Yes, you bring up a real problem - the dominance of "sale by mail". But I think if there is a return policy or a 'try before you buy' one then the usual quality

Yes, you bring up a real problem - the dominance of "sale by mail". But I think if there is a return policy or a 'try before you buy' one then the usual quality inspection might work. Postal based sales (mediated by a web interface or whatever) would be a problem of evaluating the quality of domestic (presumably higher quality) goods. The now antiquated in-person retail outlet allowed you to inspect the goods before you purchased. Now we just hope some AI summary of reviews and a "star system" will provide us quality goods....?