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They used to have lifetime returns! Regardless of condition, no questions asked! This American Life did an interesting piece on it, I was surprised the degree
by jcheng 7y ago
They used to have lifetime returns! Regardless of condition, no questions asked!
This American Life did an interesting piece on it, I was surprised the degree to which people abused—or, I guess, took advantage of—the policy.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/591/get-your-moneys-worth/act-two https://www.thisamericanlife.org/591/get-your-moneys-worth/a...
- ghaff 7y agoThe policies were always abused. I've heard people boast about taking in a well-used rain jacket every five years and swapping it for a new one although most didn't do this of course. I certainly don't have the data to support this sort of thing being more common; it's just a general impression that there are fewer social norms against gaming the system to your personal advantage so long as you can get away with it.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoI wonder if it has to do with the spread of e-commerce more generally. L. L. Bean is a mail-order company. Returns are one way to reassure customers who can't even look at the clothes before buying them. (And Amazon has a pretty generous return policy on clothes now for that reason.) But people are used to buying things sight unseen now; maybe the ironclad return policy doesn't have the value -- to the company -- that it once did.