It's even worse than that, because they are adamant that they aren't abusing the system, and insist that if they didn't want people doing it, they would stop taking returns.
That kind of argument only works where stopping the behavior is cost free, the main reason most places didn't do it before was because the number of people doing it was low so the cost of actually tracking returns rigorously outweighed the benefit of low friction returns for the 99+% of customer who weren't abusing the system. When more people start creating large numbers of returns suddenly the amount of losses they create become enough to care about stopping. (Or it becomes a low hanging fruit to squeeze more profit out of an existing business, spending customer preference/loyality for profit by cutting a small waste center)
Dealing with returns is the tradeoff that online sellers make in order not to put a store in every city or to deal with retail arrangements.
Not so for consumer electronics
Oh yes it is. Buying something you know you don't plan to keep is abuse. If you ran a store, would you be fine with 2/3 of your orders being returned? A good litmus test for "am I being an asshole" is "what would the world look like if everyone behaved like me?"
Now whether it's a good thing wrt the environment etc...
Buying 3 new-in-box $1000 cameras and returning 2 of them covered with your smudgy fingerprints is abuse, no matter how you slice it. If everyone did it, those cameras would cost twice as much. I'm saddened but not surprised people are defending that behavior here.
I agree. What percentage of online returns do you think is similar to this scenario?
What percentage of "buy N and return N-1" return patterns (which you believe to be abusive) is people buying multiple $1,000+ pieces of electronics equipment, versus say 3 sizes of shoes or 3 colors of a dress?
My guess is the former case, which I agree is abusive, is <1% of such return patterns. Partially because it's a legitimately stupid way to shop for those types of items and requires significant credit, while buying multiple sizes/colors of items like clothing is a completely sensible way to shop.
Most online shops ToS say "we can ban you at any time for any reason", so their lawyers' definition of the word wouldn't be relevant here anyway.