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40oz

abusing return policies

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Apparently most places are pretty laxed about return policies. My wife manages to get away with successfully returning used items all the time. in fact, sometimes she goes to a department store and picks out a new outfit for a party, and simply returns it for a full refund the next day. I'd always imagined that most places wouldn't accept a used item unless it has no indication that it was in someone's possession at all, but most places are surprisingly generous in accepting returned goods. My wife even returns pieces of furniture if they're too difficult to assemble, even bringing it back with parts missing! She goes in anticipation of getting confrontational if they don't accept it, and it works more often than not.

I have a bunch of American Express rewards points and I'm having trouble deciding what to redeem them for. I've been contemplating the idea of getting a Bose sound system, But to check if I actually like it, I was thinking of just buying one myself with cash, plugging it in, listening to it, then putting it back in the box and returning it after a short trial run.

I have never done this before so I'm feeling iffy. But it seems like a really cool idea. Does anyone here do this?

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I went to the store to return soiled underwear once, I mean basically a diaper full weighing a good 3 pounds. The employee was amazingly hot. I plunked it on the counter and she groaned orgasmically while licking her lips and lookin me up and down, then closed her eyes and slowly inhaled a big long whiff with a non stop smile. She gave me my return, 100 extra dollars, plus her phone number.

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Ugh, as someone who's worked customer service jobs before, your wife sounds like the kind of person that makes those jobs so terrible, and I got flashbacks just reading your post.

For something like a sound system, I guess you can rationalize it a bit more, since you can't really tell how it will sound until you put it in your own environment. But "buying" one from a store with a 100% intention of returning it seems pretty underhanded to me, even if it's something you can get away with.

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I had a girlfriend who used to do the same thing with outfits (also from PA, coincidentally), although I think the plan would often stall half-way, as there were plenty of things in her closet still with the tags on.

Back when I was a nefarious youth, I did this with CDs - buy them, tape/MD them, then return them - but that's it, I think.

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Ribbiks said:

sounds pretty trashy man. justifiable maybe if you're six feet below the poverty line.

This, for the gf part of the story. On the other hand, it does make sense for expensive tech you pretty much need to stress test a bit first, because you're operating on the promo lies and reviews of the YMMV sort when buying it. Oh, and I'd love to +1 gggmork's post.

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Wow, this is SO one of these things that only "fly" in America.

In Europe (or rather, Greece, but even Italy wasn't much better in this respect) getting a return on anything is a nightmare, and there's no such thing as a universal "no questions asked 15 or 30 day return policy", explicit or implied. YMMV, as some products claim to have it, and some big appliance store or even supermarket chains do indeed honour it, but in general you'll get very variable grace periods and pretty restrictive terms.

In particular, returning stuff on a whim because you simply don't like them anymore, even if undamaged, is unheard of. Full refunds are also unusual: you'll be lucky to get a swap for an obviously defective item, or at most a discount/purchase voucher.

I think some of the reasons that US stores yield so easily to refunding requests, even if outlandish, are these:

  • Many purchases are done through credit cards in the USA, and I recall reading that it's relatively easy for the buyer to BLOCK any payment till the end of the current fiscal month (while keeping the merchandise), with banks and credit card companies only just too eager to comply unconditionally to such requests, so (unusually for a capitalist economy) the "burden of proof" would lie on the "strong" (legally and financially) seller's side. Again, this only works because payments via credit card are deferred until the end of the current fiscal month (I think), while e.g. with debit cards they are either instantaneous or have a much smaller "grace" window (just a few days).
  • Probably there are several marketing/corporate strategy studies proving that yielding to the occasional angry/oddball/freeloader results in less overall losses (financial, legal, productivity time etc.) than trying to "put him/her in his place", at least if having good PR is important for the business you're running.

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plums said:

Ugh, as someone who's worked customer service jobs before, your wife sounds like the kind of person that makes those jobs so terrible, and I got flashbacks just reading your post.

40oz should have provided a trigger warning.

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Maes said:

Wow, this is SO one of these things that only "fly" in America.

It's pretty much the same in the UK. I think that, from the sellers perspective, the thought is that a) people will be more likely to buy a product if they know they'll have the opportunity to change their minds later on and still receive a full refund, and b) the majority of people don't change their minds.

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gggmork said:

I went to the store to return soiled underwear once, I mean basically a diaper full weighing a good 3 pounds. The employee was amazingly hot. I plunked it on the counter and she groaned orgasmically while licking her lips and lookin me up and down, then closed her eyes and slowly inhaled a big long whiff with a non stop smile. She gave me my return, 100 extra dollars, plus her phone number.


It's true,she was my sister. She says she still thinks of him every time there's a photo of an unusually large marrow in the newspaper. I haven't dared to ask what she means. ;)

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In this arms race, walmart has developed an unbeatable tactic. To return your stupid 15 dollar bicycle pump that seriously actually does not work, you have to stand in a 1 hour line, intentionally made long and bureaucratic (by the way, this is how to spell "bureaucrat"... type it knowingly incorrectly in google then copy paste the real spelling they redirect you to- the only helpful use of intelli-show-me-things-I'm-not-searching-for search ever. Don't actually learn how to spell that word because learning how to spell that will probably cause you to start spelling sanely spelled words incorrectly instead) because they know time is money. So just throw your bobble in the walmart trash can, the same place the locals sometimes put their unwanted babies.

And then there's boxer manufacturer's (slave owners) with their stupid trendy brand names purposely making their "medium" and "large" completely off any standard. Oh, woops, gee wizz, I guess you have to buy another pair now since our mediums are size oompa loompa in reality. Most of the successfuly economy is based on trickery/fruad/deception like that. The trick is to find a way to make more money with worse service and quality and trick people to buy redundant duplicate pre landfill items, or make it "illegal" not to buy your product. You don't even have to have a product if you do the latter, which is geico's business model. I mean you get a packet of paper, ok, that's like 50 cents of paper and ink for the 200 dollars you have to involuntarily bi-annually pay. But they easily make that 50 cents back 100x over by selling your information to the NSA.

Then ebay, in their hijacked quest to destroy the economy, loves forcing sellers to give returns. They even have their employees pose as buyers just to buy to then demand extra returns. They algorithmically limit your profit with search engine manipulation and selling limit caps, despite half of your sales being forced to be refunded, to make sure you can only afford an agenda 21 coffin size apartment. Then they report all those (refunded) "sales" as REAL sales to their stupid shareholders to manipulate the stock price. By the way whenever there's a power outage or something ebay never refunds its sellers, even if they lie and say they do. So they exempt themselves from their rules like most tyrannies. Well hopefully ebay was paid to take a fall to make way for bitcoin. Unfortunately I lost half of my bitcoin (I only had 1) on the exchanges from bulltrapping whales, who are probably just entities like ebay using their ill gotten gains to game that market now.

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Wow, this is SO one of these things that only "fly" in America.


People get away with it in France as well. Only 7 days, but never underestimate the efforts a frenchman is willing to go through even for a tiny benefit, as long as he also screws everyone else in the process. i.e. one guy on a forum bragged he consistently upgraded his computer while paying nothing for it, as he switched parts consistently, buying and sending stuff back every week.

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40oz said:

She goes in anticipation of getting confrontational if they don't accept it, and it works more often than not.

yeah, good luck winning your next argument with her. Because that, domestically speaking, sounds like my idea of fucking hell.

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I don't have a single nice thing to say about Wal-Mart except that I feel really bad for anyone is forced to work there. Otherwise I would wholeheartedly endorse any way you could find to fuck that company.

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plums said:

Ugh, as someone who's worked customer service jobs before, your wife sounds like the kind of person that makes those jobs so terrible, and I got flashbacks just reading your post.


hahaha yeah honestly I wouldn't ever wanna be on the receiving end of it. She could make someones life a living hell if she wanted
(FYI that's not why I married her!) but in my experience being with her at shopping centers, she almost never has to get testy about anything. Places tend to be happy to take things back for a full refund if a receipt is provided, or full store credit without receipt. It just seems awfully easy and stress-free to try before you buy in case you're unsure whether you're concerned about buyers remorse.

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darknation said:

yeah, good luck winning your next argument with her. Because that, domestically speaking, sounds like my idea of fucking hell.

Heh, I wasn't aware that winning an argument with a girlfriend or wife was possible. Oh sure, you might defeat their logic, but that's just a different kind of losing.

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I bought a PS3 controller from Best Buy a few weeks back so I could play some kickin' rad four player Diablo III couch co-op. Returned that shit the next day after they left.


I live life on the edge.

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I buy most of my stuff from the junk stores anyway. For 1 Euro a piece, it's not even worth hunting down the junkies and gypsies that sell them, for a return. If I don't need something, I just hoard it or throw it back into the street (where it won't stay for long).

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Megalyth said:

Heh, I wasn't aware that winning an argument with a girlfriend or wife was possible.


you can but don't expect to stay married for long. Learn to resolve discrepancies with delicate communication and compromise. When you get married, you're a team. You don't "win" at anything if your making your mate your adversary.

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40oz said:

you can but don't expect to stay married for long. Learn to resolve discrepancies with delicate communication and compromise. When you get married, you're a team. You don't "win" at anything if your making your mate your adversary.

'Twas a joke. For my own part, my girlfriend and I are very close, and I'm always very attentive to her feelings. We haven't had anything really approaching a real argument.

Yeah, I'm sappy and old-fashioned.

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I personally like stomping the feeling of loneliness and having few unanswered questions and infinite sex. Small price to pay imo. Dangerous return policy but awesome product.

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Infinite? For now ;]

Anyway, OT: I can abuse the hell out of this system here in NZ. Games from EB have a 7 day return policy. Its quite possible to buy a game, beat it, and return it, essentially a free rental. While its probably worth it for throw-away games that are done in a few hours, ie most FPSes, I don't really do it unless the game is, in my view, utterly awful.

Dead Rising was the only game I have ever returned.

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