What I think this thread has made clear is, that while the majority of us don't think that it's okay to return an ebook primarily on the grounds that 'I don't like it' - it also shows that the there might be some improvement of the possibilty to evaluate the item before you buy.
With physical items bought online, we can (usually) return them provided they are in the same state as when received, but that notion doesn't really work with digital files. We need some equivalent to browse the book as you might be able to in a bookseller's.
The main problem is probably that if you provide the user with the whole book, the user may copy it without paying - and no seller would be especially happy with such a solution. But the first 5-10% percent or all of chapter 1 is not always a good solution either. For a variety of non-fiction books especially, it would be great to get a broader example. Personally, I think Google Books' solution (when allowed by the publisher) to show about half or one third of the book, simply by showing select chapters throughout the book is a good idea. It should give you enough of an impression (in comparison with browsing a physical book) to know if you want to buy the book or not.
As for fiction, even while a story is supposed to 'hook' a reader quickly, I don't think it's especially fair to anyone, reader and author alike, to pull a sample from the middle of a fiction book. As a reader, it cheats me of getting to know the story as the author intended and start at the beginning - and it would probably not make much sense either. As an author I wouldn't like it very much either - random samples just don't work very well with fiction, but a decent sized reading sample would - for example the first 10% of the book. That would show me if I like the author's style and if the story hooked me, and that's what really important. Non-fiction is a quite different thing and I don't know if we can even discuss it in the same paragraphs. For non-fiction, random samples and the index would be important.
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