Nope, Partial refund. Schiit charges a restock fee (at their descretion). When i requested a full refund for my unit i was told pretty matter of factly that they'll determine if the restocking fee will be waived.
Also, apparently customers are expected to eat the return shipping costs, so factor that in.
Challenges of Cheap Products and Product Returns (2)
I am sure that few of our clients ever ponder our costs to process a return. I seldom do when returning something to Amazon, although an overwhelming percentage of what I do return is defective. This is because I understand exactly what I return for any purpose other than broken does nothing other than raise everybody's selling price. Why is that? As a customer, you are entitled to a unit which should adhere to certain standards. It should be new. It should not be repacked. Consider what happens when we get a return – it is no longer new. In fact, it is not even qualified for us to resell until it has been re-evaluated, re-tested, and repackaged as qualified B-Stock, possibly with some parts replaced. So we have a new unit which we sell for say, a hundred bucks, spend 5 bucks or so on original shipping, 15-20 bucks or so on rework including replacement parts, and then we still have to sell it as discounted B-stock. Ah, but we have the balls to charge 15 bucks for a non-defective return
plus customer pays return shipping? Huh?
Well the ethics are that if the product is really defective, we messed up and its on us. If it isn't, then you are using us as a lending library. Now in the first place, we have no lending library margins built in our products. When someone returns any, and particularly a lower priced Schiit product, we just lost almost if not all profit we ever had on the thing. Sellers with liberal return policies generally charge more because, well, liberal return policies cost more. Now are we at Schiit accounting type corporate pigs? I don't think so, but if we don't end up with at least a break even, then we have no reason to keep doing what we do.
As we grow, we pick up more and more new users who expect liberal return policies. There are a surprising high percentage of users who return things over and over again, just to try them out. We had one person who ordered and returned two thirds of everything we build. Never kept anything. They only raise raise prices, and there are way too many of them lurking out there. They have every story in the book on why our product is defective. These types are a much higher percentage of orders than you might think.
So who pays for product returns? If defective, us – period. If lending library, the trial returner - hence restocking charges. The users who kept their units get subsidized. We could raise our prices 10-15% and cover the lending library returners. Do you want us to do that? I didn't think so.
Ah, but you say, there are no local places for me to audition your stuff. No local meets? What about dealers? Yeah, and then your price just went up 100%. We won't be having our clients subsidizing our dealers by paying double the price. Nor will we have our normal users be subsidizing our lending library . If you are not sure which one of our products you want, talk to us. We may be able to help you out. If you are not sure if you want our product vs. The Fully Swollen Chingon, go to shows, local meets, talk to people. Our mission is always to have the lowest prices possible.
