But I guess that on the whole, the good customer experience for the honest customers outweighs the cost of fraud.
That is a poor assumption that is likely incorrect more often than not.
A Chinese restaurant that I go to occasionally has a bowl of mints by the register. I could take a handful of them, they would not stop me, but that would be a dick move. I could go hang out at library and pass the time by taking their books off the shelves and building castles with them on the desks, but that would be a dick move. I could go to the shoe store and try on every single pair of shoes that they have, leaving them all in a massive pile in the middle of the store, but that would be a dick move.
Generous customer-friendly policies like this can exist, for the benefit of the customer, because there is an understanding that most people will be respectful and not abuse the privilege. If everybody acted like your friend, then we would not be able to have nice things.
So "abuse" over time could cause prices to increase by a small amount. However, not hassling people over things that rarely happen increases loyalty, which increases volume, which increases the discounts a retailer can get from a manufacturer...
The vast majority of people don't need to benchmark video cards or want to "rent" products - they buy things because they need them and that's why good customer service exists.
As a concrete example, I worked someplace with a nice and consumer friendly return policy... no restock fees, no hassle.
But when a customer "bought" and then without fail returned something like 40 books, 1 at a time (without buying anything else), we did have a word with them. Depending on the books, that can adds up to several hundred dollars of overstock, eating up already crammed inventory space in high-rent storefronts. Plenty of seating for those who'd like to read books without buying that won't excite our inventory count ;)
Once upon a time, it used to be possible to get Bing points by playing a bunch of stupid games on Club Bing - you could accumulate at most 1000 per day, unless there was some sort of modifier (like "double ticket day") site-wide. The prizes available for these points were usually older Microsoft products like old games (9.99USD), kitchen appliances, hammocks, cheap headphones, etc. The biggest prizes were Zunes, Vista, Microsoft Office, and the XBox360 Arcade Edition. As I recall, the XBox required some crazy amount of points and thus wasn't worth it...and Vista and Office are hardly sexy items. You could win at most one of each prize per physical mailing address.
The games that you played to win points were flash games, so a bunch of bot writers automated this. They'd register multiple accounts and try to max out the number of points they could get per day. Since users had multiple accounts, people would maintain different amounts of points to save for the big ticket items. I believe that Office and Vista were in the 50,000 to 100,000 point range. (Side note: Microsoft was slow, but they DID actually deliver - I got a 360 controller for free!) There are forums dedicated to "opportunities" like these.
So, what do you do with a free copy of Vista Ultimate? Well, one day a user who had exhausted all of the other prizes tried going to Best Buy with his copy. He went to customer service, in-store, and said "Hey, my grandmother got me this for my birthday. I already have it. Is there any way you could possibly help me out?"
Can you guess what they did? They gave him $450 in Best Buy credit.
For awhile, the overarching Club Bing metagame was to simply farm Vista Ultimate, go to a different Best Buy, and "return" your copy. And, on top of that, someone discovered that Microsoft's shipping treated "123 N. Fake Street Apartment A" and "123 N. Fake Street Apartment Z" (and, for that matter, "123 N. Fake Street Apartment AAAA") as unique addresses - so it became possible to have multiple copies of Vista Ultimate shipped to your house. At one point there were so many Club Bing copies of Vista Ultimate floating around that you could go on forums and purchase it directly for $100 because botters had exhausted their local return options.
Why would a company want you to do that?! The only reason some allow it is that it's very difficult to have a policy that allows honest customers to return items they don't like (for whatever reasons) while at the same time preventing this behavior.
You'll find that there are many companies who have stopped the practice of accepting returns for any reason, for the very reason you stated. If you were running a product company, would you enjoy and encourage the "free rental" behavior?
On the other hand, Kragen advertises that they have a loaner tool program. It's essentially a liberal return policy, as long as you don't break the tool while trying to repair your car. I have used that, when I had a functioning tool to return when I was done with the job.
Of course, once you have the chains, no real point in bringing them back since you'll just need them next year.
No, that's immoral.
Morals have nothing to do with what others let you or don't let you do. If anything morals are about your sense of right and wrong in the absence of external pressures. It may be legal, but I don't think it's moral to abuse a system that's intended to help and protect honest customers. Even if you don't care about hurting the profits of a giant corporation, you're potentially hurting other consumers if the benefit is revoked because too many people are abusing it.
1. Buy item #1, obtain receipt, take it home
2. Go back into store, find identical item #2, take it past checkout counter and up to return counter
3. "Return" item #2 using receipt for item #1
4. Profit
For big ticket items there's usually a unique serial the store will scan to prevent this sort of thing, but not always. Pretty deplorable.
1. Have a broken laptop (item #1)
2. Buy a new laptop (item #2)
3. Return item #1 with item #2's receipt
4. Have a working computer.
note: I'm not condoning this and it's unlikely to working in the OP's case because stores are usually smart enough to check serials on bigger ticket items.
This is the kind of behavior and attitude that ruin nice things for everyone.
My car can go 100 MPH in a residential neighborhood, did the manufacturer intend for it to be used like that just because it can?
Depends on the store. When I used to be behind a returns desk we'd give store credit (on a gift card) if they didn't have a receipt.
I know it's not too relevant but I was so afraid of a no receipt, tough luck situation. I'm surprised they didn't think I just grabbed it off the shelf and went to the counter. It was just a $10 book and not a TV or anything but it left a good impression.
> The store then had the same graphics cards as before.
> If the companies didn't want you to do this, then they wouldn't let you do this.
Buying something that might work, trying it and returning it if it doesn't isn't morally wrong.
The difference is your friend is buying with no actual intent to keep and own.
Ever try to do this? Plenty of times I've done this and sometimes you get store credit sometimes cash. Many stores have "customer friendly" return policies such as these. Walmart is a big one who will take any return. You need ID usually.
>The store then had the same graphics cards as before
No they don't, they now have used graphics cards, and they have the overhead of staffing the return counter if many people get this idea. Plus the contract (i will buy this item at this price from you) was entered into in bad faith.
They do not want you to do this. What your friend did is considered to be a form of return fraud and abuse. The industry term for it is 'wardrobing' or 'renting'.
It's a big enough problem that there is a company, http://www.theretailequation.com, that helps large firms blacklist people like your friend, though these defenses are fairly recent.
Returns require a receipt.
Not always.
What I ended up deciding to do was returning them but asking for an 80% refund. The guy behind the counter gave me a really weird look and told me he had to ask if that was even allowed. Luckily for me, it was. They refunded me 80% of the total amount and I called it fair.