large online furniture purchases. In the meantime, I've started experimenting with Modsy, which is great because they have 3d renderings of all the products from various stores, so at least I know the dimensions will be right, and the color should hopefully be a bit more on point. It also lets me visualize it in my space with lots of other stuff which is half the problem. Seriously, the renderings have to be seen to be believed.