Many electronic items under $10 can only be returned at an staffed Amazon pickup location. In urban areas (e.g. Bay Area), that's a BART ride or a toll charge.

The round-trip BART ride will be $6 or more. The toll charge maybe $5.00 or whatever FastPass costs (not factoring in gas, maintenance, parking).

Such items are essentially un-returnable, unless you want to pay more to return it than simply dispose of it.

I make it a point to return such items. Having done so a handful of times, I now buy most of my electronics gear from brick-and-mortar shops.

You should always be able to return with free shipping any item that's defective. That's amazon's stated policy. In what cases are you saying they don't follow their policy?

It's been a while, but if my memory serves me correctly, some items can only be returned at a staffed Amazon location.

That is: the return shipping is free but getting to the staffed Amazon location is not.

I'm pretty sure this has happened with some items I've picked up from an unstaffed Amazon drop-off location that can only be returned via a staffed Amazon location.

EDIT: add adjective "return" in second sentence.

FWIW, this is not the case in the UK. Most of the time, for a low-value item (<£5 or so), Amazon will say not to bother returning it, and just refund.

> Amazon.com does not accept returns for items fulfilled by third-party sellers. The seller determines the return policy.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8...

The concept of a "third party seller" does not exist in stores that use buyers to stock inventory, like supermarkets or Target.

3p sellers must have a return policy at least as good as amazon themselves. I.e. they must offer free return shipping on defective products. If not Amazon will step in and refund you.

I don't want to have to return things! What a waste of packaging and shipping and effort. Now fraud detection and product QA are added to the gig economy, and we're paying for the privilege.

Then, as above, buy name brand items. The cost of buying off-brand is that occasionally you need to return.

I do that but still care about the environmental impact of thousands of other people that don't have either the means to buy name brand or the awareness of the problem they are causing.

I'd really like for crap products to disappear but... I don't see this happening in this world anytime soon.

Have you considered that people are making a rational choice to get something cheaper yet lower quality?

It's not worth my time to return cheap items. It's a huge hassle, because I need to go somewhere with a printer to print the return receipt, attach that to the box, then go somewhere to ship it. Definitely not worth all that trouble to get a few bucks back.

Recently in the UK I can often return items at corner shops with their own printer. You just scan a QR code and hand over the box. The dropoff points are everywhere.

Sellers can get de-listed from Amazon with enough poor reviews. For low-ish value items, they may offer a free replacement to avoid bad seller feedback. Leave feedback and wait a few days for them to contact you.

I don't want a free replacement if it's just going to be the same crap. The problem is that the product itself is crap, not necessarily that any given one is defective. Replacements won't be any better.

And this is still way more hassle than I want to deal with.