I worked in a big box retailer a couple decades ago. They had metrics that showed them every time a customer entered the store it was worth $50. This created a huge incentive to handle returns, since just being in the store “made them money” even if they walked out of the store without buying anything.

I don’t know how well this translates to best buy, since they probably don’t have the same really large purchases skewing the average up, but I’m positive returns are a net positive for them using similar metrics.

Absolutely.

I paid for college working at a big box store 20 hours a week in the 90s, about 50% of commissions were trolling the return line and selling to those folks.

For Amazon, I don’t think it’s that way… you mail them a return and they don’t cross-sell, many times they scrap and sell by the pound.