A lot of animosity for Amazon. So you also dislike Walmart, the king of killing mom and pops?
Amazon pays their workers a Lot more than Walmart does.
These companies are successful because most of us consumers are incredibly cheap. We are the ones shopping at Wal-Mart/Amazon enmasse. You can't blame them.
It is like blaming China for taking all our manufacturing jobs. They didn't! Our rich-prick millionaires and billionaires (American, Canadian, European, etc.) decided they didn't want to pay a living wage to employees and spent decades moving the vast majority of manufacturing to Asia. And it is Never coming back.
To the original point, whether you do it to Shane's Audio or Amazon, it's still sleazy. But the pendulum will swing back. Unfortunately we may then all pay the price for that behaviour. IE. No more free returns at all, at a minimum.
Lot of assumptions. I have no issue with Amazon. But as I said, if a market expresses needs, consumers will create solutions... return policy loopholes notwithstanding.
Amazon has managed to take out the big box and mom-and-pop stores by reducing operating costs. Sometimes reducing one set of operating costs creates or increases another. The trick is to come out ahead in that calculation, and Amazon has done very well with that math.
Rather than get into the myriad varying costs and savings, let's just consider the audition process...
Brick and mortar stores must pay rent, pay for a demo headphone, and most costly, pay for an employee to help you audition headphones. The result is you get exactly what you're looking for, but it is a costly sale for the brick and mortar store.
Amazon builds warehouses on cheap land, and while they employ a large infrastructure of packers, drivers, etc etc, none those employees can help a customer audition a headphone, and furthermore, the cost of those employees is far less than that brick-and-mortar store's employee, when transposed against the sale of a single headphone. The result is you buy essentially blind, and it is a very cheap sale for Amazon to make.
Let's also not forget the cost that Amazon pays for the headphone vs a brick and mortar store. Amazon might buy 30,000 headphones. They enjoy a bulk pricing on their units that mom-and-pop stores will never be able to get ordering, say, 50 pieces.
What it comes down to is that Amazon still comes out well ahead, even if people "abuse" their return policy. And I write "abuse" in quotation marks because let's be honest here... Amazon isn't run by dummies. They understand that there are products people need to try out before buying. They understand that this is something they can't really offer on everything (they do actually offer try-before-buying option for clothing). Bottom line, the "try-five-keep-one" people have been built into whatever yearly profit margin for headphone sales Amazon is comfortable with. Like I said... it's the cost of doing business.
And again, Amazon has made trillions doing it, and eradicated most of their competition. What they are comfortable giving up has worked out very well for them. Why on earth would you want them to further reduce their costs at the expense of the buying experience? You realize if they had instituted the return fees you are advocating, they would not have been able to capture the market share from the brick and mortar stores in the first place, and wouldn't be where they are now, right?
