2025, Chapter 4
Worst. Customer. Ever…the Sequel.
Those of you who’ve been around for a while may remember the original
Worst. Customer. Ever. chapter from a decade ago.
And those who are new to us are probably saying something like, “Oh no, is Schiit attacking one of their customers? Don’t they know
The Customer is Always Right? How’s this gonna come out?”
To assuage some of your concerns, let’s make this clear:
We love 99.X% of our customers.
Most of our customers are absolute delights. That’s why we refuse to use awful dehumanizing corp-speak like “consumer,” and “unit” and “customer lifetime value.” It’s why we ask your opinions on things like new Urds and Asgards and Schiitrs and other crazy random ideas that happen along the way. And many of you love us right back. I mean, look at this:
This is amazing.
This is dedication.
This is a great customer.
This is a big part of why we keep trying to do unprecedented and awesome things.
I mean, if we didn’t love (most of) our customers, we shouldn’t be doing what we’re doing. I should be shopping the company out to some faceless investment conglomerate or consumer electronics giant.
But not everyone is perfect.
And some cross the line from imperfection to, well, outright fraud.
And one of them was cheeky enough to piss off Tyler, who now has instituted an entirely new process to counter that fraud.
Aaaaaaaaaannndd….so now I can finally talk about this.
The “Free Amazon Upgrade”
For years, there’s been something I couldn’t talk about: the “Free Amazon Upgrade.”
This is where someone buys, say, a new Magni Unity with DAC…and returns their 10-year-old, Dr. Pepper soaked Magni 2 for a full refund.
Yes, you read that right. Buy a new product, return an old one. Bingo bango, free upgrade.
“Wait, Amazon lets you do that?” someone asks.
Har.
Har har.
You trusting, naïve, wonderful human.
Here’s the thing: Amazon probably doesn’t know. It looks about the same as the photo, if they even bother to look at it. And, even if they look at it, they probably don’t care. It’s not their product, not their money, not their problem.
All they know is that they can’t sell it to someone else. So they refund the person’s money and send it back to us.
Now it’s our problem.
“Oh yeah, though, like, no biggie, you’re a giant impersonal corporation of billionaires who are just getting rich off the back of The Man, and you probably have insurance on your insurance anyway, so who cares, you whiny plutocrats,” someone is probably saying.
Billionaires, LOL. Insurance, LOL x 2.
No, this is our bag, our loss, our deal. And Amazon really doesn’t care. They make it very, very difficult to challenge these kinds of returns, and even more difficult to tie the order to a particular customer.
Aside: here’s the bottom line for any business looking to sell on Amazon. You’re gonna take at least a 30% hit between their vig and returns (normal returns processing, not the aforementioned fraud). Plus advertising costs. Starting to sound like a dealer, hmm? Not sounding so great? Here’s the dilemma: you may also get 80% of your new-to-brand customers from Amazon. Yeah. Oooooogly choice, ain’t it?
So for years, we took this loss.
And I kept quiet about it, because if I mentioned that this was happening, other people would think, “Hey, this is a great idea,” and we’d get even more of these Free Amazon Upgrades.
And, it became a bit of a joke. “I got an original Magni today,” someone would say, when we got the Amazon returns. “I got a (insert $39 not-Schiit product here),” or “I got a pair of kid’s toy binoculars.”
Aside: all of these actually happened.
But, you know what? A lot of this you could squint at and say, “you know, maybe the guy just did have, like, 12 Magnis and grabbed the wrong one,” or “maybe that non-Schiit product was a mixup by Amazon,” or something like that.
I mean, yeah, this was fraud, but it was low-level fraud, kinda floor-sweeping opportunistic at best, low energy, low effort.
Until…
Fraud in the First Degree
Tyler stopped me when I came in one morning, his expression a complex mix of incredulity and anger.
“Look at this,” he said, handing me a Skoll.
“What about it?” I asked, not understanding at first.
And then I stopped. It felt…weird. Wrong. Like, about the right weight, but not the right texture. And the embossed “S” logo looked weird. It was like someone had faked it with white tape, rather than the UV ink fill we used…
“Someone 3D printed a Skoll?” I asked.
“Yeah. Came in as an Amazon return,” Tyler said, face reddening.
“Wait. Like an
Amazon Free Upgrade return?”
Tyler nodded.
I turned the thing over. It had button and LED holes in about the right place, and simulated side holes. It wasn’t just a rectangular brick. Someone had
designed this thing. And it was dense, pretty much the weight of a real Skoll.
“This is heavy,” I said.
“Yeah, brohan used a whole spool of filament on this,” Tyler said.
I stood there, mouth open, just trying to process it all. “So…some guy literally fired up Blender, made a model of our product—”
“—burned through a pound of resin—” Tyler added
“—and made this thing to stick in a box so he could get it free?”
Tyler nodded.
I sighed. “But what can we do? Nothing, right?”
Tyler beamed. “Oh no. Nope nope nope. It was a giant pain, but not only did I figure out how to challenge the refund, but I managed to cross-reference with the order and get a customer ID.”
“Well, that’s too bad—wait, what?”
“We got ‘em,” Tyler said, laughing.
“Wait a second. We can stop the Amazon Upgrade Program?”
Tyler waved a hand. “We can, at least, challenge the refund and probably get the money back, and also report the customer to Amazon by their ID, so Amazon may decide they don’t want them buying anything anymore.”
I nodded. That sounded good.
“I mean, it’s not like we can report them to the police,” Tyler said.
I grimaced, then shook my head. This guy had planned to defraud us, and had gone to great lengths to fabricate a fake product. This was actually really Fraud in the First Degree.
Aside: yeah maybe not making-a-paste-version-of-the-Hope-diamond level, but you get it—this took effort.
“So is the door really shut? To the Amazon Free Upgrade program, that is?” I asked.
Tyler nodded. “It’s tedious, but it’s time this ends. We’ll be challenging every old product, wrong product, and fake from now on.”
“So I can talk about it?” I asked.
Tyler knew I’d hesitated saying anything about this for a long time, for fear it would attract additional fraudsters. “Go ahead. This one pissed me off.”
Upgrade Program Deleted
So here’s how it’s gonna go now: everything that isn’t the product that’s supposed to be returned from Amazon is gonna be reported. And every person who is sending back not-the-real-deal product is gonna be reported, too.
So, if you’ve been contemplating this amazing new upgrade program, stroking your chin and eyeing the old cat toy in a corner that happens to weigh about as much as a Mani, or if you’re uber-bored and feel like firing up a 3D CAD program to make a fake Saga 2, welllllllllll…maybe think again.
Or you may end up not being able to buy from Amazon. Or you may even get a visit from authorities you don’t want to personally meet. Or, who knows, maybe even a criminal record which won’t be brilliant if you want to run for mayor or dogcatcher in the future. We don’t know about the particulars.
What we do know is: the Free Upgrade Progam stops now.
Thank you,
Worst Customer Ever #2.
. The opportunity cost of having an (_)(_) for a customer is too high.
20% off.
for bcowen then, it's
![20250517_125204[1].jpg](https://cdn.head-fi.org/a/12739349.jpg)
