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How Your Returns Are Used Against You At Best Buy, Other Retailers (nbcnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): At Best Buy, returning too many items within a short time can hurt a person's score, as can returning high-theft items such as digital cameras. Every time shoppers returns purchases to Best Buy, they are tracked by a company which has the power to override the store's touted policy and refuse to refund their money. That is because the electronics giant is one of several chains that have hired a service called The Retail Equation to score customers' shopping behavior and impose limits on the amount of merchandise they can return. Stores have long used generous return guidelines to lure more customers, but such policies also invite abuse. Retailers estimate 11% of their sales are returned, and of those, 11% are likely fraudulent returns, according to a 2017 survey of 63 retailers by the National Retail Federation. Return fraud or abuse occurs when customers exploit the return process, such as requesting a refund for items they have used, stolen or bought somewhere else.
Amazon.com Inc. and other online players that have made it easy to return items have changed consumer expectations, adding pressure on brick-and-mortar chains. Some retailers monitor return fraud in-house, but Best Buy and others pay The Retail Equation to track and score each customer's return behavior for both in-store and online purchases. The service also works with Home Depot, J.C. Penney, Sephora and Victoria's Secret. Some retailers use the system only to assess returns made without a receipt. Best Buy uses The Retail Equation to assess all returns, even those made with a receipt.
Amazon.com Inc. and other online players that have made it easy to return items have changed consumer expectations, adding pressure on brick-and-mortar chains. Some retailers monitor return fraud in-house, but Best Buy and others pay The Retail Equation to track and score each customer's return behavior for both in-store and online purchases. The service also works with Home Depot, J.C. Penney, Sephora and Victoria's Secret. Some retailers use the system only to assess returns made without a receipt. Best Buy uses The Retail Equation to assess all returns, even those made with a receipt.
charge back when best buy fails will change there ways
I always assumed this was the case? And it's not really unreasonable is it? Like, some people are going to take the piss, and it's not ridiculous that the company would keep track of customers that are causing them costs.
I'm the last person to be an apologist for big business, but this seems fairly reasonable to me...
E-commerce has tons of sales, but they're all losing tons of money, too. Free returns? Free shipping. Yeah, that's not profitable for anybody, including Amazon. How long will investors tolerate losses?
I don't respond to AC's.
Refusal to give a refund is not generally a valid reason for a CC chargeback. For one thing, you still have the merchandise you paid for.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I've seen way too many people openly boast about abusing return policies and the like. Eventually companies reach a breaking point where they have to reconsider their approach and weed out the bad actors.
Tragedy of the commons and all that.
So, basically, if you try to take advantage of the system, they'll call you on it. Not seeing the problem here. Sounds like someone trying to manufacture outrage as though the stores are trying to screw you over, but it sounds like they're just trying to protect themselves against a somewhat common type of fraud.
Or am I wrong here? If so, maybe someone can explain. I rarely shop retail these days, and I rarely return items.
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I'm perfectly okay with this. People who treat stores like a free 30 day rental service are jerks.
Having purchased Jaybird Bluetooth running headphones in the early days, they would short out at about 3 months... I'll be damned if I am going to go through some ardent process for warranty repair, given that I simply bought a new pair and then returned the faulty ones the next week as if they were the new pair. I did this twice and gave up on the brand. If retailers are going to stock faulty products and not hold the manufacturers accountable, then why should I bear the brunt as the consumer?
Refusal to give a refund is not generally a valid reason for a CC chargeback. For one thing, you still have the merchandise you paid for.
You could always leave it in the store?
BB refused to take back an item 25 years ago. I would usually drop 15-20k per year in that store. Have not been back. A 40 dollar item cost them MUCH MUCH more.
That is how I treat stores that refuse to take broken things back.
I've been on enough boards to know that there exists a significant "customer" base which is perfectly willing to unethically take maximum benefit of easy return policies for personal benefit. Like - "I know the new TV models will be out in a month, but I want a 4K now, so I'll buy one and then return it and get a new one when they're available." (or, "I'll buy one for my Superbowl party, and return it a couple weeks later" or similar)
That's why we can't have nice things (policies). If someone's purchase doesn't meet their legitimate, reasonable expectations, fine, return it. But there are many who know up front that they'll be returning it later, or expect to go through multiple returns so they can cherry pick the best of the best. Fuck 'em. Such abuse only ends up costing everyone else more, and I have an issue with funding reprobates.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Someone who is super picky, and has a problem with everything they buy, and returns a lot of stuff is a customer to be avoided
If I was a seller, I would blacklist them
Someone who has real problems with stuff not working right should be able to return it
is that this is the big data folks keep talking about. I'll leave figuring out how this can (will?) be abused as an exercise for the reader, but regardless this puts more power in the hands of retailers and contributes to tipping the balance between consumer/retailer. Airlines do the same thing with rapid price changes, and yes there's a bit of an arms race on right now, but I don't expect plucky consumers to come out ahead. There was already a lopsided power imbalance before all the mergers and acquisitions and leveraged buyout fueled bankruptcies.
TL;DR. We need to consider the effects of large sets of cheaply available consumer data being easily traded among the few retailers that are left.
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They really don't give a shit, because for every self-righteous asshole like you that does that in their store, there is another one at their competitors store that is doing the same thing and will become Best Buy's newest customer. It all evens out, and more importantly that $40 showed up on that quarter's sales figures.
Then you've taken the active option of abandoning it.
A charge back because a store refused to abide by their printed and posted policies is a valid reason for a charge back. I can tell you that American Express fully supports this as long as you show what the store policy is and that you attempted to return in good faith within the terms of the store policy.
I think some people have a buying addiction and then have buyers remorse afterwards. Dealing with that is difficult and merchants have tried many tactics like restocking fee's and limit return times. Sometimes even offering only in store credits to discourage some of this. The merchant has a lot of issues too with returns. Dealing with all that merchandise that cannot be resold and must go back to manufacture. Many refurbished items are simply returns from people who simply didn't want them.
I would expect that you need at least a receipt and that should usually include the device serial number. Or is there some defect in the way this is done in the US?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I wonder how they handle valid forms of ID that aren't driver licenses if their system doesn't understand them like passport cards or IDs from other countries.
The item was broken. Perhaps I should have quietly slunk away just so you can call me names? Most other stores if something is broken they are pretty reasonable.
. It all evens out
As Circuit City and Radio Shack how it 'evens out'. You treat customers like shit and over charge them you go out of business.
nd more importantly that $40 showed up on that quarter's sales figures
The 15-20k was not on the one after. Do not care really. If I want shitty service I can goto walmart or Amazon.
It is if they refuse to honor their started return policy.
Plus, you can use the credit card's policy and they'll probably get tired of filling in for the retailer.
Depends on the reason for return. If the item is defective I would imagine that the CC would side with the buyer.
However the bigger picture here is that if you're returning things with such great frequency that it puts you into this category where you get flagged, I would be suspicious too.
End of the day though, the CC will probably side with the buyer.
That's the problem with big companies. There is no respect from either side.
Big companies don't care about you, and in return people don't care about the well being of the company. The gap is so large that executives forget that customers and low rank employees are people not just profit making machines. And in return, customers who abuse the system don't seem to realize that by doing that, they hurt the small people (like other customers and employees) more than executives.
Let them track you then.
It seems the retailer inputs driver's license number and address, or scans the barcode if it has one. That's how one is tracked. Retail return policies generally have a catch-all "we can refuse any refund for any or no reason at our discretion" clause, which is used in this case. It seems The Retail Equation (TRE) presumably uses machine learning fraud-detection systems, like a credit or debit card company uses, only you can't call them to force the transaction through, so you're just stuck with no way out. Given that returns are a cost-center for retailers, this is a 'feature' rather than a bug. Getting flagged means no returns to that store for 365 days, and you only find out after you've bought your merchandise; so if you bought clothes unsure if your spouse likes how they look, or if they'll be comfortable, then you're SOL if not. TRE has been around for several years, their website says 1999, and I found complaints about them online dating back to at least 2011.
TFA gives an anecdote of a guy who was blacklisted from his first return... before he even made it. So he was allowed zero returns from Best Buy before being banned from returns. Apparently, it triggers so rarely that there haven't been enough complaints about false positives to cause retailers to ditch the system. In my experience, customer complaints can cause a company to loosen its return policies to the point of letting pretty-obvious fraud through, although larger companies are probably less likely to care. I guess the moral is, shop at smaller stores if you're not certain you want something, and check the return policy.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
It IS a credit reporting system because data may be shared across retailers. If this is the case you absolutely have the right to view and send a written request for review al
According The Retail Equation's page to request a Return Activity Report, retailers using the service are supposed to give a transaction ID when they refuse a return.
If they ask for ID, you either forgot yours, show one without an address (passport), or go to a different store where the checkers are too rushed to care.
A return policy is part of the contract of sale, i.e. I purchase certain goods under a set of conditions which includes that the product is as advertised and that the product may be returned according to the posted return policy. If this "we may conditionally allow returns" policy is posted, then I see the retailer as being in the right. However, if the customer is returning the product according to the posted rules, and the retailer is using hidden data and denying returns/refunds based on an opaque and unposted policy, then i see a potential violation of consumer protection laws.
Pretty much ANYTHING is a valid reason for a chargeback, as long as you've made an attempt to resolve the issue, the CC company has a list and refusal to refund IS specifically listed.
The best thing that Best Buy can do with this list, besides inserting it in their corporate rectums is actually refuse purchases using this list, they're not required to sell to everyone, although such list could also bite back (hey there's an awful lot of black people on that list, that's racism, good luck in court Best Buy).
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Last quarter Amazon's US retail operating profit was 4.5%.
Not bad for mass-produced merchandising. (Compare Walmart at 3.28%)
DogDude simply spoke without knowing what he was talking about, talking out of his ass. We all do that sometimes.
Same. I tried to hold them to their repair policy and they had security escort me out of the store. I haven't given them a dime since.
Indeed it is. Which is why you're a moron to compare it to someone who paid money for a product and is trying to get money in a return for said product.
Maybe the stores should be tougher on the manufacturers for producing faulty products. I know in the early 2000's when I bought my 1st LCD TVs, one of the 1st 32" 1080p to hit the market, I returned the thing to BestBuy 4 times before I got one with no dead pixels.
Back then a 32" TV cost $1500. Sorry but I am not paying that much for a TV with dead pixels. For the price that 32" TVs go for these days sure a pixel or two wouldn't bug me as much.
I still have that TV to this day it has been moved to the bedroom now and a projector takes it's place in the living room these days. I doubt many of the $200-300 32" TVs these days will last that long.
Recently bought a TV at Walmart and had to return it because the screen was broken out of the box. They refunded that in case and took down zero notes of any kind about who I was. Paid with a card. They refunded me cash.
So I got the same model TV again and eventually returned that one because I didn't like it. Again, they just gave me back my money and took no info.
Walmart USED to ask for ID and all sorts of crap. No more.
Sig for hire.
I had a T-Mobil SIM card and a month's worth of service which I asked the retail associate would work with my Nexus 5 phone. They told me it would. There was no "all sales final" posted near the register or on the merchandise (there is on Verizon's stuff). It didn't work on Google Voice and the store wouldn't give me a refund.
When I did the charge back, I explained I was "refusing acceptance of the sale" which is a specific legal criteria you can use to void a commercial sale. This is very different from requesting a refund and it's baked into the Universal Commercial Code (google for it if you're curious). If you use a credit card processor here in the US, they must conform to this law regardless of the "all sales final" or whatever a vendor's return policy. I got my $62 back even thought the store tried to say that the sale was final, etc. etc. because I invoked this part of the UCC. It worked with Techdirt when I bought sheets that didn't fit and they said "all sales final". It even worked with a vendor in Europe who wasn't covered by US' laws, but VISA was and refunded my money.
The problem is, just like return fraud is an issue, chargeback fraud is also a problem. While the CC company may side with the buyer, that doesn't stop the business from suing you. If it's a relatively inexpensive item, it's probably not worth it. But if it's a big ticket item, that might just get you sued. And if chargebacks are abused more often, they may also be restricted just like is happening with returns.
There are other avenues of recourse, so these are hardly the only options available to you. You can sue the business in small claims court. You can ask the Better Business Bureau for help in resolving the dispute. And you can also report it as fraud to your state's attorney general. A chargeback is more appropriate when an item wasn't delivered or you were charged twice for a single purpose and the merchant refuses to refund the charge. A fraudulent purchase made with your card is reason for a chargeback. Also, if you returned an item and you were never refunded, then a chargeback would be appropriate.
My kid got a laptop from her grand dad. They shorted her on 8 gigs of ram. I wasn't paying attention and neither was she. She uses it for school so it's not like it matters, but if I got that back it would go. I've returned tons of stuff like that over the years. Stuff that was functional but not what the manufacturer says it was.
I also use a Phillips Air Floss. Works great, but the motors die like clockwork ever 12-14 months. I bought the extended warranty and return it to the store. If you don't want me to keep returning them fix the bloody problem with the motors. It's not like I enjoy traipsing to Best Buy ever year when the damn thing breaks.
And don't get me started on cell phones. Use slightly cheaper ram and their performance goes to crap. Not a problem if you buy $700+ flagships. But I buy $250 mid range phones. I go through two or three before I find one that isn't crap and do that about every 2-3 years (mostly because radios improve and I want the better reception/new bands).
If you're savvy there are plenty of legit reasons to return lots of stuff. Companies will make barely functional crap if you let them. Returns are the one thing that lets us punish them. And again, I'm not scamming anyone. In fact, I'm pretty damn pissed companies are wasting my time with their God Damned corner cutting.
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I have a few extended family members that do shitty stuff like this. They're willing to use anybody. Probably because they've been supported by welfare their entire lives.
If the item is defective, there is in some jurisdiction a "hidden flaw" rules that allow a complete exchange or a complete refund (up to the retailer decision). e.g. if your buy a camera and after 3 month the camera internal sensor burn out, they have in those jurisdiction to prove either the consumer misused the camera (e.g. let it drop down and broke it) or with the hidden flaw laws, give a complete replacement or a free reparation (usually not the case too labor/pieces/cost intensive compared to the other solutions) or a complete refund.
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Refusal to give a refund is not generally a valid reason for a CC chargeback. For one thing, you still have the merchandise you paid for.
Most reputable credit card companies will issue the chargeback and have you send in the product to them.
My local grocery, where there are probably only 5 people working total, has refunded me cash for bad/moldy fruit, no questions asked, no receipt. Then again, they probably remember that I bought it.
back in the early 90s explicitly BECAUSE the small stores were shafting us on return policies, especially computer stores (pre-CompUSA and company, back when mom and pops were giving up the ghost to the first wave of 'small' corporate computer mercenaries.)
Now the small corporate stores were sold/eaten/etc by big corporate chains, and now those chains in turn are being crushed by multinationals who provided the service that the corporate stores had forgotten after crushing the small corporate stores over the same hubris and some of the small mom and pops places before them. Mixed in with this was price fixing, undercutting the competition and working out exclusive deals that damaged the market for all the honest players.
And in a few years the cycle will start anew, but with even fewer players and even more mercenary terms.
TFS says
Retailers estimate 11% of their sales are returned
More than one out of every ten sales are returned? That's not correct.
And, why would they need to *estimate* ?
In Anchorage AK Best Buy is the only company that sells customer electronics, so then have monopoly on the local market. The next nest choice is 1200 miles south in Seattle. I bought a dash cam for them and dash mount that came with the unit broke less than week after I brought it. I did not want another unit with the same crappy dash mount, and rather than give a refund, they only allowed store credit.
Blaming a third party for your returns policy is a stroke of genus. You can rip the customers off by selling crap products, and refuse to refund their money when the crap brakes, and blame some else if it ever by some miracle it ever makes through the courts.
I call bull shit on the poor big company protecting itself from those evil customers.
That really depends on the particular credit card. Some of the "we kiss your ass for your credit score" cards... generally the ones made out of metal instead of plastic... explicitly list defective merchandise as a legit reason for a chargeback. What I mean here is, if some shyster sells me something defective, and I paid with that card of course, I don't even have to TRY to get them to take it back. My >800 FICO time is deemed to be too valuable to bother driving back to the store. I just call up the concierge; occasionally take and send a picture to document the defect; and the charge is gone with no hassle, no headache, no waiting in line (very nice around the holidays), no worries if I already threw the receipt away, no justifying myelf to some teenager, and no retail manager with his illusions of power over me.
I'm generally nicer about it and do actually go back to the store though. I don't shop for crap to start, but I do know that anything mass-manufactured nevertheless had a defect rate and sometimes you get unlucky. So I'm almost always exchanging for a non-defective example of what I bought instead of returning it outright. But oh how it has been nice to have the option on the occasions when a store has tried the "restocking fee" (Oh? You're going to restock this defective Switch and sell it's dead-pixels to someone else? Sure you are...) game.
People are discovering this, only now? In my state, it was in the news a few years ago when when women who buy $10,000 of clothing were being black-listed for changing their mind on $3,000 of purchases.
To quote the GP, your purchase didn't meet your legitimate, reasonable expectations by having dead pixels. The return/exchange was fair.
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>At Best Buy, returning too many items within a short time can hurt a person's score, as can returning high-theft items such as digital cameras. Every time shoppers returns purchases to Best Buy, they are tracked by a company which has the power to override the store's touted policy and refuse to refund their money.
What kind of SHITHOLE country do you live in that has no consumer protection laws?
SAD.
Not at Costco. I’ve never been egregious with my returns there, but from what I know they will accept things months or years after purchase.
End of the day though, the CC will probably side with the buyer.
Depends on how often it happens. The CC company probably has some sort of similar rating system to catch people who abuse the system in a fraudulent manner. (Well, at least they can't do a charge-back on products they have never bought in the store, so at least that angle of fraud is impossible at least)
Not everyone has credit cards, and debit card chargeback policies are usually limited to protection against unauthorized transactions/fraud.
---
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I get the outrage, like everyone else it's hard not to think of this as a blacklist designed to rip off customers and with all the Kafkaesque elements you'd expect from an opaque, privately run blacklist.
That being said, if a big part of this is tech "rental" -- buying an item for limited use and then returning, why not approach this as a business opportunity? Create some business model where people can more or less rent these items (purchase minus restocking fee) and where each iteration of sale-return results in a declining, "open box" selling price?
If this "problem" is big enough that it's worth the pure overhead cost of running a blacklist of abusive consumers, it sounds like there's a way to run to use that overhead instead towards basically renting these items to abusive customers.
Try tracking that! And if you are clever, you will give them different address and name every single time! Now try tracking that too! Hahahahaha! :-DDD
I used to work at Bed, Bath, and Beyond when in college. Our return policy was so insanely easy to abuse. I only ever recall one person being spoken to about their returns, and this was because they had made something like 78 returns in the past year. There were customers that would buy items with a coupon, then return without receipt (I didn't use my card, I paid cash) and get 100% store credit back for something they paid 20% off for... then just use their store credit on something with yet another 20% coupon. And they'd just do this all year. And we couldn't say anything about it ever... only the loss prevention guy was allowed to in extreme cases. But we'd have the same "super bowl party" tv situation. Except in ours, people would buy tons of outdoor furniture for summer parties - then just return it a week later scuffed up and dirty. And our policy allowed for this.
Get electronics, use them, take them back before the return period, repeat.
Companies should be free to refuse to do business with any individual as long as the reason is non-discriminatory. And if it turns out that the customer simply isn't profitable due to a high return rate, that seems pretty reasonable to me. Nobody really wants unprofitable customers. And arguably those who have high return rates drive up prices for everybody. But this should be disclosed at the time of the sale not when the return comes in the door. When the purchase is made, the retailer can use the payment card data to decide if they want to complete the sale. Or they can tell the customer that it's a final sale and ask if they want to proceed. Waiting until the return happens is pretty unethical
Indeed it is. Which is why you're a moron to compare it to someone who paid money for a product and is trying to get money in a return for said product.
If someone is abusing the system of returns and returning something that they have used and not in good faith purchased in the first place (always intending to return- as a large number of returns indicate) then they are committing fraud themselves.
I fully support stores implementing these rules as long as there is plenty of wriggle-room for legitimate returns.
They guy who buys a suit, wears it to a wedding and then returns it... then buys a big screen TV to watch the super bowl and then returns it afterwards are costing the rest of us money. Who do you think pays for these fraudulent uses? We do, it raises the cost of doing business which causes us to pay more.
I fully support Best Buy trying to cut out on fraud. It helps keep the costs down for me.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It is sad you got upvoted because this is horseshit. The UCC states that the buyer must accept pay for goods when the seller had delivered, unless a contract between the buyer and seller says otherwise. It also states that the buyer has the right to inspect goods before making payment, at which time they can decide whether or not to accept delivery from the seller.
Once the optional step of goods being inspected, delivery is accepted by the buyer and payment is made (which is understood to happen concurrently unless there is a separate contract as stated above), that is it. The transaction is complete and the UCC offers no more protections.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
If you've ever been involved with charge backs, you post your charge back, and the store has typically 60-90 days to respond, if they dispute the charge back, the next stop is a court room. If you've been abusing the return policy, and they have evidence, this can end very poorly for you.
I'm under the impression that the UCC is applicable to B2B transactions only. Is that not true?
End of the day though, the CC will probably side with the buyer.
Absolutely not. The CC sides with themselves and that's it. I had a company that was refusing to respond to me so I disputed the charge in an attempt to get them to respond (missed a flight, trying to find out options for unused ticket). Well, that was enough to get their attention and they finally started responding to me, but they challenged my dispute, I didn't challenge any more as I'd gotten what I wanted. The CC made it clear though that my options were to let the charge through, or take the company to court, and they were washing their hands of it. Just because you dispute the charge doesn't mean you won't pay for it.
There was also a famous one a while back where some guy made a fake donation for like 10 grand and then disputed it as a troll move. The credit card pulled the same thing, said if he wanted to further the dispute he'd have to take it to court. Don't know if he actually took it to court, but I imagine the court isn't going to be terribly sympathetic with a troll gone wrong.
It could still be flagged by Best Buy's vendor regardless of how legitimate the return may be.
Returns are a cost of doing business - and consumer protection laws in civilized countries. Barring mind-reading powers (which would be creepy AF anyway) there's no way to know if the guy returning the purchased tux is a cheapass avoiding a rental fee, or if the pants really did ride up in the crotch. And as prices are always set to maximize revenue, the "Best Buy rental program" doesn't cost you the consumer a dime. BB could magically eliminate it entirely (and shoplifting, and employees "forgetting" to ring up each others purchases) and you wouldn't see prices go down by a nickel.
Then there's the old business saying, 'manage the exception, not manage to the exception'. So sure, if you're an assistant manager and you see Joe Punkass come in on a Thursday to buy yet another Alienware rig before a three day LAN party (that you know he's going to return on Monday) go ahead and tell him he's not welcome. But as an especially greedy, unethical corporation, any software system Best Buy will use is guaranteed to tag far more regular consumers than people "abusing the system".
Seriously, Ebay needs to improve their return policies. There are too many flippers on Ebay these days.
Returns are a cost of doing business - and consumer protection laws in civilized countries. Barring mind-reading powers (which would be creepy AF anyway) there's no way to know if the guy returning the purchased tux is a cheapass avoiding a rental fee, or if the pants really did ride up in the crotch. And as prices are always set to maximize revenue, the "Best Buy rental program" doesn't cost you the consumer a dime. BB could magically eliminate it entirely (and shoplifting, and employees "forgetting" to ring up each others purchases) and you wouldn't see prices go down by a nickel.
So you're saying if stores reduce returns from "11%" to "5%" you DON'T think their costs will go down? Disagree with you there. It might not make a huge difference, but stores that compete on prices lower their prices as much as they can to still maintain a profit - retail runs on very low profit per item- they rely on volume to make profit- volume increases by getting prices as low as possible.
If fraudulent returns weren't costing them money they wouldn't care about fraudulent returns. Fraudulent returns cost them money which means they have to raise prices to pay for it... which means you pay the bill.
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Depends on what constitutes abuse. If I buy a camera and test drive it for a week, then decide I want to return it, is that fraud? The way this article reads, the retailer wants the sale to stand regardless of how I may feel. If they are willing to go to court to go around their policy, it just makes me not want to but from there.
Toy's R Us: I bought a Nintendo handheld game (DSi/2DS/3DS/whatever) for my kid a couple years ago. I badly wanted to get him a Nerf case for it. Toy's R Us had them in stock. I couldn't remember which model I needed. The salescritter, perhaps desperate for commission, says "Just buy your best guess. You can always return it." Well, I guessed wrong. So I tried to return it. And tried. And tried. Several different Toys R Us stores. Talking to the manager at every store. Printed out their return policy and read it to them. Finally got the return, only for some weird reason the computer brought it up as store credit. Again read Toys R Us their own return policy. To the manager, no less. I had to provide my drivers license and the original credit card. I almost took Toy's R Us to small claims court. And I never shopped there again!
Walmart: Changed my mind on a DVD player. No receipt. No problem. In, out, and done in 10 seconds.
One of the things I've been burned on with a few stores now, including OfficeMax and ToysRUs, is where they offer these great deals online. And, for just a few dollars more, you get free shipping. So you add in some fluff, like a ream of paper to your order, to get the free shipping. Then the original order is canceled. It was quote "posted in error". Or they "sold out". Now you're hit for shipping and your fluff order. It's out-and-out fraud, and our DA looks the other way. (Though to OfficeMax's credit, they waved shipping and accepted the refund locally when I complained. ToysRUs wasn't so helpful.)
Bah. The harder they make it to shop locally, the more I order off Amazon & Newegg. (Newegg, to their credit, actually accepted a return on an out-of-spec part weeks after their return policy ended. I was, and still am, impressed!)
If you invoke the legal department in any financial company they are going to end the dispute immediately in your favor to avoid any further work or time. They will not risk exposing themselves to a regulatory finding over a transaction. I saw more than one case where a person was not able to access their money ($200 but the amount does not matter) for a day or two resulting in a settlement of $8000. The arbitration limit for the particular company at the time--a very small company.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
A Best Buy sales person forced my grandmother's iPad into the wrong case and cracked the screen. "It was already cracked." If this is how they treat a 76 yr old woman--a regular customer--it shows you what they are all about.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
This is a well known scam around the heroin addict community, get the highest priced item you can in store and "return" it without a receipt. The consensus seems to be 3 times is the most you'll get away with but if it's heroin you're after morals aren't exactly a high priority.
Captcha : Felony
The policies exist to reduce sales friction. Choosing a product and bringing it back because you think one of the other brands might be better--and doing this multiple times--is not an abuse. It increases customer engagement and reduces a barrier to decision making. If you want to reduce returns, educate the customer and let them use the product before they purchase. Your lambast of the cherry-picking pattern is not valid, it is exactly why the policy exists. Markets (information and competition) do not protect merchants, it serves consumers. Best Buy and the like attract abusive behavior because they are abusive in spirit.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
"Big companies don't care about you, and in return people don't care about the well being of the company."
In the age of technology and information isn't loose coupling preferred?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Run it as credit then. How does this still fucking elude people?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Except that doesn't happen.
When you get flagged by TRE, the retailer tells you this is the last return they'll accept from you for X amount of time, and you're given a number to check on the TRE site that lists your returns and your status in the system. If you have beef with any of it, you can bitch at TRE (and they'll ignore you / laugh at you).
Future returns will not be covered by policy, you'd have to get lucky and get a manager to approve and override. (They can't actually override the TRE piece, but they can initiate a separate transaction that gets you your money back and takes the item back.)
You would NOT be eligible for a return or a charge back after being flagged by TRE. In many cases your credit card may side with you, but in many cases they won't. And it certainly won't work again after that. The whole system is designed to target repeat offenders. It was a big deal amongst a shitty group of gamers a few years back.
People would buy a game from Amazon to get it slightly cheaper, get a preorder bonus, get Amazon exclusive DLC, skip paying tax, earn points on their Amazon credit card, etc.
Buy the game from Best Buy on release day or preorder (with pickup in store on release day) to get the bonus, DLC, etc..
Open and play the game.
When the Amazon package arrives, take that game and return it to Best Buy.
I've had my share of returns at Best Buy over the last year or two, but nothing fraudulent. I can recall returning 3 games (unopened) for various reasons (Best Buy missed the delivery date on one so I bought it digitally to play with my friends on launch day, reviews for another showed it was shit and I couldn't cancel the order, I secured a special edition of another and didn't want to risk altering my orders and losing anything as their system had been messing up). I've also returned a router (opened) because it was obnoxiously large and not much better than my current one anyway. With the opened router they opened it up on the counter and inspected it before accepting the return.
I don't know what the exact thresholds are, and I'd be pissed if I got flagged. But I absolutely agree with Best Buy doing this to stop people who abuse their policies to commit fraud.
Depends on what constitutes abuse. If I buy a camera and test drive it for a week, then decide I want to return it, is that fraud? The way this article reads, the retailer wants the sale to stand regardless of how I may feel. If they are willing to go to court to go around their policy, it just makes me not want to but from there.
The system tracks patterns to find serial abusers who buy things with the intention of returning them later. For example, someone will buy one in store and one online (Amazon, eBay) for a cheaper price, then return the online item to Best Buy once it's delivered to them. Or scalpers who buy a ton of X item and resell it at inflated prices, then once the market for that item dies they return their unsold stock to the retailer.
When you get flagged by TRE as being a serial returner, you are told by the merchant that this will be the last return they accept from you, and you're given a number to look up on TRE's site to check your history of returns, dispute any errors, etc.
Pretty much ANYTHING is a valid reason for a chargeback, as long as you've made an attempt to resolve the issue, the CC company has a list and refusal to refund IS specifically listed.
A reason to open one, sure. A reason to prevail? Nope. Your credit card issuer will contact the payment processor on record and get in touch with an actual human at the retailer and tell them about the dispute and they have X days to respond and contest. If they contest, the credit card company won't willy-nilly side with the buyer. They look at the details of the transaction and the dispute and if it's too messy they'll wash their hands of it and you'll have to go to court. If it's not too messy, they'll pick a side and it may not be the one you want.
Returns are a cost of doing business - and consumer protection laws in civilized countries.
Ah, a millennial who has never run a business or sold a product.
BS. The same people also demand new-in-the-box units, not the ones returned by others of their ilk. That costs the rest of us real money in higher prices.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
BB refused to take back an item 25 years ago. I would usually drop 15-20k per year in that store. Have not been back. A 40 dollar item cost them MUCH MUCH more.
That is how I treat stores that refuse to take broken things back.
If you were spending $15,000 - $20,000 annual in Best Buy in the 1990s, you're retarded.
I'm going to guess the $40 item saved them the hassle of dealing with a jerk who only occasionally bought something.
They guy who buys a suit, wears it to a wedding and then returns it... then buys a big screen TV to watch the super bowl and then returns it afterwards are costing the rest of us money. Who do you think pays for these fraudulent uses? We do, it raises the cost of doing business which causes us to pay more.
I fully support Best Buy trying to cut out on fraud. It helps keep the costs down for me.
Can you please explain in your McWhiney way how the fuck it costs me money when Mr. Smith decides to return something he bought? Oh wait, it doesn't you're just a shill for mid-manager stop-loss BS, nevermind.
Ah, a corporatist with a grotesque sense of entitlement. Still, nothing wrong with you that ten years of honest labor wouldn't fix. They even have camps for that.
Good luck with this when state law says that retailers must accept returns within 20 days when the buyer has a receipt. In my state the most the store can do is charge a restocking fee. Information on restocking fees must be posted at the point of sale.
They can list a policy of all sales final, but discriminating by individual is not allowed.
All states (except Louisiana) have merchant-ability laws that override any in store policies. These state laws vary on the state, but the basics of each one are mostly the same: If a product is sold as being able to do X, then it must do X. If it doesn't do X, then the buyer is entitled to return the product, regardless of what the return policies are.
For example, let's say there is a store selling sheets. Their return policy says "no returns on sheets once they are used", which is pretty typical. Through the course of business, they say that if a set of sheets has been washed, then they are used (also typical). I buy a pair of king-sized sheets. I then take them out of the package and immediately launder them, as you are supposed to do. When I take them out, I find out they don't fit my bed and that they were queen-sized sheets sold in king-sized packaging. Despite the policies saying that there are no returns on sheets once they are used and that sheets are considered to be used if they have been washed, I would be legally entitled to return the sheets for a full refund regardless of what the store's policies are.
The exception to the above is when items are sold "as is". "As is" is very different than "All sales final". It also, required specific language be used to designate a sale of "as is" product. There are a handful of states that don't even allow for the merchantability exception for as-is sales either.
Most credit cards have return protection insurance that covers exactly this scenario. No chargeback required.
Funny that this is now in the news. Last October my son called me. He had purchased an Asus router for his mother at Best Buy, and when he got it to her house, it simply would not work - he could not connect to the router's interface, and the computer connected to it was not receiving an IP address via DHCP. He's set up several routers before, so it's not like it's the first time he's ever done this.
His receipt actually contained the words, "As a mind Best Buy Elite member, we are pleased to extend your return and exchange period on eligible products to 30 days from purchase date."
When he went to return it to Best Buy, only about an hour and a half after he had purchased it, and WITH his receipt, a message popped up on the register saying he would no longer be allowed to return items to Best Buy (they did give him a refund for the defective router, though).
A copy of the notice they gave him can be seen at http://tinypic.com/r/20gikno/9 . Apparently they required him to sign a copy of this, which they retained, as a condition of getting the refund.
When they did this, he was pretty upset about it because he was returning a defective product that he had just purchased, WITH a receipt, and the transaction (both sale and refund) was made with a Best Buy credit card. And, he told me that it had been probably about a year since the last time he returned anything to Best Buy.
When they sprang this on him, his response was predictable, he informed the clerk that he would never again make a purchase at Best Buy and that they would probably be joining the long list of companies that are going out of business (my words, not his, but that's the gist of what he said).
My son says he can't remember ever returning anything to Best Buy without a receipt.
So, I went online and found this thread, which showed that his experience was not unique: BANNED FROM RETURNING OR EXCHANGING ITEMS FOR 365 DAYS AND I AM AN ELITE MEMBER!!!! (Sorry I had to use a TinyURL link, for some reason when I included the full link it went to a "Page Not Found" error. The link is to a thread on the Best Buy support site.)
I understand that the point of this is to prevent people from shoplifting items and then returning them without receipts, and I have no problem with that. But why is Best Buy using it against customers who have a receipt and may need to return a defective item? Something seems clearly wrong about the way this is being implemented.
So, we have this company that no one has ever heard of making decisions on whether customers are allowed to return items (despite what the store's published return policy may be). And they are even flagging honest customers that only return items they have purchased (and have a receipt for).
If you read that thread, my son is not the only person that this has happened to, and Best Buy doesn't seem to care, preferring to pass the buck to this TRE outfit.
I wonder if it is illegal for them to deny a return, if their published policies indicate that you can return something with a receipt for a certain number of days, and you have your receipt and are within the return period? I know that in this case my son signed that notice in order to get a refund, but he did it because they more or less twisted his arm - if he hadn't signed it, he'd have been stuck with a defective router and no refund.
To me it sounds like this TRE company that nobody's ever heard of is making decisions about whether a store can ignore its own return policies for certain customers that it has flagged. And it sounds like perhaps it's doing this at multiple stores, so if you get flagged at one store you may have a problem making a valid return to another. They do appear to have a some process where you can call them and more or less beg to be taken off their list (I have to wonder if people with Middle American accents get removed a lot quicker than people with strong ethnic ac
Nope, both VISA and MasterCard have official rules for ALL their brand cards. It's the deal you take when you agree to accept MC/Visa cards as a merchant.
Obviously they can sue, unless the merchant has already gone through a binding arbitration with the CC. Typically though as a merchant, it's your loss unless you can prove fraud and in small claims showing up with an army of lawyers typically is not very pleasing to the judge.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I have been the victim of this disgraceful, sloppy, sneaky, anti consumer policy. I am making sure that family and friends know about Best Buys policy. Most people like myself are making legitimate returns for various reasons yet it is not being disclosed that it being held against us. You don't cast a dark cloud over all consumers for some who may be committing fraud. Hopefully, Best Buy can resolved this. If not, perhaps the local television consumer investigator would be interested. I would say this whole policy will be an epic PR fail for Best Buy as more people find out. One friend is already closing his Best Buy account.
Yup. Best Buy will hopefully go down the drain soon like many other electronic retailers. Their return policy is misleading and deceptive. They have signs flaunting how great their return policy is but they don't tell you returns are used against you and your license information is shared with an outside company. Total sleaze.
Yup, same here. Not as much as you but 5-10K for a new building I was working on and they wouldn't return $70 worth of cables. I can get decent service online, so now I do.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Back in the 1970s, for a while Target had a policy that so long as it was an item Target carried, you could return it to Target for a refund -- no matter where you bought it, because they figured they could just put it on the shelf and resell it. Needless to say this didn't last very long.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Technically, you can still do this as long as it's new and unopened, but there's an annual limit to how much you can return without a receipt. It's handy for dealing with unwanted gifts or other unused items you don't have a receipt for.
They must have started doing it again, then, because I did use it once (unwanted gift and Target actually had what I wanted, but it cost a little more, so I walked out the door poorer than I went in) but very shortly thereafter started requiring receipts.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Seems to be the Natural Balance. Live by marketing die by marketing. They offered an additional service that any fool would realize before signing off on it would result in many many returns. But did the math and in the end they still make more money. So now they want to negate the check that keeps the whole thing for becoming in imbalanced, it's only fair that if you use something to make money you accept NE loss that occurs. Barter is fair trade but Business is a gamble. Betting that decisions you make will result in people deciding to give you more money when they would in the if you did otherwise after expenses.. This is just bullshit double dipping, when there is no need .
Oh, their costs may certainly go down, but not your cost as a consumer - they will simply pocket the difference. Which is the idea in the first place.
Prices are determined by the what the market will bear, not what the cost is for the business.
Not to mention many of us can barely be fucked to return an actually broken item. The hell of standing behind these assholes in line and then jumping through all the hoops put up to block their abusive behavior is just not worth it for me. Do I have the original credit card, do I have the receipt? Is the warranty card in the box? Aw jesus fuck unless you do this regularly you don't even know if you'll successfully return the piece of shit when it's finally your turn at the counter!!
I also hate people who buy a bunch of the same thing so they can go home and try them all before they pick one. It would be kind of a good idea but like you said nobody is selling open box shit at full price, plus I have to wait in line behind them after they've bought clothes for their whole family and only kept a quarter of what they bought.. intentionally.. by design.
Fuck them when I'm in line behind em at the cash register and they're loading up on shit they don't intend to keep and fuck them when I have one fucking actually broken thing to return and half the people are serial-returners bringing back more shit than I buy retail in a whole year.
These people are almost all pleasure shoppers too so the entire experience is fun and they're going to take their sweet time.