[bugsy]

OK, so 5 people returned the book as "not as described."

Here is a question. If you are returning a product to amazon because you don't like it, is the only way to get your shipping refunded and/or a refund at all to check the box that says "not as described"?

It sounds like some people bought the book and didn't like it so they returned it. If it's only 5 people it's not much of an organized conspiracy by "fanatics" as he suggests.

Perhaps the problem is with amazon's return policies, and perhaps they should not link "not as described" to cancellations with books from known publishers as they would be if it was sacks of golden coins sold by some independent vendor.

In a brick and mortar store, customers can evaluate more of a book than is possible on amazon. Therefore it would be reasonable for amazon to have a liberal refund policy.

[nowarninglabel]

I think this may be somewhat true. I've bought over 150 books now on Amazon, and have only returned 1. That 1 was a Packt Publishing book which had a fantastical description, but after I spent an hour leafing through it, it turned out they had literally copy and pasted 1/4 of the material from drupal.org. Thus, I returned it "not as described". However, this was prior to Kindle.

As to your last point, I would have agreed, until Kindle came out, in which case with most books I can now get a free preview, which is usually enough to evaluate if a book is worth purchasing.