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Random story. I used to have a pretty intense phobia about returning things, and 90% of the time I'd opt to just eat the cost rather than doing so. When we ha

Random story. I used to have a pretty intense phobia about returning things, and 90% of the time I'd opt to just eat the cost rather than doing so. When we had our first child, we bought this automatic rocker/chair thing. I got it out of the box and put it together -- it had these locking joints where like a spring pin would pop into internal slot, such that once put together it was impossible to disassemble. Once I'd finished, I put our daughter in it, and when turned on, one part rubbed against part of the structure, making an annoying clicking sound. My wife, half mad from lack of sleep, took one look/listen and told me to get it out of the house. (In much more colorful language). Just then, our daughter, who was still in the chair, who was wearing diapers a size too small because we'd run out of her normal size, pooped. We quickly got her out but there was a quarter size stain on the fabric. We cleaned that as best we could, but it was still visible. I collected the pieces, which no longer fit in the box because you couldn't fully take it apart, put as much in the box as I could, and took it back to the store. As I stood in line for the return with this overstuffed box with various rods & parts sticking out all askew, I kept replaying horror scenarios in my mind. Like the clerk taking it out of the box and shouting in front of everyone "YOU CAN'T RETURN THIS, YOU MONSTER, IT HAS POOP ON IT!" The clerk barely glanced at the box. I'm no longer afraid of returning things.

samstave 3y ago
Been there - but it still sucks !!! as a commentary of our society - and our inability to make lasting things for long-term FEAR OF LOSING PROFIT. Every first-world item made should have a 2nd/3rd world plan for it. When your comfy butt is done with thing - you should be able/required to hand-down iten to next party, and you should be happy paying the premieum to use the item freshly new, as well as be happy that you cared for it such that the next person still gets an appreciated object. THE LAST THING we need is for a primary buyer of [THING] to think the *next step* to their use is trash/landfill. If you disagree with me, hand me the hammer that you have in the garage from your great grandfather and maybe then he can knock some sense into to.
- usefulcat 3y ago
  > our inability to make lasting things for long-term FEAR OF LOSING PROFIT. I agree that’s part of the problem, but even if that weren’t an issue you’d still have the (IMO) much bigger problem of most consumers preferring whatever product is cheapest.
  - samstave 3y ago
    This is why thos who make plastic products shoul be held to greater account... Wht saddens me, and I seem to see lit. nobodoy talking about is our glamourisizing 3d plastics printing of billions of arbitrary objects - and where these plastics will end up in the ecos... 3d printers (I have an ender3) should be urged to have a recycling platform. Personally - I want a 3d recycling machine which will shred HDPE, melt it to pellets and make a filiment extrusion for the 3d printer. We should have the 3d printing community building recycling stations from 3d filiment and object fails etc... and try to close the loop as much as possible. (lookng at you cosplayers of microplastic contamination for internet points)
    - datadrivenangel 3y ago
      You can build or buy a filament recycling machine. The issue is that it costs more than a 3D printer, and often times the filament is not as good later, so you end up spending time and energy recycling when it would be less time and energy to create new filament. It would probably be better to put that time and money into insulating your house and growing flowers for local birds and bees.
    - progman32 3y ago
      Unfortunately there isn't a true, affordable (for an individual or small group) circular solution that I've found. I've taken to gathering all my scraps in a bucket (not mixing plastic types) then occasionally having a "recycling day" to melt them down into bars, rods, or sheets, which are then used for other things using more traditional manufacturing techniques. I made some very pretty swirly vases on the lathe, for example. It's not ideal.
  - 3y ago
ronyeh 3y ago
Thanks for the morning chuckle. As a 2x parent I remember the poop blowouts (fondly?)....
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  Good for you. I think I have PTSD from the first one, 22 years ago.
mahathu 3y ago
I had an issue returning a macbook to a major electronics store chain within the 14 day right to return law (EU). The returns person and their manager said it wasn't possible to return it because after signing in with an Apple ID when you turn it on it gets "locked" to that ID or whatever. Fortunately there was another store in the city I had to travel to for appointment on the same day and they just took it back and gave me a refund. I hope the person there didn't get in trouble..
- Ylpertnodi 3y ago
  >within the 14 day right to return law (EU). Eu too. My local, we get 30 days for an items bought online, so I tell the shops 'thanks for letting me look, I'll get it online just for the better returns policy'.
  - eckesicle 3y ago
    That’s why you also by your car online or over the phone (applies to EU/UK). Have the dealership mail/email the paperwork. They will ask you to come in because they know this is the case, but just stand your ground. Then you have the right to return if you find any defects within 14/30 days.
- foldr 3y ago
  If the store acquired it legitimately then they can get it unlocked by Apple. It's just some amount of extra work for them.
- YeBanKo 3y ago
  It’s activation lock. They can actually check if your removed it or not.
doh 3y ago
As a European living in the US it took me many years to adjust to the return system in here. In "Europe" (I'm super generalizing here), to return a product, it has to be in pristine condition, you have to the original receipt and even then they will go over it like you are smuggling drugs into the country. In US, nobody cares. This is built into the business model. You pay higher prices due to returns, but then you buy more stuff because you don't worry about returns. When I first moved to the US, I was extremely careful with money (didn't have any). So every purchase was carefully planned and I worried about it long after it was done. Then I made a mistake and bought pair of shoes. They were uncomfortable. I felt like an idiot. But I already wore them, so now I am stuck. I told my colleague about it and he looked perplexed. After bunch of back and forth he decided to teach me a lesson. He took me a to a grocery store. Bought a can of corn. We walked out, he opened the can, dumped half of it in a trash can. We walked back to the return counter. My heart was pumping so hard I was losing sight at moments. He put it down on the counter and said: I would like to be refunded. I thought the clerk is going to smack him silly and me with him. But he didn't even flinch. Gave him few coins and we were on the way. This was 18 years ago. I since very well adjusted to the system, maybe a little bit too well.
- bonoboTP 3y ago
  True, and it makes business sense in a rich country. But just like in parenting, this kind of experience and expectation can yield entitled personalities, which is indeed a common stereotype of Americans abroad. Or see American students' attitudes towards their university. They also approach it with the same customer attitude, and fair enough, they do have to pay hefty sums.
  - doh 3y ago
    I think that’s the crux of the point. Americans are trained to be demanding customers. Whatever is then packaged as a product/service for purchase, will be treated equally. As you pointed out, students pay a lot of money for their education in US. Shouldn’t they have a say in it? If that’s not good for the society, maybe it shouldn’t be sold as a product in the first place.
13of40 3y ago
Yep. They (edit: in Costco, Walmart, or whatever in the US) don't care, and half the time they're happy to point out that it's OK what you're doing and please just calm down. My wife didn't grow up in the US, so wasn't used to this, but now she's addicted to doing returns when there's anything even slightly wrong.
cainxinth 3y ago
When I was young, TV pitchman Ron Popeil sold a food dehydrator and advertized that it was easy to clean. My mom bought one, tried it out, and upon realizing that most of the food she put in there was stuck to the trays, packed up the whole thing and mailed it back, dehydrated apple slices and all. They refunded her without an issue.
- RajT88 3y ago
  Just as an aside, Ron Popeil products were generally crap. He made a lot of money because those products mostly were bought as gifts for people (who were afraid they would offend the gifter if they returned them).
mindslight 3y ago
My own transition was when I returned a few items in a row that were brazenly unfit for their intended purpose. A heater fan that had locked up and melted without a thermal cutoff kicking in, a palm sander whose handle got extremely hot, paint that didn't stick to a surface and beaded up. The clerk just didn't care about any reasons for returning or feedback. I had wanted to be asked questions because these items were clearly defective. But, no questions asked. Companies just really don't care about the details of what they're selling beyond the immediate bottom line. Since then I've come to see the return window as an extended purchase decision. My stock of items sitting around is a local cache of things I might need, rather than having to delay a project for another shipping time or waste time running to the store and getting gouged. I'll even do things like buy a tool because it's on sale at a good price, then decide a few months later whether I really need it or not. Recently I've even been toying with the idea of skipping digging through piles of box store sheet goods - order some quantity much larger than what I need, have them load onto my trailer, go through at home at my own pace, and then bring back the rejects/unneeded and they can unload. It's not how I'm wired - when I make decisions I generally want them to be settled. But I'm paying for that overhead anyway, and there's no honor on retailers' part - stocking busted up goods to begin with, playing games with sale prices and coupons, terrible packing jobs, etc. So whatever, they chose the rules and I just play them according to my own incentives. I still can't fathom how the overall system adds up though. Intellectually I get it that if only 10% of items are returned and trashed, prices only need to go up 10% to compensate. But I don't understand how there aren't many more returns since that is the optimal strategy for taking advantage of sales/bundles/competition/etc. I can only think that most people are much more reluctant to have "spent money" outstanding in the short term, regardless of getting it back down the line.
- bityard 3y ago
  They're better now but a few years ago, I actively avoided buying tools at Home Depot because they always just restocked broken returns and I got burned by it multiple times. I'm not sure why they would do this other than sheer laziness. They even asked why you were returning it. (Why ask if you don't care?) On one particular trip, I returned some kind of complicated saw or jig or something because it was broken in a spot that I didn't see until after I brought it home. (It also had obvious signs of use, so I wasn't the first "owner" of it either.) After the return, I walked around the store to get some other items and then came back to the tool isle to get a replacement and was non-plussed to see that the exact item I returned 15 minutes ago had already been put back on the shelf, without a discount sticker or anything.
undersuit 3y ago
I bought the wrong size of shower curtain from Walmart and for some odd reason I held onto it for 4 years. When moving into my new place I found the shower curtain, that still didn't have the right size... so I returned it no questions asked, I think the price had even gone up a little bit since I bought it.
el_benhameen 3y ago
We had a Costco couch that fell apart after a few months. I wanted to Craigslist it, but my wife wanted to return it. I carried it and the biggest load of shame I’ve ever felt in to the customer service counter and apologized profusely to the guy working there. He shrugged and said “man, it happens all the time, no problem. You wouldn’t believe the kind of stuff people return.” Another Costco employee told me that they go by the 51% rule: if you have 51% of an item, they’ll take it back, even if it’s the bones and packaging from a two-month-old rotisserie chicken that you say you didn’t like.
- pengaru 3y ago
  No couch should be falling apart after so little time. You shouldn't feel guilty when it's a legitimate unhappy customer situation. Your money sure as hell didn't fall apart after a few months of their receiving it. Except maybe if you paid in BTC.
- at-fates-hands 3y ago
  My sister in high school worked at a cosmetics counter at the Mall of America for Estee Lauder. They had the same rule which was even more generous. You could use virtually any of their makeup stuff and as long as their was 10% still in the bottle they would take it back and refund full price. She said they had a few girls and older women who knew this and would return stuff all the time. She asked her manager if they could blacklist them because it was obvious they were abusing the return policy. The manager's response? "Its above my pay grade. I'll keep returning their stuff until someone at corporate tells me otherwise."
- bityard 3y ago
  I had a co-worker who moved into an apartment in the area and bought all of his furniture and appliances at Costco. A year or two later, he took a job in another state and instead of moving all of his stuff across the country or hawking it on facebook, he just returned it all to Costco. It's certainly not what I would have done but he said they took it all back, no questions asked.
  - flutas 3y ago
bombcar 3y ago
I feel bad about returns sometimes; I bought something from Walmart, and the product had no issues at all, but I had misread how it would mount to my bike, and wouldn't work. I didn't notice until I had opened the box - I carefully repacked it and returned it. It was still perfectly fine, they complained not at all. The next day, there it is on the clearance aisle for $10 off. I felt bad.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  They really don't care. I returned something once and the lady behind the counter asked what the reason for returning it was. I said, "my wife told me to get that ugly thing out of the house." She nodded, scanned it and gave me the refund.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Yeah, they only ask the question to see if it should go back on the shelf, back into clearance, or into the auction, or trash. A completely un-opened non-food item goes on the shelf, an opened item goes into clearance, and most everything else is auctioned or trashed. If you say it was broken, it goes into trash but I daresay they ding the manufacturer.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  On other hand I would be somewhat annoyed as customer if it had ended up with new items back in the shelve. You never know if something is missing or slightly broken.
  - progman32 3y ago
    I bought a carpet cleaner "new" from target via curb pickup. It was clearly used (presumably once), there was water in the plumbing, the bottle of cleaner was opened, and the cord was not machine wrapped. Never used curbside pickup after that. I did keep the machine though, for better or for worse.
    - 3y ago
whartung 3y ago
Another random anecdote. We ordered a custom glass shower door from Lowes because we were remodeling. During the process, we found we were happy with a curtain (which we did not have before, we were replacing an existing door). So, we asked Lowes if they would take it back, and they did. A custom sized, $1500 door -- and they took it back. We were really surprised and grateful for it, to be sure. No idea what the aftermarket is for random sized shower doors.
- buttercraft 3y ago
  I have a custom glass shower door that I bought at a discount because someone returned it. Not to Lowe's though. It was some local tile shop.
- guyzero 3y ago
  I suspect this is the case of a retailer prisoners dilemma - if one retailer offered no-questions-asked returns and one did not then the one offering returns would get a lot more business. If neither of them offered unlimited returns they'd both be better off, but as soon as one offer it (defects) then they both have to do so.
  - YeBanKo 3y ago
    Amazon used to be like that, but now they are making their returns harder.
    - guyzero 3y ago
      IMO Amazon returns are easier than ever. You don't even need to box it up, just drop the item off at Whole Foods. I feel like my local Whole Foods is at least 20% an Amazon returns depot these days.
      - YeBanKo 3y ago
        They started charging fees for UPS pick ups. It may not apply to all returns, but definitely some are noticing: https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonprime/comments/voem7s/prime_returns_suddenly_charging_799_for_ups/?rdt=64361 https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonprime/comments/voem7s/prime_r...
sillystuff 3y ago
In the US, you have a "credit report" for your retail returns. If your returns are determined to e.g., be excessive (even if your other returns were at different retailers), you might be denied the return. An example of one of these retail return consumer reporting agencies: https://www.theretailequation.com/ https://www.theretailequation.com/

samstave 3y ago

Been there - but it still sucks !!! as a commentary of our society - and our inability to make lasting things for long-term FEAR OF LOSING PROFIT. Every first-world item made should have a 2nd/3rd world plan for it. When your comfy butt is done with thing - you should be able/required to hand-down iten to next party, and you should be happy paying the premieum to use the item freshly new, as well as be happy that you cared for it such that the next person still gets an appreciated object. THE LAST THING we need is for a primary buyer of [THING] to think the *next step* to their use is trash/landfill. If you disagree with me, hand me the hammer that you have in the garage from your great grandfather and maybe then he can knock some sense into to.

usefulcat 3y ago
> our inability to make lasting things for long-term FEAR OF LOSING PROFIT. I agree that’s part of the problem, but even if that weren’t an issue you’d still have the (IMO) much bigger problem of most consumers preferring whatever product is cheapest.
- samstave 3y ago
  This is why thos who make plastic products shoul be held to greater account... Wht saddens me, and I seem to see lit. nobodoy talking about is our glamourisizing 3d plastics printing of billions of arbitrary objects - and where these plastics will end up in the ecos... 3d printers (I have an ender3) should be urged to have a recycling platform. Personally - I want a 3d recycling machine which will shred HDPE, melt it to pellets and make a filiment extrusion for the 3d printer. We should have the 3d printing community building recycling stations from 3d filiment and object fails etc... and try to close the loop as much as possible. (lookng at you cosplayers of microplastic contamination for internet points)
  - datadrivenangel 3y ago
    You can build or buy a filament recycling machine. The issue is that it costs more than a 3D printer, and often times the filament is not as good later, so you end up spending time and energy recycling when it would be less time and energy to create new filament. It would probably be better to put that time and money into insulating your house and growing flowers for local birds and bees.
  - progman32 3y ago
    Unfortunately there isn't a true, affordable (for an individual or small group) circular solution that I've found. I've taken to gathering all my scraps in a bucket (not mixing plastic types) then occasionally having a "recycling day" to melt them down into bars, rods, or sheets, which are then used for other things using more traditional manufacturing techniques. I made some very pretty swirly vases on the lathe, for example. It's not ideal.
- 3y ago

ronyeh 3y ago

Thanks for the morning chuckle. As a 2x parent I remember the poop blowouts (fondly?)....

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
Good for you. I think I have PTSD from the first one, 22 years ago.

mahathu 3y ago

I had an issue returning a macbook to a major electronics store chain within the 14 day right to return law (EU). The returns person and their manager said it wasn't possible to return it because after signing in with an Apple ID when you turn it on it gets "locked" to that ID or whatever. Fortunately there was another store in the city I had to travel to for appointment on the same day and they just took it back and gave me a refund. I hope the person there didn't get in trouble..

Ylpertnodi 3y ago
>within the 14 day right to return law (EU). Eu too. My local, we get 30 days for an items bought online, so I tell the shops 'thanks for letting me look, I'll get it online just for the better returns policy'.
- eckesicle 3y ago
  That’s why you also by your car online or over the phone (applies to EU/UK). Have the dealership mail/email the paperwork. They will ask you to come in because they know this is the case, but just stand your ground. Then you have the right to return if you find any defects within 14/30 days.
foldr 3y ago
If the store acquired it legitimately then they can get it unlocked by Apple. It's just some amount of extra work for them.
YeBanKo 3y ago
It’s activation lock. They can actually check if your removed it or not.

doh 3y ago

As a European living in the US it took me many years to adjust to the return system in here. In "Europe" (I'm super generalizing here), to return a product, it has to be in pristine condition, you have to the original receipt and even then they will go over it like you are smuggling drugs into the country. In US, nobody cares. This is built into the business model. You pay higher prices due to returns, but then you buy more stuff because you don't worry about returns. When I first moved to the US, I was extremely careful with money (didn't have any). So every purchase was carefully planned and I worried about it long after it was done. Then I made a mistake and bought pair of shoes. They were uncomfortable. I felt like an idiot. But I already wore them, so now I am stuck. I told my colleague about it and he looked perplexed. After bunch of back and forth he decided to teach me a lesson. He took me a to a grocery store. Bought a can of corn. We walked out, he opened the can, dumped half of it in a trash can. We walked back to the return counter. My heart was pumping so hard I was losing sight at moments. He put it down on the counter and said: I would like to be refunded. I thought the clerk is going to smack him silly and me with him. But he didn't even flinch. Gave him few coins and we were on the way. This was 18 years ago. I since very well adjusted to the system, maybe a little bit too well.

bonoboTP 3y ago
True, and it makes business sense in a rich country. But just like in parenting, this kind of experience and expectation can yield entitled personalities, which is indeed a common stereotype of Americans abroad. Or see American students' attitudes towards their university. They also approach it with the same customer attitude, and fair enough, they do have to pay hefty sums.
- doh 3y ago
  I think that’s the crux of the point. Americans are trained to be demanding customers. Whatever is then packaged as a product/service for purchase, will be treated equally. As you pointed out, students pay a lot of money for their education in US. Shouldn’t they have a say in it? If that’s not good for the society, maybe it shouldn’t be sold as a product in the first place.

13of40 3y ago

Yep. They (edit: in Costco, Walmart, or whatever in the US) don't care, and half the time they're happy to point out that it's OK what you're doing and please just calm down. My wife didn't grow up in the US, so wasn't used to this, but now she's addicted to doing returns when there's anything even slightly wrong.

cainxinth 3y ago

When I was young, TV pitchman Ron Popeil sold a food dehydrator and advertized that it was easy to clean. My mom bought one, tried it out, and upon realizing that most of the food she put in there was stuck to the trays, packed up the whole thing and mailed it back, dehydrated apple slices and all. They refunded her without an issue.

RajT88 3y ago
Just as an aside, Ron Popeil products were generally crap. He made a lot of money because those products mostly were bought as gifts for people (who were afraid they would offend the gifter if they returned them).

mindslight 3y ago

My own transition was when I returned a few items in a row that were brazenly unfit for their intended purpose. A heater fan that had locked up and melted without a thermal cutoff kicking in, a palm sander whose handle got extremely hot, paint that didn't stick to a surface and beaded up. The clerk just didn't care about any reasons for returning or feedback. I had wanted to be asked questions because these items were clearly defective. But, no questions asked. Companies just really don't care about the details of what they're selling beyond the immediate bottom line. Since then I've come to see the return window as an extended purchase decision. My stock of items sitting around is a local cache of things I might need, rather than having to delay a project for another shipping time or waste time running to the store and getting gouged. I'll even do things like buy a tool because it's on sale at a good price, then decide a few months later whether I really need it or not. Recently I've even been toying with the idea of skipping digging through piles of box store sheet goods - order some quantity much larger than what I need, have them load onto my trailer, go through at home at my own pace, and then bring back the rejects/unneeded and they can unload. It's not how I'm wired - when I make decisions I generally want them to be settled. But I'm paying for that overhead anyway, and there's no honor on retailers' part - stocking busted up goods to begin with, playing games with sale prices and coupons, terrible packing jobs, etc. So whatever, they chose the rules and I just play them according to my own incentives. I still can't fathom how the overall system adds up though. Intellectually I get it that if only 10% of items are returned and trashed, prices only need to go up 10% to compensate. But I don't understand how there aren't many more returns since that is the optimal strategy for taking advantage of sales/bundles/competition/etc. I can only think that most people are much more reluctant to have "spent money" outstanding in the short term, regardless of getting it back down the line.

bityard 3y ago
They're better now but a few years ago, I actively avoided buying tools at Home Depot because they always just restocked broken returns and I got burned by it multiple times. I'm not sure why they would do this other than sheer laziness. They even asked why you were returning it. (Why ask if you don't care?) On one particular trip, I returned some kind of complicated saw or jig or something because it was broken in a spot that I didn't see until after I brought it home. (It also had obvious signs of use, so I wasn't the first "owner" of it either.) After the return, I walked around the store to get some other items and then came back to the tool isle to get a replacement and was non-plussed to see that the exact item I returned 15 minutes ago had already been put back on the shelf, without a discount sticker or anything.

undersuit 3y ago

I bought the wrong size of shower curtain from Walmart and for some odd reason I held onto it for 4 years. When moving into my new place I found the shower curtain, that still didn't have the right size... so I returned it no questions asked, I think the price had even gone up a little bit since I bought it.

el_benhameen 3y ago

We had a Costco couch that fell apart after a few months. I wanted to Craigslist it, but my wife wanted to return it. I carried it and the biggest load of shame I’ve ever felt in to the customer service counter and apologized profusely to the guy working there. He shrugged and said “man, it happens all the time, no problem. You wouldn’t believe the kind of stuff people return.” Another Costco employee told me that they go by the 51% rule: if you have 51% of an item, they’ll take it back, even if it’s the bones and packaging from a two-month-old rotisserie chicken that you say you didn’t like.

pengaru 3y ago
No couch should be falling apart after so little time. You shouldn't feel guilty when it's a legitimate unhappy customer situation. Your money sure as hell didn't fall apart after a few months of their receiving it. Except maybe if you paid in BTC.
at-fates-hands 3y ago
My sister in high school worked at a cosmetics counter at the Mall of America for Estee Lauder. They had the same rule which was even more generous. You could use virtually any of their makeup stuff and as long as their was 10% still in the bottle they would take it back and refund full price. She said they had a few girls and older women who knew this and would return stuff all the time. She asked her manager if they could blacklist them because it was obvious they were abusing the return policy. The manager's response? "Its above my pay grade. I'll keep returning their stuff until someone at corporate tells me otherwise."
bityard 3y ago
I had a co-worker who moved into an apartment in the area and bought all of his furniture and appliances at Costco. A year or two later, he took a job in another state and instead of moving all of his stuff across the country or hawking it on facebook, he just returned it all to Costco. It's certainly not what I would have done but he said they took it all back, no questions asked.
- flutas 3y ago

bombcar 3y ago

I feel bad about returns sometimes; I bought something from Walmart, and the product had no issues at all, but I had misread how it would mount to my bike, and wouldn't work. I didn't notice until I had opened the box - I carefully repacked it and returned it. It was still perfectly fine, they complained not at all. The next day, there it is on the clearance aisle for $10 off. I felt bad.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
They really don't care. I returned something once and the lady behind the counter asked what the reason for returning it was. I said, "my wife told me to get that ugly thing out of the house." She nodded, scanned it and gave me the refund.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Yeah, they only ask the question to see if it should go back on the shelf, back into clearance, or into the auction, or trash. A completely un-opened non-food item goes on the shelf, an opened item goes into clearance, and most everything else is auctioned or trashed. If you say it was broken, it goes into trash but I daresay they ding the manufacturer.
Ekaros 3y ago
On other hand I would be somewhat annoyed as customer if it had ended up with new items back in the shelve. You never know if something is missing or slightly broken.
- progman32 3y ago
  I bought a carpet cleaner "new" from target via curb pickup. It was clearly used (presumably once), there was water in the plumbing, the bottle of cleaner was opened, and the cord was not machine wrapped. Never used curbside pickup after that. I did keep the machine though, for better or for worse.
  - 3y ago

whartung 3y ago

Another random anecdote. We ordered a custom glass shower door from Lowes because we were remodeling. During the process, we found we were happy with a curtain (which we did not have before, we were replacing an existing door). So, we asked Lowes if they would take it back, and they did. A custom sized, $1500 door -- and they took it back. We were really surprised and grateful for it, to be sure. No idea what the aftermarket is for random sized shower doors.

buttercraft 3y ago
I have a custom glass shower door that I bought at a discount because someone returned it. Not to Lowe's though. It was some local tile shop.
guyzero 3y ago
I suspect this is the case of a retailer prisoners dilemma - if one retailer offered no-questions-asked returns and one did not then the one offering returns would get a lot more business. If neither of them offered unlimited returns they'd both be better off, but as soon as one offer it (defects) then they both have to do so.
- YeBanKo 3y ago
  Amazon used to be like that, but now they are making their returns harder.
  - guyzero 3y ago
    IMO Amazon returns are easier than ever. You don't even need to box it up, just drop the item off at Whole Foods. I feel like my local Whole Foods is at least 20% an Amazon returns depot these days.
    - YeBanKo 3y ago
      They started charging fees for UPS pick ups. It may not apply to all returns, but definitely some are noticing: https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonprime/comments/voem7s/prime_returns_suddenly_charging_799_for_ups/?rdt=64361 https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonprime/comments/voem7s/prime_r...

sillystuff 3y ago

In the US, you have a "credit report" for your retail returns. If your returns are determined to e.g., be excessive (even if your other returns were at different retailers), you might be denied the return. An example of one of these retail return consumer reporting agencies: https://www.theretailequation.com/ https://www.theretailequation.com/