Bed Bath & Beyond has the most generous return policies I’ve seen. One store manager told us a story of a manager at a different store that OK’d the return of four used tires, among a few other examples.
Seriously? So you can basically buy one pair of shoes and get free shoes for life? And they even encourage that? Wow. Sign me up!
Edit: Damn. Their closest location is over 90 miles away.
I used to work in IT for a group of shoe companies that you have certainly heard of. I often had to travel to their customer service center in the Midwest. They once showed me a case study training book for the call center reps. At one time, the boat shoe company had a lifetime replacement policy although they discontinued it for new purchases. One day, a doctor called up mad because the stitches ripped in one of his shoes and he wanted a free replacement. Ok, when did he buy them? Answer: 15 years ago. His model had obviously been discounted but they sent him the most expensive similar pair that they had.
My notoriously cheap uncle had a Daisy BB gun from the 1960’s that he used to chase off pesky animals. It broke about two years ago. He called Daisy and they said to send it in and they would reimburse for the postage. The model that he had was made with a nice wood stock and heavy steel parts. They don’t make them like that anymore. He got his gun back and Daisy had one of their technicians disassemble it and rebuild the whole thing to like new condition.
Companies like warranties and exchange policies like that because it is great word of mouth advertising and the vast majority of people don’t actually take them up on it so it isn’t as expensive as it sounds.
LL Bean does that - the guarantee on those backpacks is serious.
And I think Target quit doing that, because it hasn’t happened in a while. Probably one single shortsighted guy at the top of the heap. Normally Target service is quite a bit above most big box stores - when I ask somebody to find an item they’ll look all over for me and accompany me.
I think that’s a UL that used Walmart as the store with the liberal return policy if memory serves.
I bought a DVD at Target and exchanged it at Wal-Mart.
It was a copy of Schindler’s List that had a skip in it, so it wouldn’t play past a certain part. I tried it on three different DVD players, no joy.
I’d thrown out the receipt, but all I wanted to do was exchange it, not get my money back. Target turned up their nose at me.
I drove over to Wal-Mart, explained the DVD was defective, and they let me exchange it, no problem.
A Google search turned up Nordstroms as the store.
He didn’t present the story as being “I heard somewhere,” but I guess he heard it from somebody in the company he trusted.
Thanks for fighting ignorance. 
BB&B still has a ludicrously liberal return policy. I’ve returned stuff there without a reciept, getting full retail when I almost assuredly used one of their 20% off coupons. I’m not unprincipled enough to exploit that discrepancy to its logical, evil end.
Due to real life examples of excellent customer service (a cousin of mine has a great story), they have great word of mouth advertising.
I once tried to exchange a DVD with a skip in it to Walmart that my mom had bought me through Amazon. They wouldn’t do it, because the woman said that she could tell it wasn’t bought at Walmart. So I went to Borders and they were very nice! I’ve had other good experiences there, so who knows.
When I had my daughter, I got a lot of gift receipts with my presents, but not always. I ended up taking a bunch of stuff to several different stores to see what came from where. Everywhere I went was fine with scanning my merchandise, telling me if they carried it and how much they would return it for if I wanted store credit.