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Exaggeration warning, but as someone who has indeed spent a bunch of money on games I ended up disliking, I find our current-day inability to cope with disappointment kind of sad.

Sometimes we buy something we don't like, but it's on us, and that's just life.

At some point I think we just took the "satisfied or your money back" mentality too far.

Edit: note this doesn't absolve actual scammers or other bad actors from being crappy people though.

Demos existed, for home computer and PC games anyway. This is why you bought the game review magazines to get the disk (and later, CD-ROM) with demos. For consoles you could often try the game in the shop, or rent them at the Video rental shop. You could even rent entire consoles! I've also returned a few games back in the day.

Everyone I knew just rented games (and sometimes console too). You'd usually rent them for a weekend.