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Comment by AncientPC | Hacker News Reader

I suspect this is a uniquely American thing.

Similar to Dell's failed entrance into Asia, Americans are uniquely content with purchasing plenty of merchandise without ever physically examining the product.

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Amazon has an absolutely amazing return policy. I've only returned an item once, but it was a $400 USB video adapter that didn't work with my monitors. I just printed out a UPS label, and returned it to the closest UPS store for free, and I got an instant refund.

"Amazon has an absolutely amazing return policy."

Watch out of Amazon Marketplace though. I bought a copy of The Wire through there that ended up being pirated (and terrible quality), and Amazon would neither refund the purchase nor shut down the vendor, even after we got a letter from HBO confirming that it was a pirated copy.

Did you contest the charge with your credit card provider? I can't imagine that Amazon would contest such a claim.

Without looking I'd be nearly certain that Amazon isn't going to take the hit for chargebacks on the marketplace. Appart from costing a heap it would just be inviting fraud.

If they're like paypal they just don't contest and pass the hit on to the seller unless they can prove otherwise.

Yeah, I have found PayPal for all their supposed fraud protections to be quiet useless with preventing chargebacks. As a merchant you are also disadvantaged in that you aren't able to access any BIN/AVS data on the card yourself.

No. To their credit Amazon eventually did end up eventually sending us a new copy of the DVDs, but it took quite a lot of effort to make that happen.

Yeah but outside the US we don't have UPS stores much. Posting a parcel here in the UK involves queuing at a post office for quite some time. Makes returns much harder.

Why wOuld I feel the need to inspect a book before buying it? I am working under the assumption that no pages will be missing. It's worked out fine thus far. You do realize that purchasing items over the Internet has been working well for some time now, right?

You've obviously not tried purchasing things in a 3rd world market, such as in China

You're failing to account for the fairly sizable chunk of the world that's both not the US and not the third world. Such as Germany, where people do seem to prefer physically inspecting items.

China hasn't been a 3rd world country for some time. It isn't even close. Sure there are massive pockets of poverty (with 1 billion people, there are massive pockets of everything)...but visit India or parts of Africa if you want to see what 3rd world is.

If we were going by the original definitions of first world, second world third world. China would be a second world country since it was aligned with Russia and not the US.

Not really, the Russians and Chinese were both communist but were rivals rather than allies through most of the cold war.

There was no first and second, it's third world as in "third person". NATO, Warsaw Pact, everyone else.

Yes, there was a first and second world, it used to denote then Nato and USSR block respectively, that's how the third world got its name. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_World

I supposed you could call China not a 3rd world, but I've been to China, Nepal, and parts of Africa, and a lot of rural China looks like the poor parts of the other two. How people in poverty live in China is still quite a bit below how the impoverished live in western countries

I like to flip a book open that I'm considering at a store to random sections. Not one of 20 pre-selected pages offered in some online shop, but just random places, so I can see if it's my speed. This has saved me from purchasing many (seemingly) awful works.

Google Books supports that kind of browsing pretty well showing selected chunks of a lot of books.

Purchasing from the Internet works fine until you have problems. Here in Romania you can't inspect the contents of the package until you sign for its delivery. Then if it's broken you get to keep the pieces, unless the merchant is nice. Of course, there's also the option of arguing with them, but it doesn't guarantee anything.

I bought a couple of years ago an LCD monitors from today's Romanian Amazon wanna-be and they assured me that if the monitor has any broken pixels I can have it replaced. The next day after the delivery, I discovered I had 1 broken pixel. I called them back only to find out that they can replace it only if it has 3 or 4 broken pixels as specified by some ISO standard. After this, I regretted that I didn't buy the one that I saw in a regular store and worked fine.

That's not true (probably you didn't knew). If you buy something online, you have 10 days to return it without giving a reason (and if they don't specify that clearly when you buy it, the period extends to 30 days). That's the law, it doesn't matter if they agree or not.

In Romania?

In the whole EU the customer can return items purchased online up until X days since the purchase arrival where X varies by country. There are some exceptions like digital items, custom made ware, DVDs etc. Check your local laws.

This was before any laws as far as I know. Also if I'm not mistaking, even with these laws the package must be intact. Otherwise I wonder if you can buy a TV or computer, use it for N days then return it. Do the same with the other stores until the first one forgets the repeat.

I have once bought a book with missing pages. Not common though.

> Why wOuld I feel the need to inspect a book before buying it?

To make sure the pages will not start falling out before you're done reading it ? I had that happen to me several times with cheap paperbacks litterally falling apart before I was even through the first quarter of the book

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