amazon electronics return policy - how consumer friendly?
I recently purchased an expensive-ish electronic item from Amazon.com. Their return policy says 21 days to return, but I’m unsure if that means “totally unused” or “it can be used”
I want to play with the item for a few days to see if I want to keep it. I could not have tested the item in a store so this is the only feasible way to see if this is a product I want to keep.
So, can I use an item and return it from amazon? Or are they going to give me crap because it’s not being returned in a perfect, was-just-taken-out-of-the-box-and-put-back-in-10-seconds-later condition?
A guy has purchased several cameras from Amazon, and he often buys 2-3 at a time to compare. He gets them, plays with each of them, and sends back the ones he doesn’t want. He’s never had a hassle doing it.
He does take very good care of the cameras and the packaging while he’s evaluating them, and when he’s sending them back, he’s very careful to re-do the packaging well. Never had a problem.
That said, I do recall him once saying that he’d searched the web for stories about Amazon returns, and apparently there have been cases where people abuse the policy and Amazon tells them “no more returns.” But it seems like those were people who were really abusing the policy – getting many devices, keeping them the full 30 days, returning them, then re-ordering again and again and again. Even then, Amazon warned them before turning off the return policy.
Amazon asks almost no questions, and returns hassle-free. If I recall correctly, in the two times I’ve ever wanted to send back orders (since 1999 or so, I believe), all I had to do was fill out some basic form for why I was returning the item, return said item, then receive a refund. Once I bought something through Amazon from a different seller, and there was a dispute of some kind (item not as described, lost in the mail, I can’t remember what exactly) and Amazon gave me my money back. It was pretty sweet.
There was a story a year or two ago, where someone was banned from Amazon for returning too many items as defects. IIRC there was outrage on the internets about the fact that Amazon canceled his account completely, thus making his Kindle content unavailable.
That said, I believe the key point was that he was claiming the items were defective, which means Amazon was not only refunding the sales price, but also paying for shipping both ways. Perhaps Amazon suspected that he was intentionally damaging the items so he won’t have to pay for shipping. If you just return because you “don’t want the item anymore”, you have to pay for shipping both ways (i.e. they refund the amount minus what it cost them to ship, even if you qualified for “free shipping”). But at least you’re less likely to get Amazon upset at you. I’ve returned a number of items myself, in the “used for a few days and then put back in original packaging” condition, and never had any problems.
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