They have returns for a reason. Not just because products are defective, but because no matter what they're still going to make a net profit since you're likely to buy at least one thing that you purchase. They have an entire system where returns are handled and are either placed back on the shelf slightly marked down or sent to be refurbed. There's nothing "shady" about what I described. It's exactly what they want you to do.

> Is there anything difficult in buying a thermostat? Heating on, off, programmable. Is there something I'm missing?

It's not much different than the nuances of figuring out which phone to buy. A Samsung Galaxy and a Google Pixel might sound like they both do the same thing, but one has a bunch of crap installed and the other one has less crap, but the average person might not be able to figure out the significance of this unless they actually try both.

> but because no matter what they're still going to make a net profit since you're likely to buy at least one thing that you purchase. They have an entire system where returns are handled and are either placed back on the shelf slightly marked down or sent to be refurbed. There's nothing "shady" about what I described. It's exactly what they want you to do.

I would need a source for that. I don’t see how selling 1 item and having to mark down 4 others to refurb price results in a profit.

It’s also been in the news that stores keep track of people returning items, and ban them if they cost the store too much money.

I don't know about hardware stores, but non-grocery retail that I am familiar with targets 50% gross margin (revenue from goods sold minus cost of goods sold).

And they still end up with low single digit profit margins, which means with even more returns, they'd have to try to get even more gross margin.

Best Buy gross margins are 22%, but their net margin is 3.75%. In a good quarter.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BBY/best-buy/gross...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BBY/best-buy/net-p...