When you promise easy returns, you make consumers more confident in buying, which leads to more sales.
What they save through non-free returns will cost them in sales, eventually… or maybe not. I have a hard time imagining that the analysis holding up these policies for years has turned out to be wrong.
They're betting that people aren't going to stop doing something they're used to just because they end a policy they only put in place to help people get over their unease with a new'ish way of buying shit. And they're probably right.
At least in Canada, and it surely must be the same elsewhere, they keep raising the taxation on tobacco because of this and that health impact reason, but the moment the sales start to slump, the price comes down drastically again. Lobbyists spend a lot of money to make sure they keep everyone that smokes hooked.
This happens once or twice a decade, ad nauseum. The only thing prolonging it this time around is the vape.
As the people shopping start to lose faith in satisfactory deliveries, they'll lower the prices, etc. They already do free shipping now, so that's an example of it in action already.