Revenge of the returns

It doesn't get talked about much, but this is one of the things that has really REALLY hurt small businesses.

If you want to have returns no questions asked, you need to either have the deep pockets to write off the loss, or you need to have enough sway with the manufacturer to let them write off the loss after it is sent back to them. Customers got used to this in the early internet days when box stores and online retailers were duking it out, and eventually places like grocery stores got in on it. Take a giant turkey back to the customer service desk and say you want your money back... refund, and they'll probably just throw the thing out.

I work adjacent to a music store, and for a few years this was kicking our butts. People would buy a guitar, keep it for a couple weeks, get a few pick scratches and belt buckle marks on it, make up some phony complaint, and send it back wanting a full refunding INCLUDING shipping. Some customers got onto a "do not sell" list because they did this so much, but it is an uphill battle. Lots of guitars already had a couple hundred bucks of shipping costs lost plus our labor to buff it out and make it look new again. I'm glad to have good return policies, especially when a customer shows me something they got from Sweetwater that should've just never made it out the door, or that they bought and totally doesn't suit them... but boy oh boy does it get abused.

I have a friend who grew up in Hong Kong, and she says that returns like that just don't happen. You can't go back to a store and just say "I don't like it" or "I want something different"... sales are final, and you need to show that it was broken, the wrong item, or something else. She moved in the mid/late 2000s so maybe it is different now, but it seems to have stuck.