> The customer having to prove beyond doubt that they were shipped a product that is fraudulent under objective standards is a natural evolution of a marketplace.

So I will sell you on Amazon an enpty box instead of a Rolex. You open the box and its empty, how are you going to prove the box was empty to begin with?'

Suppose I ship you a CPU i know to be broken, how will you prove it was broken? I, the seller, can alway say you broke it.

Welcome to retail.

On online retail, that’s why delivery services weight the packages, take photos of the boxes delivered etc.

On retail in general, we’ve enjoyed these same questions for decades. You buy a video card, open the box and a connector is bent. When getting it back to the brick and mortar store, you’ll have quite a time explaining you didn’t crush it by accident. Shops that value you will help. Other will just show you the door, and you’ll need to find many other people with similar issues to finally get your voice heard.

A lot of people here seem to be arguing Amazon returns are black and white… they are not, and you’ll have the same discussions as everywhere else, except you’ll be sending messages and photos back and forth.

There is an important distinction - if you buy something in store, at least hypothetically have a chance to inspect. You at least will see that the box is sealed and undamaged, and you could open it if you insist.

When you get a package delivered, you can do none of those things

In my experience this is a distinction without being relevant in a lot of cases. I used to shop at a national retailer that had a very generous return policy, the other side of it being that they’d inspect returns and potentially repackage them when judging they had been unused (sealed package etc.), except for super high margin stuff where they’d be more open to just discard the returns.

But then fraudster learned the ropes, and after a while knowing wether your product was actually new or not got basically impossible. They still had a generous return policy, so you wouldn’t be left SOL, but expectations got a lot different.

I’ll aim for a brick and mortar retailer if I go for a specific well established brand I’m willing to pay extra for (in particular if it’s the brand’s direct store), but otherwise I don’t feel physical retail has much of a high ground compared to online ones given the overhead and other limitations.

> The product doesn’t violate any factual claim of the seller, but it’s not what you had in mind and want to return the box.

The product doesn't have to violate any "factual" claim of the seller when the seller isn't beholden to customers.

> Should the seller eat the loss and accept the return?

Yes absolutely. Sellers should stand behind the products they manufacture. If a customer doesn't like something they purchased then the customer should be entitled to obtaining recompense up to, and including, a refund.

Suppose you go to a restaurant and order the McFatmeup Burger Prince. You take one bite of it and decide you don't like it.

Should you pay for the burger?

Yes? In what McDonald's do you get to walk away from that? Maybe in a super fancy restaurant that builds subjective satisfaction into the cost of doing business, but then you can also go to department stores where they have unlimited return policies, not some discount place like Amazon.

Now granted, Amazon used to have good customer service, but now they are definitely discount.

McDonald's and fast food places deal with situations like that everyday, and from what I see, they just make the food how the customer wants it in retrospect, let them substitute it for something else or refund them.

Refusing to do so over a $6 sandwich is how you get irate customers calling corporate to complain, who will then give them coupons for free meals in response.

> Should you pay for the burger?

I’ve had restaurants replace an order for various reasons, some as silly as “our kid read the wrong menu line”, and while we’re ready to pay for it the restaurants usually eat the cost.

But we’re still paying for the whole meal and additional purchases, and the restaurant’s loss (time and raw ingredients) is hopefully covered by the rest of the orders. We actually make an effort to order enough for that tbh.

I were to go to a fancy burger shop, order a menu, take one bite, stand up and get out of the shop shouting “that burger is disgusting” with a horrified face, I’d definitely should be paying for that burger, yes.

That’s the easiest proposition ever.

Do you want to be the entity that enabled my wife and I to have an all weekend sexathon, with the piece of mind that there’s no surprise baby coming? Or do you want the be the entity that cock-blocked me by sticking us with the condoms she doesn’t like?

It’s worth more than the value of the product to be the vendor that got me laid.

Companies like Amazon are making bad customer decisions like this because their growth trajectory is falling and they didn’t see it coming. So they are stuck with stupid capital investments and with running their own version of the post office that they don’t really need.

So now the MBA idiots assume that I’m some sort of criminal scamming them out of condoms. (All the while operating the largest carnival of grift ever devised via FBA) Whatever, I’ll go to CVS and deal with the inconvenience and awful shopping experience rather than risk being stuck with a product I don’t like.

Do you get to return condom boxes at CVS ?

> It’s worth more than the value of the product to be the vendor that got me laid.

This is of course the key. Is it actually worth more to them ?

To jest, if for instance you were ready to give up on Amazon and go buy everything from Wallmart at the first sign Amazon isn’t treating you well enough, and expect to be buying high brand goods at lower than market price, your LTV will probably be pretty low to Amazon. And of course, as you don’t like their condoms, you’re also basically dead to the seller.

On the other hand, if you were willing to eat up the price of a box of condoms, see high value in the Amazon experience, will continue to buy Amazon stuff even if there’s occasional hiccups, you’re a ton more valuable to Amazon. But then their real value to you won’t be wether they force the seller to accept the return, but probably wether they can get you a box of a different brand ASAP.

> Do you get to return condom boxes at CVS ?

Depends on the manager but at least a human is making a decision.