Who says they “should”? They choose not to!
And I don’t agree that it is a “complete” lack of ethics. Personally, I won’t do such things. Actually, I’d point out that on very rare occasions, I have done so - and in most of those cases, I ended up keeping the item. The stores know that this will happen and they factor it in when deciding their policy.
The television shopping networks like QVC and HSN have 30-day no questions asked guarantees, but if you return too many items you get what is referred to as “the letter”, which tells you to knock it off, and if you continue to return too many items, they will cut you off and not allow you to purchase any more. There’s a lot of speculation as to what the specific numbers are; supposedly its a percentage of items purchased – maybe returning over 50%. There’s a whole culture of people trying to get around the restrictions, similar to the “sock” culture at this and other message boards.
Well I have a few Darn Tough socks which have a unconditional guarantee against wearing out.
From their site:
Now their socks are very good and durable, but the also do wear out. Is it OK to exchange them when they wear out or is that taking advantage?
They are the ones that came up with the policy and they are explicit about it. Ask for new ones if you want. Most people don’t so that is how that make money.
I used to work for a shoe company that made boat-shoes that once had a lifetime warranty. I was visiting the Customer Service center when a doctor called in quite upset that his soles had worn out after only a few decades worth of use. His pair was purchased when they still had a true lifetime warranty and customer service was happy to send him a brand new pair for free. It is good publicity and so few people take advantage of that type of warranty that it isn’t much of a concern.
My Swiss Army knives have a lifetime warranty. I use them daily for years and then send them back to be replaced or rebuilt once they develop any significant flaw in any of the tools. They fix them right up like new again.
Apples and oranges. Buying something with a lifetime warranty (most likely for quite a bit more money than a product that is not made as well and doesn’t have the warranty) is different from buying something from a store, using the shit out of it for a month, summer or year and then taking it back for a refund. Or eating 90 percent of a meal and then complaining and asking for a refund.
At the end of the day the folks who say the store is OK doing this are right; nobody’s compelling the stores to do what they do. And the folks saying the consumers doing the bogus returning are wrong are also right.
The challenge is that the store assumes their theft-by-bogus-return rate is some low enough percentage where it all works. And if enough petty con artists play the game against the store, the store will change the policy.
It’s a kind of tragedy of the commons; or more accurately, out of control selfishness ruins fair dealing.
If everybody is honest, good folks who don’t try to con the stores will have a generous return policies for the rare occasions we legitimately need them. If enough folks are dishonest, the policies will eventually change and then won’t be available to honest folks.
Which realization of course causes some con men to hurry up and steal faster before the good times end.
Nothing good can come from this dynamic. And IMO the generous return policies are getting more and more limited at bricks & mortar stores all the time.
Anecdote: I rarely return anything. I’m pretty careful to not buy already-opened boxes or defective merchandise. But the other day I bought a cheap hoodie at a touristy beach goodies store near my home. Got it home, washed it, then discovered one sleeve wasn’t sown properly; the seamer had run off the edge of the fabric and there was a 4" section of sleeve that wasn’t closed.
Took it back to the store the next day. With the receipt & my local ID. The manager said it’s been washed 20 times. Accused me of damaging the shirt so I could take it back for a refund. Told him I was looking for an exchange, not a refund.
I was livid to be accused of that. But at the same time I can’t blame the guy for thinking that way. I’m sure that store gets lots of folks that stay at the nearby hotels for a week at the beach who intend to “rent” all their beach gear from his shop for a week then return it all for a full refund.
Once I pointed out I was local & a semi-regular customer he relented and said he could fix the sleeve tonight so I could pick it up tomorrow. I agreed & got it back the next day with a half-assed repair. I’m still pissed; at myself for carelessly buying a defective itemand for him being a jerk. But mostly at the thieving customer base for driving this guy into jerkitude.
And that’s how a good society of honest citizens and merchants turns into a cutthroat society competing solely to out-gyp the other guy.
Trader Joe’s has a policy, written in giant letters above the checkout counters, that if you try something and don’t like it, you can simply bring it back (or the packaging if it was a one meal thing) and get a refund. There doesn’t have to be anything wrong with it, you just didn’t like it. IMO it’s a great policy because I’ve tried things there that I otherwise wouldn’t have, because I knew I could return it if I didn’t like it. And generally what they sell ends up being pretty good.
This reminds me of a short 1966 film documenting a woman’s attempt to exploit the return policy of a canned bean manufacturer in order to finance the purchase of furniture:
The Lucy Show; Lucy The Bean Queen
Long ago, I worked at a potato chip company, much smaller than Kelloggs. But they too kept a list of people/addresses that had received replacement items. And after the 3rd time, they cut the complainer off.
Actually, that doesn’t hurt Wal-Mart – they write into the contract with the supplier that any items returned by customers will be sent back to the supplier, who must reimburse Wal-Mart for the cost of those items. So Wal-Mart can easily afford to be generous with their returns policy – it doesn’t cost them anything.
These policies aren’t a matter of law where the company has no choice but to do what the letter of it says. Pizza Hut had a refund policy when I worked there. But it was explained to us that if a customer is never satisfied with the pizza and always wants a refund after returning it mostly eaten, that’s not really a customer. So we document cases where we suspect scammers and if they repeat the behavior a few times we can cut them off.
These policies are simply good faith promises to good faith customers that they will be satisfied with our product. If a customer break faith, then so do we.
Well I have heard in WalMarts case its not WalMart per say who eats the cost, its the vendor for the item. So like the time I bought a lawn chair and it quickly broke. I returned it to WM for a refund and bought another brand of chair. WalMart didnt lose money. They simply return the broken item to the company who makes it and so that vendor gets hit. WalMart acts more like a sales agent.
I once bought some Firehose work pants from Duluth Trading company which claimed to be so tough, they had a lifetime warranty. Well after about 3 years they did tear and I sent them back for exchange. They didnt have that particular style and sent me a full refund.
One time I bought a camp stove from an online seller and when it arrived it was damaged. I called the company and they wanted a picture. I sent in the picture and the owner himself called me and said the cost of sending the item back was greater than it was worth, plus he already had insured it so they just sent me another. And actually I took the damaged one into my workshop and after a half hour of bending I was able to repair it so now I have 2 stoves.
Reported
My awful ex-MIL travels a lot and always flies with the same airline. After a genuinely unfortunate experience once, she wrote a letter of complaint, and to her delight received a free upgrade on her next travel. From then on she fabricated a reason to write and complain after every flight. At first she got upgrades or other compensation, but over time these freebies stopped coming and she only received letters of apology. Those dried up too, and now her complaints go unacknowledged. Doesn’t stop her writing in though - I still remember the look of delight on her face as she told me about something that genuinely went wrong on the last flight she took so she didn’t have to make something up.
Costco had to change its return policy for electronics, presumably because of customer abuse.
There’s an online store called Zulily I recently bought some tops from. One of them was defective, the screen printing was done while the garment was all wrinkled up in several places. When the wrinkled places were fanned out, the picture had all these gaps. I took pictures of the issue and emailed Zulily about it, along with a screen capture of their listing showing what it was supposed to look like.
The way they purchase items, they don’t warehouse anything, so it turns out I don’t think they take any returns of anything, ever, nor can they send a replacement. They do say they want customers to be satisfied and will do what they can to make things right if there’s a problem. In my case, it was a full refund, plus a $10 store credit (this was for a $20 item). Sounds like they do that for anyone with a complaint, and I had the same sort of thought as the OP, I wonder how long it will take before too many people get their items plus full refunds plus store credit before Zulily stops one or the other. In the meantime, it’s a nice policy. I have worn the shirt anyway, too. It does make me wonder how often someone has to complain before they’re cut off.
My uncle used to return obviously worn (as in worn over and over again) sneakers to Kmart for a refund. Eventually they banned him from the store!
I had a cool pair of black leather Harley Davidson zip-up boots that I loved. When a zipper failed I took them to the leather store I purchased them from to see if they could be repaired. The guy explained that they had a HD lifetime guarantee. He punched in my info and gave me the cash. The boots were no longer available.
In retrospect, I wish I’d turned down the cash and sought out repair instead.
The boost to sales from a satisfaction guaranteed promise must nearly always far outweigh the cost of “satisfying” sleazy customers.*
Just like “all you can eat” places profit from the general run of customers with average appetites, despite losing on the food hogs.
*there are also ways of making it inconvenient for customers to seek refunds; for instance, demanding not only receipts but requiring people to ship items back at their own expense.
I purchased a fairly expensive face cream from Olay, and I had an allergic reaction to it. I sent them an email explaining the situation. I couldn’t return the item to the store at that point, since I had thrown the receipt away. They replied to my email within 2 days that they were refunding my money, in the form of a prepaid visa card. I had the card in about a week.