Very large fraction of US population is paid $30 an hour compared to Indian population which makes scamming not worth the trouble
I live in India and I've worked in the US I know Indians just have too much time at their hand, so even schemes which take a lot of your time with little payoff are worth it here.
And the reason people don't use their time to achieve something more productive like starting companies etc...is because government procedures are very hard to understand, and you get penalties left and right, even starting a micro industry like machining shop is hard, power is not available continuously even at top industrial zones in India, fixed cost of electricity connection is high in industrial area and government is very insensitive to business owners so only very large and the ones close to policies are able to navigate.
The biggest problem isn't even market in India which has lot of demand, it's the costs you didn't plan for which seem low on surface the deeper you dig, the costs just keep increasing untill you are left with nothing and in debt so starting a business isn't very popular here and people limit the size of their success to not get in trouble.
Why frame it so negatively? You could as well say "people saw that Apple was ripe for disruption".
But something like this would not work in Bolivia (where I'm from), people would abuse the shit out of it. within a week the policy would be gone, no doubt.
It's more the depreciation and how quickly electronics evolve. People were using the returns as a free lifetime of upgrades.
One particularly stark example when I worked there a long time ago was someone who wanted to upgrade their old projection TV.
So four years after they bought it they brought it in and returned it. They got about $4k back. They walked out on the floor, picked up a brand new LCD TV for $2k and almost half a decade after their original purchase they walked out with a brand new, upgraded TV and $2k in their pocket.
You can imagine how this can be abused with most electronics that Costco sells. Imagine going in and getting a brand new upgraded laptop every 2-3 years for the rest of your life after a single couple thousand dollar purchase.
I saw someone return a flat of steaks with half a remaining cooked steak left just saying "my guests thought they weren't very good".
Someone had a custom photo book printed and when they came to pick it up decided they didn't want it anymore and just got a refund.
Someone returned a plasma TV because of the glare from their windows.
My wife bought a car seat there (something you can't return _anywhere_) which we ended up not being able to get installed in the car (had the shitty cheap version of the LATCH clips that are impossible to get tightened up). Took it back for a full refund.
We bought a vacuum there that broke literally a week after the manufacturer's warranty. Brought it in and exchanged it for a new one.
There's no time limit on any of this.
This is by no means normal in North America. It's one of those Costco things like providing part time retail workers reasonable salaries and health benefits, etc that sounds insane in theory but obviously works for them.
I know personally there's been a couple times where I've been on the fence about buying something and ended up purchasing it because "If it sucks/falls apart in 6 months/whatever I can just bring it back."
Add to that the people who realize what a waste of an investment that was after the holiday spree is over, you can explain it a bit more.
But of course, it's impossible to tell surely without data.
Going back to gut feelings: Does he see suspicious behavior? Weird reasons for returning?
It's gonna be impossible to concretely discern intent from the data you could get, but it's pretty obvious there's _some_ abuse. The only question is where you draw the line on abuse and how much.
January at our store was a rush of returns of opened and used Christmas decorations because "I decided I don't want it anymore." Often times from people that had done the same thing year after year. We'll never know what those people really intended when they bought it in the fall, but you'd have to be pretty damn charitable to assume the best of intent in all the cases. Especially when it was people doing it multiple years in a row.
I assume it's some combination of degraded quality as most stuff is made in the same Asian factories and an increasingly widespread attitude that it's OK to take anything that isn't nailed down.
A couple random things - the first stack of shelves that face the front of the store are managed to give a good impression. They always keep those shelves full of pallets and try to have a lot of only a few items to give a clean look. If the warehouse has empty space they try to keep it so you can't see from the center of the store.
On Amazon India you can still get refund based on your history with them.
Basically trusted customers still get the "refund" option in their account. Just new customers and the suspecious one aren't given that often by default
That alone is not only OK but was recommended recently in the USA.
Specifically, during COVID the Apple retail shops were shut so you couldn't compare devices when shopping. I bought my GF a regular and max sized iPhone and she took a week to decide which one she wanted. We sent the other one back and had a refund before the credit card bill was even due, so as far as my bank account was concerned I really did only pay for one. In normal times we would have been unlikely to have bothered with this (although with something as personal as a phone...)
I can imagine that this only scales to a certain percentage of transactions though.
Maybe Apple could just give a discount if you give up your return option at the point of sale.
But I mean, those policies exist elsewhere, so I don't know what specifically makes Polish customers more prone to abusing those policies. I suspect it's the relative cost of a phone vs income.
India is basically a "low trust society". People in general have a mindset of "scarcity" and at every stage of their lives they try to micro-optimize for what's the best for them at that time. In the absence of good institutions, this often means that we get stuck in shitty Nash equilibria which have terrible, terrible outcomes for everyone involved, but are difficult to get out of.
It is not that everyone in India has no morals or behaves terribly. But the number of people who do are enough to spoil trust-based models that work in other countries by making them too expensive.
From a business point of view, the obvious question is - how do you create a circle of "trustworthy" people? If you could create such a circle, you could offer them special services (better return policies, lower rates for insurance and credit etc) to encourage them to consume more without worrying so much about abuse. This is one of the most exciting business problems in India and solving it is worth at least worth 10 billion dollars and that is probably an underestimate.
There is one company already that claims to have solving this problem as their primary long-term vision - Cred and that company is currently valued at > $2 billion even though currently their revenues are weak and any connection to the long term trust problem quite distant.
Third party resellers essentially activated an iphone and marked it as lost. Then, after getting a new replacement iPhone from Apple, they would go on and sell it to customers.
Nowadays, you can only get AppleCare (not the plus) in India which does not cover theft or accidental damage.
1 - People buying a handful of phones and comparing them, then returning all but the one they decide to keep.
2 - Semi related, one of the ten thousand phone comparison Youtuber channels.
I don't really know what the solution is. I think a phone rental business could spring up. Charge $10/day or something to rent a high end phone to folks to see how they like it.
My guess is that Bestbuy has more money so they can afford the rare demo phone getting stolen somehow. Funnily enough when I worked at Radioshack we often had people steal the fake phones that just played a video loop. Someone even tried to return a fake phone once saying that we sold them a broken device.
Think of it - if you are spending $1200 on an item, would you want to save $20 on it to get one that who knows who had for who knows how long? I sure wouldn't. You'd probably need to go at least $100 lower before it becomes somewhat appealing.
It’s abuse because people buy it with the intent to return it. Buying it and then honestly changing your mind is fine, but Amazon probably determined that wasn’t the case here.
Indian culture is about display of wealth. Wealthy individuals are respected and get access to inner clubs while the people who don't have much don't get invited anywhere.
College students might want to leave a good impression at a party and might get an iPhone so people start taking them seriously.
Similarly, a guy might get an iPhone so his date considers him important.
iPhone is status symbol in India because not everyone can afford it.
I can certainly and easily afford it but I am still using android because I don't feel the need of uncessarry attention
Every culture
Apple is at the centre of this. You see people who obviously can't afford it with those (probably) fake AirPods all over the place. Sometimes they're not even connected. It's THE "look at me, I can afford it" electronics brand display for the middle and lower class.
No, he mostly got paid ₹3-₹4k per night. Purchasing power of rural India is very low.
If you had a Star Trek replicator in your home that could replicate a brand new iPhone for you for free that lasts a week then poofs out of existence, you'd go ahead and use it, probably more than once.
If you don't mind the hassle and the ethical, er, annoyance of going to a store, waiting in queues, having $1000+ temporarily blocked off from your savings, a bunch of back and forth with the sales people, etc, then that's equivalent to replicating yourself an iPhone for a week for free.
On the other hand, In the US, more often than not, you have to pack up your item and drop it off to a store to return it.
This model would work great to bring more developing countries on board with e-commerce
It's interesting how these clothing retailers still offer a very customer friendly return policy compared to electronics retailers like Amazon or Apple.
Many people also abuse return policies to buy expensive cameras, use them to shoot nice pictures on vacation and then sending them back. They can still keep the pictures, so the camera lost its value for them.
This is also why the terms on rental cars can get very specific.
Now that I think of it, the "eat the steak then complain" tactic is probably the most common that's in this ballpark.
Personally, I do judge the people I've seen do this. They are self-centered and all did it for social reasons. If someone did it for a job interview I might understand, but invariably it was to have something they didn't want to pay for.
With bulletproof insurance and the right accessories.
Lots of products should have a return window this long or longer.
I wonder if the same people hold both the opinions.
Apple has gone and done the analog of that; they've changed the returns code.
I don't see anything wrong with what Apple has done here, and if the US decided to tighten up the tax code, I wouldn't see anything wrong with that either.
To your actual point, I think it's about intent and spirit. The holes in the tax code were put there intentionally, to benefit businesses. We may not like it, but that's how it is. Businesses aren't violating the letter or even the spirit of the law when they avail themselves of it.
On the contrary, Apple sets their return policy based on a balance between good customer service and an estimate of how much that customer service will cost them to provide. They likely estimate this cost based on what they think is reasonable customer behavior. In this case they mis-estimated: apparently Indians don't behave within what they consider to be the spirit of that policy.
Another way of looking at it: the US government estimates tax revenue knowing that those loopholes exist, and is fine with the result. There are no budget-related surprises. Apple's estimates for the cost of returns in India was a large underestimation, so they're fixing their problem.
Maybe it's an overreaction to think about this as "returns abuse", but I don't see these two things as being the same.
The result, which is that large corporations have a tax rate lower than small businesses, is what is important. Do you want a company, as it grows bigger and spends more on the legal implications of its business structure, to be able to lower its tax rate? Do you want to incentivize bigger companies to have more tax agility than smaller ones? I don't, and I don't believe any legislator would hold such unpopular views.
It's not like they are paid for that or anything.
Once again, you're being too simplistic.
I suspect there are a lot of business owners on HN. Current, future or past. So it's definitely possible.
If you break store policy, they don't send armed people to your house to fix the glitch.
You also seem to be comparing tax minimization (as distinct from tax fraud) with warranty/return fraud.
My friend Kevin used to test out different GPUs when he was writing a game engine. He'd buy one, install it on his computer, run the engine, then return it a few days later. They often had a 10% restocking fee. Was he abusing policy?
It's the same sort of logic banks use to justify "identity theft." Ah yes, it's the fault of the customer, not the banks' poor verification methods.
That said, it's true that when large amounts of people do a thing, you'll have to adjust policy. But it's not their fault for taking advantage of policies they're legally allowed to use, and that the company freely offers.
This is clearly unethical, but maybe not illegal.
There's the "letter of the policy" interpretation, where anything the text of the policy doesn't explicitly forbid is A-Okay. And then there's the "socially acceptable norms" interpretation, where you're only supposed to ask for refunds when a product is actually defective, and if you go any further than that, society and HN comments will shame you for it.
In the US, we have a thriving culture of shaming people for anything and everything, so companies can have generous policies and lean on the social norms interpretation to keep people in check. India is more of a free-for-all, so companies feel the need to spell everything out.
Consumers in US can buy a product without the anxiety of not having read the fine print, knowing that the seller will honor the return policy. Sellers also end up selling more because most buyers like the product they buy. Society wins overall.
I have lived both in India and US, about two decades each at both places.
It's not illegal to use the agreement in this way, and I would never try to make it so. But I would absolutely look down on someone for behaving this way.
The fact that businesses change their policies as a result of abuse should tell you whether these actions are within the spirit of what they intended or whether it's outside of it.
Culturally in the states and Latin America that makes you jerk and people will hate you for it. So there is social pressure in place to help regulate those events, but it may not always be the case everywhere.
We can agree to disagree, but it's not X just because someone says it is.
I think the issue is people operating in bad faith. I recall a story about people buying big TVs before the super bowl then returning them the next week. My opinion is that's abusing a company's generous return policy. The people doing that never intended to buy. The company had the policy to give customers more confidence in their purchases, not to run a free TV rental business.
There's a saying "this is why we can't have nice things". If people constantly push leniency or generosity to the limits, they get taken away, and it's a net loss to everybody else.
I counter with the following observation: You note that a return policy exists so that customers can use it. Under what conditions are you allowed to use it and it not be abuse?
Being able to return the product is often why customers buy something. How many times have you considered the return policy before buying? You can decide to return it for any reason you like: whether you dislike the product, whether you ran out of money and needed a refund, or for no reason at all.
If it's a problem, the business will change the policy, just as Apple did here.
I'll give you an example, which is also a true story: I bought a 4K TV that could also run Android apps. But, while regular TV broadcasts displayed in 4K, the Android apps were limited to HD. This, of course were never mentioned in any of their marketing material. Did return, and did get a refund, but if it had worked as I thought it did, I would have kept it.
You claim it's okay to follow the letter of the policy and abuse it. When too many people do that the policy is removed.
Result: You live in a culture where returns are disallowed.
Me, I'd prefer to live in a culture where returns are allowed. That only happens when people don't abuse the return policy. The fact that Apple changed their policy because people abused it is a loss for everyone that had no intention of abusing it. It's even a loss for those who were abusing it if they ever have a legit reason to want to return something.
There are a many many policies that only really work on social norms. Living in a society that respects those norms is "almost" always a nicer society to live in.
I'm not sure whether there's an ethical problem with acting in that way, but it resembles a "tragedy of the commons" situation. Or, "this is why we can't have nice things".
If your plan wasn't to return it from the start, then it isn't abuse. This seems pretty simple. In your original example your "friend" was planning on using GPUs to test and then return them. At no point was he planning on keeping this purchase.
Now, I will say if you're friend bought 3 GPU's with the plan to keep one and returned two I would say that's not abuse, but there are certainly better ways to try before you buy.
There is the spirit and the letter of an agreement. The relative importance of these in commercial contexts varies from culture to culture. (The term of art is high trust versus low trust societies.) Abuse (versus breach) involves complying with the letter of an agreement while violating its spirit. As you observe, this is subjective.
Fundamentally, if return policies are treated by customers as a return versus rental, terms can be more generous. If they are abused, the terms must be stricter.
I don't know if that rises to definition of abuse, but that's why I don't want people to use refunds that way.
>If you buy a product with the intent to return it for refund, that's abuse.
If you are an honest seller, you can't even resell returned products as brand new.
Remember Costco permanently blocked some consumers due to abusing the return policy? Costco honors the policy, but those consumers were still considered as abusing the policy.
Let me ask you this. Do you agree with illegal copyright infringement being classified as "piracy"? My issue here is the terminology. It's deceptive to classify this behavior as "abuse," as if someone was kicking a puppy.
It's an asshole thing to do, but it's not abuse. No one is doing anything illegal, and everyone is free to feel however they wish about their morals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_fraud
This is the problem when people go around pretending like they are technically correct, when they aren't.
Everyone else, intuitively understood the problem with return abuse, except for you. Which is why you got this wrong.
If you had focused less on trying to find some clever hack or technically, then you wouldn't have been so misinformed on this issue.
Not one of those examples is "the act of purchasing an item with the intent to return it."
Also, be less aggressive. We're having a conversation here. It's not a battle.
The entry you're looking for is Wardrobing, and it's most certainly not illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardrobing
The Talk page even has someone asking the very same question I am: Why is it fraud? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wardrobing
It's not fraud. It's not "abuse," and it's not illegal. You're free to feel however you wish about it.
Yes it is. You are wrong.
https://www.news24.com/w24/Style/Fashion/Trends/wardrobing-e...
From the article:
"as it is an act that can, in fact, be prosecute"
https://www.spatzlawfirm.com/blog/2019/08/what-is-return-fra...
"Purchasing an item and using it for a short period of time before returning (also known as wardrobing or “free renting”)"
Its illegal. Thats what the sources say. The 2nd link is from a law firm. Your facts are wrong.
> https://www.findlaw.com/consumer/consumer-transactions/retur...
"Below are some common types of return fraud:
Wardrobing (or "renting"): Buying clothes or other items for one-time use and then returning them"
" For example, wardrobing may be next to impossible to prove"
https://www.allcriminaldefense.law/what-is-criminal-return-f...
"People that engage in ‘wardrobing’ or ‘free renting,’ are also committing return fraud."
https://www.legalline.ca/legal-answers/fraud-against-retaile...
" Return fraud
Renting or Wardrobing: When someone buys an item specifically on a short-term basis with the intent to return it, this is known as renting or wardrobing. An example is buying a dress for a special occasion and returning it after it has been worn."
https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/credit-cards/worn...
"Wardrobing might sound like an innocent thing to do—after all, many of us have returned something we've already worn at least once in our lives. But the truth is that wardrobing is actually considered "return fraud."
"It's technically illegal""
- In a recent Florida case , a Miami socialite, Meghana Rajadhyaksha, was found guilty for purchasing over $130k in designer purses from retail giant TJ MAXX and also purchasing similar knock-offs from Amazon where she swapped the designer tags out and returned the Amazon knock-offs to TJ MAXX to receive a full refund.
I agree this is fraud! That's literally deceiving in order to receive money. There's nothing deceptive about using a policy that the store offers.
- The Florida statutes define return fraud as obtaining or using a receipt in a fraudulent manner
Ditto.
You're free to keep repeating that I have no idea what I'm talking about and so on, but at this point it's becoming quite boring for readers, and everything has been said. We simply agree to disagree, and that's that.
Now, please stop calling me a criminal. It's not nice, and it's also not accurate.
If you dig up a single case of someone being prosecuted for using a policy that the store offers, without modifying the receipt or the item, let me know.
Read them again.
There are multiple sources, that I quoted, that literally say that it is illegal. They use the words illegal to describe wardrobing.
> Now, please stop calling me a criminal.
Well the sources say that you are a criminal.
One specifically said "It's technically illegal"
> We simply agree to disagree,
No. The lawyers say that you are wrong. The actual legal websites say that you are a criminal. They literally call it illegal.
Here was another quote "People that engage in ‘wardrobing’ or ‘free renting,’ are also committing return fraud."
Return fraud, in this quote, is referencing the Florida law.
Although wardrobing is, arguably, unethical, there are no statutes or case law that specifically render it illegal. Whether wardrobing should even be considered an abuse of retail policies would depend on the retailers’ specific return policies. Some retailers welcome returns of clothing in any condition, therefore, one can hardly argue that the return of any item, in any condition is an abuse of that policy.
We can sit here and cite sources all day at each other, or you can find a case of someone being prosecuted for wardrobing. Once you do, I would be more than happy to listen and to change my mind on the issue.
In case it helps, I currently live in Seattle, and the story I related in my original comment happened in Boston, I believe. I'm also about to be moving back to Missouri. (You seem to be focusing on Florida for some reason, so I thought I'd give you a few trails to follow.)
So you don't care about what actual legal firms say?
I am giving you links to actual law firms!
You can't just say "well these 7 legal experts are wrong" and expect to be taken seriously.
> We can sit here and cite sources
Wtf dude. Sources and the legal experts and lawyers know more about this than you do.
If a bunch of law firms say that it is illegal, then clearly it is illegal in some places.
So, that means that we can call it fraud, because it is illegal is some places.
(Once more, I gave you information about (a) where I live, and therefore where the relevant laws are, and (b) pointed out that there are many, many citations saying that Wardrobing is an asshole move (as I said) but not illegal. That is my basis for rejecting your claims. It's not impossible to search the case law for someone being prosecuted for Wardrobing, and I encourage you to do so; if you find someone who has been convicted under any state law, I would be genuinely interested in hearing about it, since that would likely change my mind. Irrelevant sources, however, won't.)
Yes, it is abuse.
Yes. Here, abuse means misuse, which must be interpreted relative to the intent of the ones making the policy (or else it's meaningless). The intent is clear: for customers to be able to return the item if they are not satisfied. It is not a borrow/rental policy.
Same goes for the country's biggest online retailers, both Amazon and Flipkart also switched to a replacement-only policy in India.
"Most analysts agree that many many buyers were abusing the company's refund policy. With many buying latest smartphones, and returning them after a week after trying them "[1]
I've seen return abuse in the US, not sure if it's higher than what I have seen in India. I tried to research this topic back in high school for a paper, it was hard to find concrete data to compare the two countries.
[1]https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech-news/amazon-ends-re...
[†] edit: I feel like I need to clarify what "abusing" really was.
AppleCare+ used to cover two incidents of Theft, Loss and accidents.
Third party resellers essentially activated an iphone and marked it as lost. Then, after getting a new replacement iPhone from Apple, they would go on and sell it to customers.
Nowadays, you can only get AppleCare (not the plus) in India which does not cover theft or accidental damage.