When you return an item, sometimes a store charges a fee. So for example a $300 phone, they take $35 off your return, so you only get back $265 if you decide to return it.
When you return an item, sometimes a store charges a fee. So for example a $300 phone, they take $35 off your return, so you only get back $265 if you decide to return it.
In Europe we are paying restocking fees, just not overtly. I have been in the ecommerce business, and know others who have. You just mark up the goods taking into account your returned goods cost.
It’s like physical stores adding a the spread cost of shoplifting into the prices.
You’re not paying a “fee”. Sure, someone is paying for it, but it isn’t a fee.
Returns are a right and a necessity. Just as you take broken, spoiled, lost (and as you said, stolen) goods into account and “mark up” others to make up those losses, you do the same thing for returns.
It’s a business expense that has to be covered by some means (larger margins). But that’s not a “fee”.