4 ms·

We cannot accept your return, Mr. Costanza; this book has been flagged. This only stops gormless shoppers from making reasonable returns. Everyone else will d

We cannot accept your return, Mr. Costanza; this book has been flagged. This only stops gormless shoppers from making reasonable returns. Everyone else will do a chargeback for credit purchases, or file a complaint in small claims for cash purchases. The moxious will call their credit card company right at the returns desk and ask if they need a photograph of the posted return policy.

gknoy 9y ago
> The moxious will call their credit card company right at the returns desk and ask if they need a photograph of the posted return policy. Thank you! That's an excellent suggestion!
kalcode 9y ago
Well if you do and you constantly do chargebacks then you will get hit with fraud from your credit card company.
- cwkoss 9y ago
  What does it mean for a CC company to 'hit' someone 'with fraud'?
  - kalcode 9y ago
    They hit you with 'Chargeback fraud'. They can cancel your card, put it on your credit history redcord and can choose to press charges.
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      Has this actually happened to you or any of your acquaintances? The retail-dispute resolution clauses of most credit agreements are very biased towards the consumer. If you can document that you made at least one good-faith effort at resolving the issue yourself before requesting that the credit issuer handle it for you, then the retailer has to overcome the presumption that the customer is always right in the arbitration. As it's all about the money and private agreements, it is always possible that someone who has more of it than you could use it to buy a more favorable outcome. But it is also very unlikely that anyone would ever see a criminal indictment over credit fraud before the damages exceed thousands of dollars. No credit company wants to lose customers because they got a reputation for grassing on their customers, but they would want to discourage their petty frauds--they know they have some, with statistical certainty--from growing worse by occasionally prosecuting the worst of the grand frauds. If HSBC can knowingly launder drug money, and Wells Fargo can knowingly open fake accounts, a credit bank can knowingly screw the retailer when one of their credit customers does a bogus chargeback just because the cashier was rude at the checkout. I won't say bogus chargebacks are not a problem, but there is a threshold below which it does not negatively affect the revenue of the bank, so no one there will be paid to care about it. A computer program might evaluate it. It might get randomly selected for human auditing. And most people are mostly honest, so the fraud rate would still be low, even if no one policed it more than a token amount. The credit banks's mission isn't to catch the frauds; it's to make money. So they catch just the right amount of frauds in order to make the most money.
devy 9y ago
Most return policies these days has provisions that say they reserve the right to refuse returns. Also it's a huge hassle to go through a small claim court or call credit card companies (even credit card companies flags you if you make repeated calls for chargebacks.)
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Those processes are also burdensome to the retailer. That's the whole point of accepting returns in the first place, because it reduces hassle for everyone. If you stop accepting returns, you're back to the old way of doing things, plus your old customer is also blasting your intransigence over social media and driving new customers away. If I can't return an item, I will be much more cautious about buying in the first place. As I am already very cheap, that usually means the time horizon for me to make a buying decision now spans well beyond the time I am spending in the store. Which means I will be elsewhere when thinking about a purchase. Which means that when I finally do decide to buy, I then have to decide from where. Even if I never return an item, reducing the consequences of me making a wrong choice when buying something makes me more likely to actually spend my money. This means liberal return policies, price-match guarantees, in-stock guarantees for sale items, etc. I don't know how much they actually lose to returns fraud, but I do know how much they never gain because I don't even bother to shop there any more.
  - kalcode 9y ago
    >If you stop accepting returns They are trying to stop people who abuse the policies, not returns altogether. The article never says the retailers are making a move to stop returns from everyone. That kinda defeats the point you are trying to make. >If I can't return an item, I will be much more cautious about buying in the first place. Sounds like its working then. The point is the customers that feel they don't need to research an item they are purchasing cause they can 'just return it' are the ones they want to be more cautious about buying in the first place cause you are costing them more money. Really sounds like you are arguing against a scenario that isn't taking place. You are actually bringing up points that made them decide to do this. They can deter constant returners from using returns as a 'try any item you like and return it' and also deter return frauds.
lotsofpulp 9y ago
Then you ban the person. And your credit card will drop you too if you keep doing charge backs.

gknoy 9y ago

> The moxious will call their credit card company right at the returns desk and ask if they need a photograph of the posted return policy. Thank you! That's an excellent suggestion!

kalcode 9y ago

Well if you do and you constantly do chargebacks then you will get hit with fraud from your credit card company.

cwkoss 9y ago
What does it mean for a CC company to 'hit' someone 'with fraud'?
- kalcode 9y ago
  They hit you with 'Chargeback fraud'. They can cancel your card, put it on your credit history redcord and can choose to press charges.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    Has this actually happened to you or any of your acquaintances? The retail-dispute resolution clauses of most credit agreements are very biased towards the consumer. If you can document that you made at least one good-faith effort at resolving the issue yourself before requesting that the credit issuer handle it for you, then the retailer has to overcome the presumption that the customer is always right in the arbitration. As it's all about the money and private agreements, it is always possible that someone who has more of it than you could use it to buy a more favorable outcome. But it is also very unlikely that anyone would ever see a criminal indictment over credit fraud before the damages exceed thousands of dollars. No credit company wants to lose customers because they got a reputation for grassing on their customers, but they would want to discourage their petty frauds--they know they have some, with statistical certainty--from growing worse by occasionally prosecuting the worst of the grand frauds. If HSBC can knowingly launder drug money, and Wells Fargo can knowingly open fake accounts, a credit bank can knowingly screw the retailer when one of their credit customers does a bogus chargeback just because the cashier was rude at the checkout. I won't say bogus chargebacks are not a problem, but there is a threshold below which it does not negatively affect the revenue of the bank, so no one there will be paid to care about it. A computer program might evaluate it. It might get randomly selected for human auditing. And most people are mostly honest, so the fraud rate would still be low, even if no one policed it more than a token amount. The credit banks's mission isn't to catch the frauds; it's to make money. So they catch just the right amount of frauds in order to make the most money.

devy 9y ago

Most return policies these days has provisions that say they reserve the right to refuse returns. Also it's a huge hassle to go through a small claim court or call credit card companies (even credit card companies flags you if you make repeated calls for chargebacks.)

logfromblammo 9y ago
Those processes are also burdensome to the retailer. That's the whole point of accepting returns in the first place, because it reduces hassle for everyone. If you stop accepting returns, you're back to the old way of doing things, plus your old customer is also blasting your intransigence over social media and driving new customers away. If I can't return an item, I will be much more cautious about buying in the first place. As I am already very cheap, that usually means the time horizon for me to make a buying decision now spans well beyond the time I am spending in the store. Which means I will be elsewhere when thinking about a purchase. Which means that when I finally do decide to buy, I then have to decide from where. Even if I never return an item, reducing the consequences of me making a wrong choice when buying something makes me more likely to actually spend my money. This means liberal return policies, price-match guarantees, in-stock guarantees for sale items, etc. I don't know how much they actually lose to returns fraud, but I do know how much they never gain because I don't even bother to shop there any more.
- kalcode 9y ago
  >If you stop accepting returns They are trying to stop people who abuse the policies, not returns altogether. The article never says the retailers are making a move to stop returns from everyone. That kinda defeats the point you are trying to make. >If I can't return an item, I will be much more cautious about buying in the first place. Sounds like its working then. The point is the customers that feel they don't need to research an item they are purchasing cause they can 'just return it' are the ones they want to be more cautious about buying in the first place cause you are costing them more money. Really sounds like you are arguing against a scenario that isn't taking place. You are actually bringing up points that made them decide to do this. They can deter constant returners from using returns as a 'try any item you like and return it' and also deter return frauds.

lotsofpulp 9y ago

Then you ban the person. And your credit card will drop you too if you keep doing charge backs.