I bought a car part on Amazon that, when I opened it, was a chunk of blue clay in a box that was poorly-printed to look like the box of the correct part. I never bothered to return it because the cost of shipping and my time would have been more than the cost of the part.
I'm sure this seller was eventually discovered to be selling obvious fraudulent goods, but I never received any notification saying as much.
I ordered a car part, I received a block of clay. This isn't a problem that is solved by any return policy.
You became a sucker and helped contribute to others being suckers by doing absolutely nothing after very obviously getting scammed.
The truth is, returns would be irrelevant if Amazon had done their job.
In many (most?) cases time=money is a false equivalence because time spent doing something isn't necessarily always time you would be spending working, but the local postal services are only open during hours I would be working, so it's not a false equivalence in my case.
Receiving the item you ordered and paid for is easy and free. Returns are not.
Why are we even having this conversation? They sent me a box of clay when I ordered a car part. This isn't an ambiguous situation.
Also, I see your rationale and think you are really missing the point. You may have a small hourly rate of $60 and use that as justification but its complete garbage. I do better than that and I work with guys who literally make 10's of millions a year. Taking a preventable loss that only requires a phone call or a chat is foolish, even if it is $7.00.
1. Order item from Amazon, discover item is a block of clay, go through the Amazon returns process, reorder item, which may be a block of clay again.
2. Order item from a site that ships me the item I order instead of a block of clay.
So again, why are we talking about this? We can argue as much as we want about Amazon's return policies, but the return policy would be irrelevant if they had sent me the item I ordered instead of a block of clay.
My fiancee had to ship a $20.00 dress that wasn't even the right color or anything like the picture back, costing $40.00, before Amazon would even refund her. And worse, the package actually bounced because the seller had folded at some point in the return period, so the package arrived right back on her doorstep. Because Amazon didn't have confirmation from the non-existent seller that the package had arrived at their non-existent company, she had to spend several hours on the phone with CSRs and different people haggling over what was essentially $60.00.
So no it isn't easy.
This math is infuriating. Do you actually bill for every waking hour of your day? If not, this calculation is nonsense. My hourly rate is similar, but I only work 8 hours per day. I have plenty of time after work to do things like spend 7 minutes returning a cheap item. I have absolutely no desire to work 16 hour days even if I was paid overtime, so it's totally disingenuous to pretend that my time after work is worth the same exact rate as my "hourly" rate at work. (I'm actually salaried so if I did want to work more it would just decrease my hourly rate.)
My wife returned it and Amazon sent a replacement the next day. All my wife has to do for the return is drop it of at Kohls next time shes out running errands. Pretty painless really.
Your experience is completely irrelevant. If Amazon didn't send out obvious counterfeits, you wouldn't have to return them, which is inherently easier than returning them no matter what the return process is.
And this isn't even touching on being nice to other people. That counterfeiter can keep on sending blocks of clay to other unsuspecting people and you did nothing to help stop them.
Best bet is to just not buy anything from Amazon.