Clearly one doesn't need to just accept return fraud. I'm not familiar enough with EU laws, but I'm assuming their consumer protection laws are a little stronger than a merchant just being allowed to unilaterally say "this is fraud, no refund for you".
If the company gets dragged in front of a tribunal, or needs to provide evidence, what could they do in the situations where someone received a normal item, pilfered it for replacement parts, and then sent back the rest. How could one show that this is fraud and not the company just sending out an incomplete product? I suppose they could just ban the customer(can they?), but dedicated fraudsters would have no problem using numerous fake identities in order to conduct their fraud.
The company can do whatever, the consumer or a consumer protection agency would then have to sue, so this is highly asymmetrical (against the consumer/fraudster) in the individual case.
A company trying to scam people like this by claiming return fraud would likely find itself in expensive hot water once the pattern became obvious though.
Avoiding the risk of having to deal with this is one of the reasons why people buy via Amazon (aside from convenience and fast+cheap shipping).
> what could they do in the situations where someone received a normal item, pilfered it for replacement parts, and then sent back the rest.
I imagine the manufacturer does some kind of QA, right? This seems like a pretty easy thing to prove. Sure, defective parts happen. But totally incomplete parts, that may be impossible in some cases, depending on the manufacturing process.
(And interestingly, by TFA Amazon actually helps dealing with the frauds - though I'm thinking they should start engaging lawyers on this)
"the result of that policy" this is not a new thing, but yeah, please preach how some basic customer service is bad