Disclaimer: I also work at AWS.

As a consumer, would you really trust a merchant that opted out of Amazon’s return policy? It’s already to the point where I filter on Amazon Prime eligible and if possible sold and shipped by Amazon.

>As a consumer, would you really trust a merchant that opted out of Amazon’s return policy?

On some purchases I would, I mean this is basically like an ebay purchase with no return policy.

Point being, is there a technical argument against giving the vendor/consumer control over this, as long as the nature of the sale is transparent? I don't think so.

And even if you're saying that's too free-wheeling there's point two. Keeping only a track record of the data for the return period and only making it accessible if a customer demands a refund is technically possible.

The anti-competitive /privacy breaching data-processing that is the topic of the thread can be completely avoided.

>> As a consumer, would you really trust a merchant that opted out of Amazon’s return policy?

> On some purchases I would, I mean this is basically like an ebay purchase with no return policy.

Not at all. eBay’s money back guarantee overrides any seller policies. You can definitely return eBay items that are sold as “no returns”, if they are defective, counterfeit, etc.

Option 1 simply won't work for customers. If a customer is buying something from the Amazon.com website they should expect to be able to get answers about it from Amazon. If a customer was defrauded or didn't get their product etc., Amazon should not be allowed to throw up their hands and say "I don't know what you're talking about."

I don’t think this is legally possible, since Amazon is the merchant of record. That implies all sorts of reporting and retention requirements (for taxes, anti-money laundering, etc.).