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Comment by offtop5 | Hacker News Reader

Amazon's entire customer service philosophy is basically will give you store credit out of good will.

For example I once couldn't figure out how to build a table right, and I hopped on the phone with their customer service department and they refund it half of the price of the table. The same thing happened where I had a monitor which 8 months after I purchased it started having problems, they just refunded half the price.

I'm pretty sure this only works for me because I spend at least $1,500 a month via Amazon, but even then it's business genius to operate like this. Many retailers would rather leave you out to dry, for example I purchased some shoes found they didn't fit and I was shocked when I simply couldn't return them. Guess I'll never go to that store again.

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> I'm pretty sure this only works for me because I spend at least $1,500 a month via Amazon

What are you buying such that you're spending at least $18,000 a year on Amazon?

I got close to that after buying a house and filling it with whatever things I figured out I needed but didn’t want to drive to the store for (tools, cleaning supplies, kitchen stuff, holiday decorations, non food consumables, etc.)

I can’t see sustaining it indefinitely, but for a year or even two wouldn’t shock me if you’re not frugal and have a big empty house.

The short answer is as a single person with a significant amount of expendable income, I buy a lot of toys. The long answer is I buy almost everything except for food off of Amazon. Need a couch, get it off Amazon, want a shiny new video game controller, Amazon, clothing, Amazon.

Now to be fair, 1,500 might be more of an outlier month, with the average month being closer to 900 or 800$.

I used to do this, but now I check aliexpress.com first - usually I can find things at a third of the price, sometimes 10x cheaper, and I haven't really felt a lack of quality (just shipping speed).

Yeah but good luck returning something from AliExpress.

I'm more into getting the stuff I want fast, and making sure it does what I want.

My guess is that Amazon is in such a strong position with its suppliers that they don't have to care.

I know a story of a guy who tried to sell a product via MediaMarkt. (A somewhat big German retailer) You have to take everything unsold back. They only pay you after 6 month. The world for a small retailer is usually the other way around. Pay upfront and sit on unsold stock. MediMarkt is small in comparison to Amazon. That is why they don't care if you tell them 10 month later that you don't like your "new" TV. It's not their loss.

When sound cards were still a thing even in mid-level PCs I once tried to call Dell for a driver issue related to the sound card that the high-end PC had come equipped with.

I got zero help with the software issue, but they sent me a new card. I sold it on Ebay for ~$70 though so I did not complain. I solved the driver issue myself.

I feel the same way. I don't spend nearly as much as you but I'm an Amazon Prime user and I haven't ever had an issue getting a refund on a product and in some cases where I ask to cancel a delivery after speaking to a representative, I get credit to use on my next purchase.

I got a refund on something that explicitly said no returns, no refunds when I bought it. Was a $800 automatic driveway gate opener.

They’ve started trying to see if the can help you use/install the product but that’s the only inconvenience

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