It depends on the item and whether the seller funds 'free returns'. Some clothing sellers want to be like Zappos and offer that while others opt for lower price

It depends on the item and whether the seller funds 'free returns'. Some clothing sellers want to be like Zappos and offer that while others opt for lower price. At the end of the day, no shipping is ever 'free', it's always baked into the price somewhere. One thing I've noticed is that the more I spend on Amazon (quite a lot lately), the less often Amazon tries to charge me for returns (lately that's been never). I suspect they have some kind of algo that estimates a customer's value over time vs the cost of keeping that customer happy with free returns.