But if they're items that would normally ship in 1-2 days, then it will provide a credits option if you have an Amazon Day (day of the week for combined deliveries) selected and that Amazon Day is at least 3 days in the future. It will also sometimes instead show a "no-rush shipping" option that is usually something like 5-7 days out, with credits.
I'm not going to lie, I almost always select it (even constantly changing my Amazon Day to be at least 3 days out from today), and I'm pretty sure I make back my Prime membership fee and then some. The credits are usually $1.50-$4.50 per shipment, expire after 3 months, and can only be used for digital purchases like Kindle and videos.
Price comparison sites are fine if I know exactly the item I want, less so if I just have an idea of the category.
It's not that I buy everything there. But it is my default option.
The culture of returns in all of the EU, too, is very different than the US.
In the US, there is no such law, though many retailers do it anyway. Some states, however, have implemented such laws, but it's not nationwide.
in the EU, you can return things after using them, no problem
Your top comment implied that it's a norm in the EU. It is not. It's very much retailer-specific.
> When can your customer withdraw from the contract?
If you have given all the necessary information about the right to withdraw, your customer has 14 days to withdraw from the contract - without any penalty and without having to give any reason:
For goods – this means 14 days after delivery
For services – this means 14 days after the contract was concluded
You must reimburse the money received from your customer (or cancel their payment) within 14 days of being notified they are withdrawing.
You may withhold this reimbursement until you have received the goods back from the customer, or at least received evidence they have actually sent them.
> Who pays what?
The Customer pays the cost of returning the goods (unless you failed to inform them of this in advance — in which case you will be liable for these costs).
Darty.com says that you can only return an item if it can be resold as new. Basically, you may only open it to inspect it. If there are signs of use, you won't get the full refund.
Other retailers, like Amazon, may not care about this and refund fully no questions asked. But in my experience, Amazon is pretty unique in doing this.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...
>If you bought a product or a service online or outside of a shop (by telephone, mail order, from a door-to-door salesperson), you also have the right to cancel and return your order within 14 days, for any reason and without a justification.
In my experience, all retailers (have not tried in France, though) follow this law.
Unfortunately, I only have French references. The actual French law is at [0]. It says that the buyer is on the hook for any depreciation resulting from handling, apart from what is necessary to determine the characteristics and good working condition of the goods. So opening the vacuum box to see that it's not missing a part or something is fine. Vacuuming your house for 2 weeks is probably not. "Determine the characteristics" is ambiguous to me, so it's not clear where the line is.
For example, Zalando, an online clothes retailer, will accept returns for garments that have been "tried on" but not "worn" [1].
LDLC, an online electronics retailer, will accept returns for items in "original condition and packaging". I expect that if I buy a mouse, use it for a week and there are marks on the pads, they won't accept the return. [2]
[0] https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000...
[1] https://www.zalando.fr/aide/Retour-and-Remboursement/Conditi...
I purchased a Chinese brand scooter from a US-based dealer.
Their customer service was awful. They had a phone number that changed often and didn't work, and lied about their intent to honor warranty claims. It was broken for 4 months. In the end, they decided to cancel my warranty and refuse any further assistance because I dared to ask for a functional product.
I suggest no one ever buy a Kaabo scooter from any of the 3 major dealers in the US.
Kaabo itself is even worse providing no support to customers at all.
It could be a small claims court matter if they were in the same state.
It's cheaper to write-off the matter as a learning experience.
Voro Motors. They're a fly-by-night operation like the other Kaabo dealers I found in the US. Ship from China and expect no support or warranty.
Also, no e-scooter shops will touch Kaabos because they're not designed for repair and parts are difficult to source. The wiring inside looks like spaghetti with random colors that don't match their wiring diagram and wires that go nowhere. In addition, the early model forks would break spontaneously due to manufacturing defects that lead to a number of grotesque injuries and perhaps a death or two.
PS: BBB is itself a widely-held misconception and fraud, perhaps the inverse of Yelp. It's mostly a feel good badge businesses pay for. Any business can join it and they have little incentive to police their "members" because, like binding arbitration, the "members" are the customers, not retailer's customers.
Totally does.
> If you bought a product or a service online or outside of a shop (by telephone, mail order, from a door-to-door salesperson), you also have the right to cancel and return your order within 14 days, for any reason and without a justification.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...
I guess it's one more reason to always buy online!
So you don't see people to go Jumbo (home depot equivalent) buy a tool and return it a week later after the job is done to get a full refund.
In fact even digitec/galaxus will charge you a 10% restocking fee if you opened the item and it isn't not defective in anyway.
I am curious, how is it different?
Here in the US, I have met seen whole spectrum where some people will never return anything even if it is obviously defective. And others who will return almost perfect items for tiny issues or for not meeting their expectations.
I am not sure how I would define the US return culture.
If you open Amazon from Switzerland and search for anything at all, you do get tons of products that seem nice & at a reasonable price, but click on any of them and it will say that the vendor doesn't ship to Switzerland. And this is when you set your location to Switzerland! There's no way to filter for products that ship there, Amazon simply doesn't bother.
This is why e commerce stores like Galaxus & Digitec (the tech-products twin of Galaxus) were even capable of getting so large in Switzerland, while in other countries any competition was swept away by Amazon.
There are some exceptions to this, e.g. Zalando, a clothes retailer, does deliver into Switzerland... I know that they have large logistics centers in Switzerland and basically send their products b2b, maybe that doesn't pay off for Amazon? I don't know.
8% doesn't matter that much, you'll see bigger differences than that for the same item between different retailers within Switzerland. A lot of people here don't shop around and aren't that price sensitive.
Duty is more relevant to food products. Meat is the big one. If you like meat, it's very profitable to take your whole family on a trip to a German supermarket across the border, since prices are ridiculous in CH and the meat is low quality - particularly the beef, which is from "dual purpose" cows, where "dual purpose" is like 95% milk cows.
Also the quality of service vs price makes it a very appealing market but very hard to penetrate. This is why international players have always had issues to do so. Swiss customers care more about quality than price.
On Galaxus you can decide to chose slow delivery so you will not necessarly receive your product the next day. But for the same price: https://basic-tutorials.com/news/galaxus-and-digitec-now-del...
Edit: added link