What a great idea! Screw the businesses that offer a free return policy by misusing them, keep prices higher for the rest of us, and keep the B-stock inventories high as a consolation! Awesome strategy! ;-)
I used to have this philosophy; however, with the advent of mail order business, I started calling and speaking with the distributors (sometimes owners in the case of smaller ID companies and sales/CS reps for others). I was very specific (as a generic example) telling them I intended to also buy model X and model Y speakers and planned to only keep the one I preferred. In every case, they said "that is exactly why we have our return policy". Some companies like SVS choose to include free return shipping and others like Hsu do not. I think that may be one contributing factor to SVS being somewhat more expensive for the same level of performance as compared to Hsu. However, I know many people who have ordered SVS over the other companies simply because it was very important for them to "try before you buy" (...well, keep) without any financial risk, and willing to pay extra for that convenience. My point is these companies see it as part of the mail/internet distribution model and if you spoke with them, I'd bet they don't think their policy is being abused. If this policy causes them to fail, it is from making an inferior product! OTOH, part of their calculus is that many people aren't going to want to bother with a return, but want the assurance they could if they wanted!
As an aside, PSA is unique, AFAIK, for having offered free return shipping then discontinuing it. As I understand it, the policy worked well with him initially as the buyers who bought from PSA researched their purchases well before buying from a "no-name" brand. However, as PSA built a reputation, more people were buying their subs on recommendation without doing much homework. My understanding is that Tom V. got frustrated because he was starting to get more and more returns with explanations like "it was too big". The idea that the cost of his subs had to factor in return shipping for people who weren't willing to assess the dimensions of the sub before ordering caused him to change his business model. That is his prerogative, and I have no idea how it has effected his sales; however it is ultimately the distributors choice on how they want to manage returns.
