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> Certainly, no one would argue against the right of a small business owner to refuse to do business with a customer that is causing them a loss.

When the profit from occasionally serving one person in a wheelchair is less than the cost of providing the wheelchair access, yet we still demand it, indeed that's why we have to demand it - if you still made money from the person in a wheelchair, you'd put the ramp in anyway.




Yes, I guess there is an exception for people with disabilities, but in the context of this discussion, I mean someone who returning items excessively. Clearly a return policy is infeasible if every person returned every item from every person. There must be an assumption that a return policy won't be abused to keep the return policy feasible for everyone.


In the past decade I’ve anecdotally noted that some places with famously liberal return policies have tightened up. Outdoor equipment retailer REI is my favorite example.

They have switched from unlimited returns forever for any reason to 1 year.

My theory is it’s a combo of two things. 1. People abusing return policies. 2. More and more items that used to be durable becoming consumable. In a lot of industries the drive for lightweight and high tech has led to things that simply can’t last. I have a backpack that weighs less than a pair of jeans, but it certainly won’t last the way my dads old backpack lasted. Same thing with my battery powered drill, I really doubt that I’ll be able to find a battery for it in 30 years.

The backpack and the battery powered drill are two things that have shifted from buy it for life, to consumable good.




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