1. > If an item is in good shape or really is new and just unwanted, the packaging is almost always damaged beyond what could be considered a new item, so at best we might be able to sell it in a damaged package sale, which we do twice per year.
It's generally difficult to open products without damaging the packaging.
This is an intentional design with consumer packaged goods, likely for a variety of valid reasons.
Doesn't seem like the customer's fault (and shouldn't be the customer's problem), as long as the customer is being honest and not pulling a fraudulent return.
2. > but the Pista has two little screws that you have to remove take the thing apart and when we looked, all of these returned pumps have had those screws unthreaded which you can see as deformation in the screw head, whereas a new in box pump has only had them installed.
Does this suggest the manufacturer is using sub-par zinc screws instead of stainless steel? So many products have cheap screws that basically can't be removed without stripping or deforming the head, it makes the product unserviceable and dooms it to eventually land in a landfill, prematurely. Seems unacceptable to call a product top-notch with these kinds of components inside.
Fraudulent returns are still bad, as are shoddy products falsely marketed and sold as top-notch gems.
3. > Folks think they’re pulling one over on Jeff Bezos but don’t understand Amazon doesn’t own that inventory, it belongs to companies and when you think you’re screwing Amazon you’re actually screwing directly with some smaller company behind the product.
This is 100% on Amazon, due to marketing things as "Amazon Prime" and "Sold and Fulfilled by Amazon". Nasty, because the customer signals get to be ignored by Amazon as they reap the profits and offload the problem downstream onto Little Companies.