We just got an email from Amazon that they identified that the water filter refills I bought 6 months ago were fake, so they issued a refund. But I hate the idea that they allowed it in the first place itself. And this is something that's affecting the health of my family. (Thankfully our unfiltered tap water won't kill us but still...)
We've been trying to avoid Amazon as much as possible and it's been hard. But not impossible. They've got such a head start over everyone else on their solid logistics operation.
They're actually open to competition... from ex-Amazonians. It's like all the ex-googlers that left and took those ideas to make open source versions because Google was so far ahead.
1) Retail return policies are mostly liberal. It's the smaller stores that tend to be more stingy. 2) Price Matching solves any issues with regard to lower prices 3) Returning is actually easier since you get the instant gratification of a refund, not 5 days later. Anyway with amazon we've always had to drop it off to UPS, so we don't save time making the trip.
The bigger issue is that since Amazon is so large and pervasive everywhere, it's very tough to actually boycott the company. Brands like Whole Foods, Ring, AWS etc are still important parts of our lives and careers.