I've never been uncomfortable about returning stuff that is broken or defective. However the proportion of that has been steadily increasing. Recently I went th

I've never been uncomfortable about returning stuff that is broken or defective. However the proportion of that has been steadily increasing. Recently I went through 9 sets of casters just to get 4 working sets. Churned through 15 Dell monitors just to get 3 without dead pixels (half of the ones I returned would have qualified for warranty replacement 3 years out!). Fifteen gas cans all returned because they were shipped bare without boxes, arriving in beat up salvage condition. And furthermore now that I'm doing so many returns, I've become completely fine with returning new unopened things that I decide I don't want, effectively delaying the actual purchase decision 30-90 days. Parts that I want to have on hand while doing a project, limited time deals from pricing games, extra copies I order preemptively to quicken the above self-QC song and dance, etc. If I already have to go to a store to drop off returns, my marginal cost of returning additional things is very low. If returns were really affecting bottom lines, companies could do a lot to tamp down on these dynamics. At this point I suspect it's more profitable for them not to. I think the manufacturing costs of stuff has just gotten so low that the physical items themselves just don't end up mattering compared to the overall margins.