That’s because most people don’t care about the existence of loss leaders to the point of it influencing what stores they shop at normally. Return policies, on the other hand, affect everyone who might ever want to return something.
As I said before, people who don’t like it when others abuse return policies don’t give a crap about Best Buy’s bottom line any more than you do. However, they don’t like seeing return policies become ever more restrictive as a result of the minority of people behaving that way.
I think it does hurt BB. It helps them to have the policy, and it hurts them when people use it. It goes both ways.
You’re right . . . after I posted and thought about it for a while, I realized the same thing. My bad.
Part of the point I was trying to make has just been made by Vihaga. Good faith can only be extended as long as it is not abused.
But, I admit my feelings are mixed on this issue.
I see what you did there. But I can’t practically critique your reason for posting it.
I don’t know about “most poeple” but loss-leaders exist because they influence what stores people shop at. So presumably a non-trivial chunk of people are so-influenced. And there are plenty of people that hunt around for “deals” and go to a store just to take advantage of them, as I described.
And loss leaders affect everyone who wants to buy that item. And since the losses are made up by slightly incrementing the price of everything else, I’d say they affect everyone who shops at the store.
And people with the time to collect coupons end up making it more expensive for the rest of us to shop. And if more people collected coupons, the stores would probably need to offer fewer of them. But I don’t think coupon collectors are unethical. Pretty much any “deal” a store offers is hurting some other customer down the line, and anyone who takes advantage of the deal is making the store less likely to offer the deal in the future.
I used to work for a consulting company that performed environmental assessments of properties, often for clients who were doing “due diligence” prior to buying it. We had several clients who, after receiving an unfavorable report, would then decide to not pay us. The rationale was that since they were no longer going to buy the property which we had blown dozens or hundreds of billable hours assessing for them, they didn’t want to send good money after bad. The worst part was that our clueless management would not pursue collections against them and would, in fact, accept more work. Because they were good customers.
I call them “Ruiners” - the asses who ruin everything for everyone. I can’t stand them - I have to believe in karma so my blood pressure doesn’t get too high, thinking about all the selfish, jerkish things they do every day.
If you told the store that you bought a loss leader item, they wouldn’t object. If you told them before you made your purchase that you were buying a loss leader item, they wouldn’t object.
If you told them you used coupons, they wouldn’t object. You’d have to tell them you were using coupons before you made your purchase, that’s how coupons work.
What do you think would happen if you told them you were trying to return something that you’d already used? Do you think they’d let you go through with returning the item after you told them that? If not, then that strategy relies on your deceiving the store, and is at the very least dishonest, if not outright theft.
I don’t think they would refuse to let me return something I’d already used, even if I told them explicitly. So far as I can tell there isn’t any indication that I shouldn’t use an item and then return it at Best Buy. And when I returned the gadget it had already been opened, so I imagine they were aware that I’d probably used it. (and as a practical matter, I doubt the bored looking HS student running the service desk would’ve cared if I told her I’d used it as a doorstop for the last week.)
There there wasn’t any intent to deceive, and I don’t think anyone was deceived inadvertently. So no, it wasn’t dishonest and certainly not theft.
Some places do have a return policy that specifies they’ll only allow returns for items that are defective or if the customer is dissatisfied. I wouldn’t try and return something there if I didn’t meet those criteria, since I agree it would be dishonest.
And indeed Athena’s experience seems to indicate that, at least for the merchants she interacted with, they have no problem selling her items that she specifically told them she may use and return. Again, I think this is simply part of offering a return policy. Many merchants allow people to use an item for the limited time allowed by the policy and return it. If they didn’t want people to do this, they wouldn’t offer it as an option on a very large bright yellow poster at Best Buy.