Thought I should share this...

[nc-daydreamer]

Best Buy isn't the only store that punishes shoppers for too many returns

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/best-buy-isnt-the-only-store-that-punishes-shoppers-for-too...

At least a dozen major retailers are discreetly tracking shoppers' returns and punishing people who are suspected of abusing their return policies.

Best Buy, Home Depot, and Victoria's Secret are among the many retailers engaging in this practice.

Most of these companies have hired a third-party firm, called The Retail Equation, to mine their sales data and keep a database of customers' returns to flag potentially problematic shoppers. Customers who are flagged are often barred from making future returns.

Retailers say they use the service to combat return fraud. Some critics say its raises privacy concerns, however, and dozens of shoppers have complained online about being unfairly punished by the system.

Business Insider compiled a list of all the companies that use The Retail Equation, based on information from the companies as well as recent customer complaints on social media.

[lookng2015]

I remember reading some blog somewhere a few years ago about buying pallet lots of returns from liquidators and anything broken or recalled etc returning to a store locally that carried the item.

If they had to take a store credit because they didn't have a receipt that was fine as they'd buy NIB stuff to resell.

[gramophone-georg]

This is a general response... not to lookng specifically.

I know where this is going... "This is industry standard. eBay needs to do this."

Well, in my opinion they should indeed  but will  they? Likely not, because it's not in eBay's interests. Let me explain.

The difference between eBay and all the entities we are talking about here is that eBay alone has no skin in the game with this. It's not their inventory and it's not their money... therefore it's not their risk.

Frankly, due to that unique difference, I'd expect to see eBay double down  on the free and easy returns no- matter- what scheme. eBay can pick up a lot of "buyers" that way because a lot of those "buyers" will stop frequenting these B&Ms and other sites and flock to eBay, which is running a numbers game on this. They are gambling that probably 75% of these disputes... if not more... end with eBay keeping fees from an unsuccessful sale.

Face facts... eBay doesn't resolve the great majority of cases in favor of the buyer because they love buyers. They resolve them this way because they love eBay. They're buying buyer goodwill on your dime. These "buyers" generate a lot of fees for eBay because a happy "buyer" is a repeat and frequent "buyer". 

We've all seen the posts from the Blues saying that eBay has "tools" to monitor this sort of "buyer" behavior. I don't doubt for a second that they do, or they are even more foolish than they appear. But the key, as always, is how eBay will use those tools... and long experience tells all of us that eBay will use them to protect eBay from losing money. Period.