But remember that Amazon keeps what's basically a social credit score on you that drops every time you return something, and then they permanently ban you (including from non-retail things like AWS and Prime Video) if it ever gets too low.
It's mostly targeted toward people who are egregious, and more importantly, lose Amazon money.
If you return a few too many DSLRs, Apple laptops or other high end gear you'll quickly find yourself on the rocks, or decide you're going to start a drop-shipping business from your Prime account or maybe you regularly put bricks in your returns instead of the actual products.
By comparison there is my friend. She shops a lot on Amazon but not a huge amount, maybe 15 items or so a month on average. She returns a lot of items, at least 20%, sometimes 50% or 100%. Far from banning her she routinely gets courtesy credits and outside policy refunds to keep her happy.
This is after she had actually been banned by Amazon, but not by retail. Instead, she spent 2+ years returning every since book she purchased for her Kindle, well over 100, when she realized she could buy a book and immediately return it, but turn off the Kindle internet connection while she finished reading it, before it was removed. They banned her from ever doing another Kindle return but she otherwise uses her Kindle normally.
> How do I know if I'm doing anything wrong?
>> ... that's proprietary
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/tiktok-trend-authors....
I recently dug into my property taxes and found I’m paying over $200/year (!) for the library. A lot more than the cost of Amazon Prime. Since I found this out, I’ve been using the library a lot more ..
As for our Amazon “customer score”, wish we could see it. I bet they have merchant scores too - would be interesting to see the number of returns per product displayed on each product page/merchant page.
You aren't, you are funding it. Anyone can use the library.
Doesn't this cause authors to actually lose money, so it's worse than straight up piracy for them?
The CBC did a writeup on this:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/tiktok-trend-authors....
Out of curiosity what goes through someones mind to think this is remotely acceptable?
Obviously by sharing this with you she sees nothing wrong/feels no remorse for what she does?
Blatant theft like this costs everyone money, why not just go to the library or something?
Copying data is not theft.
This clearly is retail fraud.
The greatest ThinkSpeak the media industry pulled was to redefine copyright, contract, and license violations as "theft" and "piracy."
Saying something is not theft/harassment/abuse/murder/etc. isn't the same as saying it's okay. Precise language matters.
It's not possible for someone to steal my chair or my wallet without harming me. Actual theft usually is not a victimless crime, by definition. In contrast, most of the people I've seen engage in copyright violation are too poor to buy what they're copying. Virtually everyone I know starts paying when they get real jobs. How do I feel about a broke high school student breaking my license? It's complicated, but much less bad than about someone stealing my phone.
If there is a social credit score based on number of returned items I still haven't hit it.
In my personal experience a large volume of returns won't even get you banned. A USB drive is also low value so assuming you are correct then again the fear of returning a USB drive should be zero.
I mean, if you returned 287/602=48% of the items you ordered, either there is something wrong in what you order or - more likely - your supplier (Amazon) is not reliable.
On the other side, if 48% of items (particularly if low value ones) are returned, the costs of shipping/returning/handling must be enormous.
My point is that if someone like me can return almost half their items and Amazon doesn't care at all - then it's extremely unlikely the people are being banned from Amazon services for returning a USB drive.
As well another question is what is actually doing (or not doing) Amazon about the USB sticks/drives issues, the return rate of that should be something like 90% assuming that 5% of buyers fail to realize that the size is much smaller and - still say - another 5% buys them "for later use" and do not test them on arrival.
In a traditional brick and mortar store there would be someone monitoring the return rate for defects on any item for sale as - besides the loss of perceived reliability - there would be objectives costs for handling the returns.
Say its Wednesday night and I'm starting to design a project I'm doing over the weekend but I'm not done yet - and realize I will need 8mm shafts but not sure the length of my design. I just buy 3 or 4 versions of the product with the approximate length I may need and then end up just using the one my final design calls for and returning the others.
In a case like this, there is a problem with the customer, that's it.
I have 300ish orders per year, and not even 5% returns.
It's an incredibly wasteful way of shopping, it hurts the seller (which may not be Amazon itself), it hurts the environment, etc.
This includes some parts of fashion. You buy online. If it doesn't fit, you return and buy another. There are hobbies which are similar. You buy extra parts, and return what you don't use.
The price factors in the 50+% return rate. If they didn't allow returns, no one would buy.
I don't know if that's what OP is doing, but I'm not ready to judge unless I know it's not.
Still, since as you say these online sellers must calculate the prices of these goods to cover these return expenses, the other "normal" clients pay more and BTW there are thousands, millions packets going and returning (it is time, money, traffic, etc.).
Anecdotally, twice after periods of large purchases and high dollar amount of returns (because I was buying a lot of equipment and sometimes had to buy several of the same due to them coming faulty), I noticed same-day and next day shipping would disappear for a few months. I was never able to conclusively determine what the reason was though.
is there any example of this?
You lose access to your consumer Gmail, Drive, etc if your YouTube account gets banned for comments.
You lose access to your Epic Games dev account if you get banned from Fortnite (unless they decoupled this in last few years).
AWS used to be hard-linked to your Amazon shopping account back in the day (they can't separate them for you if you ask).