An under-examined cause of inflation: unconditional returns
An under-examined cause of inflation: unconditional returns
It turns out that accommodating spoiled aristocrats who order shit they don't need from halfway across the Earth on a whim has a cost, and let me tell you: that cost isn't coming out of the executives' salaries!
Every time you return something, you are adding data to a spreadsheet that returns the value of "fuck you."
If free returns ended today there would be zero impact on prices. Come on.
Unconditional returns, sure, but it's the bourgeoisie expecting unconditional returns from their investments.
That’s what I thought this was going to be about: unconditional profits
There would definitely be a change in prices lol. They track all of this to the cent. Just because there's price gouging doesn't mean the cost of goods is completely unrelated to operating costs.
You're right, the Capitalists should give up their wealth and their parasitic need for returns.
They won't.
Since that's the reality we inhabit, every time you make a return, you're jacking up the prices of your future purchases.
They will always charge the maximum amount that they can! The only limit is our ability to pay and our ability to buy somewhere else.
That's it.
You're jacking up the prices by making purchases in the first place. Or rather, they're jacking up prices because they know you'll pay it - let's be sure to put the blame squarely where it belongs! The blame is always on the ones setting the prices.
Just because there's price gouging doesn't mean the cost of goods is completely unrelated to operating costs.
That's exactly what it means lol.
while companies post record profits? seems very close to the dreaded "we closed the stores due to theft 🥺"
Another oft-ignored cause of inflation: capitalism.
there are places where you can buy a laptop, use it for 364 days, then return it for a refund.
Me buying an obscure textbook ebook on Amazon, stripping it of its DRM and requesting a refund
i think this is underbaked, no-conditions returns means they don't have employees investigating/litigating legitimacy, i figure it only exists as a policy if someone figured the wages against the loses favored the company.
It's always a risk assessment. If the cost of preventing something might go wrong exceeds the expected value of what it's going to cost me to prevent it from happening, might as well let it happen in the small % of cases it happens and eat the loss.
now if they could make it a crime to disingenuously return things and have cops (public treasury) deal with it, lord knows you'd need a doctor's note to return a malfunctioning vibrator, but there's more pressing aspects of the profitability crisis they'd rather be bribing politicians over right now
Tangentially: this is why I despise association with "consumers" as a class. The wealthiest and most comfortable people on Earth have banded together with one demand: "More cheap shit for us!" This, of course, translates in reality to "More machine guns for the child laborer guards! Worse conditions for workers! More dead miners!"
Under communism there will be a firm "no return" policy
I feel like you're being facetious, but the Earth is dying and reducing is the first of the three Rs for a reason. Being frivolous with goods and resources is 100% bourgeois behavior.
A little, but I'm also serious. We should definitely reduce our consumption and waste of resources in shipping things back and forth (+ the things which just get thrown out once returned.)
I haven’t returned things half way across the world (except one time), but I have returned items from within the country of origin. With clothes I try to refrain from doing so unless it won’t fit.
What’s worse is the companies that demand you buy a single part from their factory half way across the world. I was trying to buy a replacement cap for one of my Japanese-made water bottles. It would’ve costed me like $35 plus shipping from Japan. I ended up just buying another identical bottle for $25 and requested a refund, saying it arrived empty
I rarely buy treats unless I know I’ll use them for a long time and researched thoroughly. But sometimes you just gotta take advantage of these companies
I was trying to buy a replacement cap for one of my Japanese-made water bottles.
The same thing happened to me with a part of my Hario coffee grinder. Turns out import duties from Japan costed more than the item itself, but I had already bought it and needed it to get my coffee.
i thought this was going to be about how investors are always secure in their investments, even stupid investments, cus like the silicon valley bank just gets IRS checks if things go to shit