Originally Posted by barryem
This thing about not allowing returns after the box has been opened was kind of pushed on stores in the 80's and 90's by customers who would buy a computer on Friday for a party and return it on Monday for a refund. I had a friend who managed a Computer City store in those days and, like Best Buy and all the rest, they accepted returns freely. He finally decided to change that at his store after a 3 day weekend because of the large number of returns the day following the holiday. I forget the number now but it was very large.
He'd been talking about having to do that for some time. At that point most other stores had already stopped taking returns or charging a large restocking fee.
People also commonly bought laptops in those days to use on a business trip and then returned them after the trip. I was working for a mutual fund company at the time and quite a few people working there did that regularly.
In the early days of computer stores returns were accepted gracefully by most of them with no questions asked. The idea was that you needed a little time to see if it suited your needs. Customers put an end to that.
Barry
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