[rmatt2000]

The clothing company LL Bean dealt with this same sort of issue. It used to be that if you weren't happy with a purchase, you could return any item you bought from Bean, at any time, for a full refund.

One day, the CEO of the company donated some of his old LL Bean clothing to a charity that accepts used clothing. One of the shirts he donated had his initials embroidered on it. In less than a month, that same shirt had been returned to Bean, stating the person was unsatisfied with his purchase, and requesting a full refund of the purchase price.

[dmckeon]

When LL Bean started, 90% of his boots were returned, and the purchases refunded - which gave Bean the opportunity to analyze how the boots had failed, redesign them, and send new boots to his dissatisfied customers. Apparent MVP failure becomes better engineering becomes marketing and research. Find out what your users/customers want. sources: posted on the store wall in Freeport, and https://www.ecmag.com/section/your-business/lessons-learned-...

[ghaff]

A number of retailers--REI is another--have pulled back considerably from essentially no questions asked return policies. I've wondered to what degree it is generally more poorly-made goods given that most come from the same Asian factories anyway and to what degree it is a generational shift where more people (though there's always been a subset) will just take advantage of any system they can.

[acdha]

I think the internet has a lot of credit here: there were always scammers but you wouldn’t have had an outdoors magazine publish a column suggesting that you buy something you can’t afford, use it for your trip, and return it because that’s cheaper than renting. That was disturbingly common online prior to REI changing their policies – and you’d see people suggesting it for big items like kayaks or expedition-sized tents, where selling it at the used gear sale was a substantial haircut.

One downside to sharing information easily is that attacks not only get better faster but also that it can hit the “everyone’s doing it!” norm where people start shifting how they feel about it.

[ghaff]

>“everyone’s doing it!” norm where people start shifting how they feel about it.

Yeah. A lot of people won't do something that they think is sort of scummy if they only know one person who does it--and he's sort of an asshole.

But when there's a whole subreddit devoted to the behavior, they may start to think they're the sucker if they don't do what "everyone else" is doing.

And unfortunately with outdoor gear, I've definitely had fairly expensive outdoor gear fail catastrophically after a few years even though it had only been gently used a handful of times. That said, I suspect LL Bean and REI still have some flexibility. I did just have Patagonia credit me for a somewhat older jacket that had completely delaminated--of course their normal prices are so high I'm not sure I'll even use the credit.

[acdha]

> But when there's a whole subreddit devoted to the behavior, they may start to think they're the sucker if they don't do what "everyone else" is doing.

That matched what I saw, too - I’m thinking especially of people like a few grad students I vaguely knew who treated it as a way to “upgrade” from their personal equipment for big trips. They wouldn’t have stolen something worth that much but the loss to REI is invisible.

[mc32]

I could not agree more. I know people who can afford REI (DINKs) and despite that feel they had the “right” to try and then return items.

Yes, some of this was built in to the price but not to the extent people stretched it.

Nordstroms, I guess when it was not a middling retailer, had similar policies.

But people have lost their moral bearings and it’s all about them, like there is no tomorrow.

It’s little different than looting. Looters sometimes loot immediately needed goods, but often it’s jewelry, TVs, electronics and sneakers. These chronic abusers of return policies are in the same moral category.

Very few people give a shit and care about themselves or society. It’s all a free-for-all, with few exceptions.

[mjevans]

A nice alternative would be a return policy where there was a no questions, BUT small fee (20-25% of the cost)? For returns without defects but obvious use.

The above policy should be _combined_ with an equipment rental that is substantially cheaper but expects similar condition returns.

Particularly for apartment renters, the ability to not need to store a large bulky item used 2-3 times in their lifetime would be an upgrade.

[nextos]

Yes, what freaks me out is when companies take any return, repackage it and sell it back as new.

Amazon does this all the time, and I have stopped buying from them. I try to get buy-for-life items. I don't return anything unless it's defective, but I don't want to get pre-owned things sold as new.

[bfuller]

This definitely happens all the time, I get packages whose boxes have obviously been opened before all the time.

People double-dipping amazon products and saying they never got the package (or it was stolen) has been going on forever.

[acdha]

Rentals aren’t badly priced at REI but there are unavoidable costs: liability, cleaning, storage, etc. which people were trying to avoid. The other limit is that they won’t have as large a selection so people who want pricier or niche gear won’t find it at the average rental shop.

[ghaff]

Rentals are available for a lot of equipment. Although there are liability concerns for gear used for relatively high-risk activities. But renting a kayak or a canoe is mostly not that hard--especially if you have a local club.

[blfr]

Not just a generational change but a move to lower trust society.

[antisthenes]

> and to what degree it is a generational shift where more people (though there's always been a subset) will just take advantage of any system they can.

When you're being squeezed by every system, and housing/life goals become increasingly unattainable and wages stagnate - you better be sure that people will try to exploit every system they can.

Can't really even blame them for it, except for some egregious circumstances.

[muro]

Life being difficult doesn't give one the right to cheat their way to make it easier.

[ghaff]

That sounds like rationalizing crappy behavior.

[Spooky23]

Walmart did something like this for many years. They were required to satisfy customers and would accept almost anything as a return to exchange.

Like LL Bean, the internet kinda ruined it and when the management turned over to newer people who didn’t share the commitment that the founder had, it went away.

[bfuller]

Sears used to take clothing back and replace it if it had any wear on it. In the 90s I bought a couple pairs of jeans at sears and just kept replacing them until they stopped doing that.

[SkyMarshal]

It's odd they don't have some automated system to verify the returner actually purchased that item (or at least one of its model #). If yes, proceed with RMA. If no, "sorry our records show you never purchased that item".

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Macy’s tears the tag, adds a red “sold tag,” and enters the number into their system, so you can’t just grab something off the rack, and return it.

This was because people would grab something off the rack, tear off the tags, take it to the register, and request a refund. It wasn’t even shoplifting.

[bluedino]

I don't remember doing that when I worked there. But plenty of people would try that exact scam, or buy something and then use the receipt to try to return the same item that they just grabbed off a shelf.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I think they only started doing that, in the last few years.

The red tag has a barcode (and nothing else). They have a strip of them, next to the register.

You hand them the item, they tear off the bottom of the price tag, stick on the red tag, then scan it.

[yardstick]

So this also means you cannot return something without the red tag still intact?

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I don’t know.

I suspect you don’t need the tag, but you’ll need the receipt, otherwise.

[specialist]

That (obvious) strategy would have never occurred to me. I's make a terrible criminal (or pentester).

[Symbiote]

I noticed socks I bought from Uniqlo had an RFID tag in the label. Maybe that's for the same reason? They know which items haven't been sold.

[__float]

It's (also?) used for self-checkout: put all of the items in a box, and it tallies up your total automatically, without scanning individual items.

[csydas]

It's one aspect. Uniqlo also uses them for faster ring ups at the counter. They just stack you items over the reader and it gets every tag nice and fast with a final sight check by the cashier that they got everything.

I'm not sure but I think it has a weight systém also to help with catching missed items but this I might be wrong on.

[cortesoft]

Buy a new one, return the old one saying it was the new one... free conversion of old to new.

[dspillett]

> The clothing company LL Bean dealt with this same sort

Clothing retailers and similar have seen this sort of thing a lot, even before online shopping was a significant part of their trade.

> Another issue, called ‘wardrobing’ is where a customer buys something to use once and then return

A colleague of mine some years ago used to wear designer shirts and such to company social events. At one point he asked me how I afford as much tech as I bought¹ and I referenced his designer clothes² with the notion that we just prioritise our spending differently with most of my clothes being relatively bargain basement stuff³. In response to this he told me that he wore most of it only once, and returned it within a week or two of purchase as unused, so it cost him relatively little. This was not just mail-order catalogue purchases⁴ but physical stores too where he sometimes had to return items to the same real person he'd bought them from and did so repeatedly. This coloured my impression of his trustworthyness considerably - I have no love for the retail industry but that seems rather low. He said a lot of people do it, which I doubted the scale of at the time but maybe I was somewhat naive there⁵.

My overly long-winded point being that this has been a thing for decades. The internet just makes it easier, makes learning the tricks to defraud the trade easier, and because open returns policies are often a selling point for an online retailer (for obvious reasons) makes those tricks relevant to a wider gamut of products & price ranges, which might not have had such returns policies in the past. The growth in social media and it's influence on how much we see of others outside of our close circles probably makes a big difference where fashion is concerned too.

----

[1] it turned out part of this was that my salary was larger than his by more than either of us realised, another factor was how much he spent otherwise trying to impress marks when "on the pull" and how often this expensive hobby happened!

[2] and his taste for expensive whiskey, but that isn't relevant to this thread!

[3] no personal value judgement being made here, I understand what people get psychologically (and sometimes physically!) from improving their outward image, I just have different priorities which doesn't make me more or less right just different

[4] internet shopping proper was only just starting to be significant for everyday fashion at the time, assuming what little I know of such shopping is accurate

[5] he also pointed out, when I failed to disguise my discomfort in the idea, my habit at the time of downloading TV instead of waiting months/years for it to be broadcast or available to buy on tape/DVD in this country, which I admit was a valid comparison. I know my life has been some points sort of 100% morally clean!

[lotsofpulp]

>my habit at the time of downloading TV instead of waiting months/years for it to be broadcast or available to buy on tape/DVD in this country, which I admit was a valid comparison

How is that a valid comparison? You did what you had to do in order to be able to consume media because the media’s owner did not make it available to you in any form due to the geographic location you lived in.

The other person committed fraud and basically stole the “newness” of a seller’s clothes because they could to afford them.

It would only be sort of comparable if you had a reasonable way to pay the media owner for the media, but chose not to because you wanted to save money.

[acdha]

Did they send money to the creator or buy it when it became available? If not, OP received a benefit without compensating the creator.

You don’t have a right to use other people’s work without their consent. If it’s not available, the only ethical choice is not to use it - we’re not talking lifesaving medication here, you can watch something else.

[fmajid]

The solution to that is simple: require the original purchase receipt.

The return policy changes are just an excuse, the real reason is the new management (often private equity vultures) plans on performing Quality Fade, i.e. lowering the quality but keeping prices high as they run down the formerly deserved reputation into the ground. Of course that strategy won't work without also gutting the warranty.

[bluedino]

Costco seems like it's the current place that people abuse the return system at

[genericlogic]

One major difference is that Costco requires a membership. It seems like a bad actor could be effectively banned.

[SnowHill9902]

Interesting. Reference?

[valleyer]

https://apnews.com/article/north-america-lifestyle-business-...

[aardvarkr]

OP delivers! Thanks :)