This doesn't work online, and is the opposite of how fraud works in practice though. Larger sellers have a reputation that they care about and invest in. Small sellers with 10 sales don't care at all, they will make 10 good sales and steal from the 11th for a 10% profit.

Created an account to say: citation needed.

Giants can afford to skimp on any single customer relationship. Go read Amazon reviews, etc...

The one-person show with only continental shipping taking PayPal payments for their hobby business absolutely cannot afford to screw over 10% of their customer base. PayPal (or any other provider) has no patience, and anecdotally will always side with the customer.

And sure, citation needed, I know :)

Have you used Amazon lately? They not only don't care, they push garbage that is obviously fake in their advertised/recommend blocks. Go search for an SD card on Amazon, and they will recommend a 5000 terabyte SD card that costs $9. I've switched to Best Buy because in this weird dystopian future they are more worthy of my business than Amazon now and I'm not doing business with garbage companies any more.

My personal experience with Amazon in particular has been the opposite of yours.

Amazon has completely refunded every defective or damaged products I have ever received. I've done two returns of $100+ items in the past month, in one case the seller disagreed with me and Amazon took my side. In total I've probably had 30 refunds over the past 10 years of which at least 5 were Amazon intervening to prevent the seller from screwing me.

Why do you buy so many defective or damaged products?

I cannot remember the last time I had to return something. I rarely buy from Amazon though, and choose quality products from reputable sources, not the cheapest offer.

Or maybe I'm just lucky.

I buy multiple things online every week, probably 200 per year on average. I also buy a lot of cheap electronics.

Amazon loves you.

I bought studio monitor speakers from Amazon. I received 1. Sent it back. Amazon refused to refund me. I had to point out over and over that from the weight of my package they can easily tell they did not ship me two speakers, only one. Nope. Months later I got an Amazon credit.

Just recently Amazon allowed me to buy a kindle book for my specific kindle device, which turned out to not be supported. But they still allowed me to purchase and deliver it to this kindle. Only once I went to the device to sync it did I learn that it was incompatible. I was not allowed a refund.

Amazon is full of minor counts of fraud like this and at their scale I bet it adds up to real money.