In my experience, return policies here have become more lax in regards to the time frame of when you can return something, and whether it needs a tag or not.

A recent example of this is when I've dealt with ASOS. Even though they're primarily a UK based company, they offer free shipping and free returns here in the US (also something I see becoming more common). But on top of that, even though the return policy says within a certain timeframe, emailing their customer support about a month after the return cut off period, they told me as long as the item is in sellable condition I could still return it. They literally told me that "Here are ASOS, we're not monsters" which I found kind of cute. But overall that's close to the best customer service I've had in a while (return/shipping wise).

Going back to the free returns though. I feel like this is the last major pain point in online shopping that hasn't been dealt with yet. Amazon for instance, returns are free by default on clothing and a few other categories of items. Items that are damaged, or something is wrong with the item that is not your fault gets free return shipping. But what if you just don't like it? Well no free return shipping for you. I can't imagine the amount of people that could potentially abuse a free return system could have any significant impact over the amount of profit and new customers a store could get from reassuring their customers that they care about if you're happy with your purchase or not, and offering the safety net of free returns for your purchases.

Within the EU, there are some fairly favourable (for the customer) return policies mandated by law. Even if you technically extended the time for return (and that you probably aren't covered in the US), most companies here would just err on the side of caution and grant your return in edge cases like this. Esp. large retailers such as ASOS.