The retail-dispute resolution clauses of most credit agreements are very biased towards the consumer. If you can document that you made at least one good-faith effort at resolving the issue yourself before requesting that the credit issuer handle it for you, then the retailer has to overcome the presumption that the customer is always right in the arbitration.
As it's all about the money and private agreements, it is always possible that someone who has more of it than you could use it to buy a more favorable outcome. But it is also very unlikely that anyone would ever see a criminal indictment over credit fraud before the damages exceed thousands of dollars. No credit company wants to lose customers because they got a reputation for grassing on their customers, but they would want to discourage their petty frauds--they know they have some, with statistical certainty--from growing worse by occasionally prosecuting the worst of the grand frauds.
If HSBC can knowingly launder drug money, and Wells Fargo can knowingly open fake accounts, a credit bank can knowingly screw the retailer when one of their credit customers does a bogus chargeback just because the cashier was rude at the checkout.
I won't say bogus chargebacks are not a problem, but there is a threshold below which it does not negatively affect the revenue of the bank, so no one there will be paid to care about it. A computer program might evaluate it. It might get randomly selected for human auditing. And most people are mostly honest, so the fraud rate would still be low, even if no one policed it more than a token amount. The credit banks's mission isn't to catch the frauds; it's to make money. So they catch just the right amount of frauds in order to make the most money.
Thank you! That's an excellent suggestion!
If I can't return an item, I will be much more cautious about buying in the first place. As I am already very cheap, that usually means the time horizon for me to make a buying decision now spans well beyond the time I am spending in the store. Which means I will be elsewhere when thinking about a purchase. Which means that when I finally do decide to buy, I then have to decide from where.
Even if I never return an item, reducing the consequences of me making a wrong choice when buying something makes me more likely to actually spend my money. This means liberal return policies, price-match guarantees, in-stock guarantees for sale items, etc.
I don't know how much they actually lose to returns fraud, but I do know how much they never gain because I don't even bother to shop there any more.
They are trying to stop people who abuse the policies, not returns altogether. The article never says the retailers are making a move to stop returns from everyone. That kinda defeats the point you are trying to make.
>If I can't return an item, I will be much more cautious about buying in the first place.
Sounds like its working then. The point is the customers that feel they don't need to research an item they are purchasing cause they can 'just return it' are the ones they want to be more cautious about buying in the first place cause you are costing them more money.
Really sounds like you are arguing against a scenario that isn't taking place. You are actually bringing up points that made them decide to do this. They can deter constant returners from using returns as a 'try any item you like and return it' and also deter return frauds.
The primary problem in retail generally isn't revenue or margin, it is cash flow. Creating additional customers or even encouraging customers to purchase sooner than they otherwise would have is a huge win.
"Dozens of shoppers have complained on Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and other online forums that they were prevented from making returns despite following the store’s policy."
According to the article, the scenario is taking place, in an arbitrary and capricious fashion, such that BB is making fraudulent claims about its return policy. When shoppers buy there, they expect the policy will be honored; without that expectation, the sale might not have taken place.
Indeed, if you reverse the conditional, you are likely to have a very high percentage of the people who end up returning items attributing a large fraction of their buying decision to the return policy.
To me if you are saving more money by having this than not, why make it so aggressive? Better to catch the few then catch customers that aren't taking advantage of it and not catch every abuser.
This only stops gormless shoppers from making reasonable returns. Everyone else will do a chargeback for credit purchases, or file a complaint in small claims for cash purchases. The moxious will call their credit card company right at the returns desk and ask if they need a photograph of the posted return policy.