[Merad]

Some of Amazon's policies are real head scratchers. Last year I bought a high end ultrawide monitor from them. I believe I paid about $1500 for it originally. Two or three days after it arrived, it went on sale for about $300 less. IME most companies have a policy in the fine print where if an item goes on sale less than a week after purchase they'll refund the difference, if you ask. So I contact Amazon support. The agent insisted that no refund was possible but that I should return the monitor for a refund and order a new one at the lower price. It boggled my mind so much that I asked them explicitly if they understand that they'd be paying for return shipping (at least $50 given the size and weight of the monitor), they'd be getting back an open box item that would lose probably 20-30% of its value, and I'd get back the $300. They said yeah, that was just how the system worked...

[elexhobby]

FWIW I've been told similar by Costco too, so Amazon isn't unique in this respect. My guess is that it adds some friction to the process. Refunding money is a purely digital activity, while refunding requires to you go and ship it, wait for the new item to arrive, etc, so you won't do it unless the savings are worth the time investment.

[vegadw]

I suspect this is the case, but IMHO the practice should be illegal. If you accept returns for the purpose of price reduction you should just do the price reduction directly, both for the sake of the environmental cost and as a matter of treating consumers decently.