About that “trial period” stuff and “try it, if you don’t hear a difference you can send it back” malarkey:
The customer still has to pay before trying. In most cases this stuff fetches stupid prices;
Are we sure we’ll get out money back? I’ve little faith in people who sell 10.000 euro pieces of stone and the like;
I’ve already enough qualms about buying online, what with zero hour contracts and underpaid workers in distribution centers;
All those returns are not so good for the financial health of online retailers, which again has an impact on wages;
Satisfaction or money back is a marketing ploy. Few people invoke it. True sceptics willl not buy the product in the first place. Few people who are not entirely satisfied try to get their money back, often out of fear for small print.
When it comes to big ticket items, the people who buy are inclined to want to be satisfied, regardless of the actual quality. There are many reasons for this, most of them a variation on emperor’s new clothes syndrome.
I’m not going to try something that sounds like snake oil to me. On the other hand, in the US, I have never had a problem returning anything I bought that didn’t work out. I have recently bought a few things from Amazon where I made a mistake and simply ordered the wrong thing. Their response is always, take it to UPS for free shipment back to Amazon. Money is back on my credit card the day I ship it.
I’ve also bought a lot of stuff at Best Buy brick and morter store. They have a 14 day, no questions asked, return policy that I’ve used many times with no issues.
If you return too many times, Amazon will put you on a sh*t list and not sell to you anymore.
As for BestBuy, et.al., there is a service that sellers use that tracks the returns a particular person makes across all outlets, in the same chain and across different chains… So, what goes for Amazon policy is being quietly instituted in other big box stores.
But you were replying to the post where I commented Martin for posting the Darko video… I referenced the 80s (from the video) and you you replied “you must be joking…”… referencing the wrong post.
Regarding the other video, I was pointing out that they do a 30 day free trial. Not sure why that’s upsetting you?
Again, you can’t abuse store return policies. Big box stores are not in the business of loaning stuff for you to try. As with anything, be honest and honorable, not a jerk. I’m not advocating anything untoward. Just making the case that you probably won’t have a problem returning something within the store policy, unless you are a jerk. At least in the USA, I don’t know about other countries.
I’m aware of several vinyl record customers (in the US) who have been banned from Amazon for too many returns. Of course the customers are not happy (their point is that they wouldn’t have to return these records if they weren’t warped, too much fill, etc.). But Amazon likely doesn’t care about any of that. They are just noted as excessive return customers then banned. And by the way, it seems getting the ban lifted is essentially impossible. You can’t actually talk with anyone at Amazon.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
1330
You probably need to upgrade your equipment, then.
Bill, I’m sure that together we could easily come up with a list of ten things that you and have both decided were meaningless without direct experimentation. Is it safe to assume you’ve never used cable risers, or magic rocks to improve the sound of your speakers? I’ve never gotten a trial subscription to my local newspaper so that I can start letting the horoscope section guide my decisions each day, have you? I’ve never visited a psychic to have the lines in my palm read to help me make decisions about my career. How about you? There’s no shortage of things that we both consider to be invalid without having gone to the effort of directly experimenting. There’s nothing wrong with that.
That fact that we are willing to dismiss a near infinite number of tenuous propositions is not a sign of a closed mind or an epistimological shortcoming. Not every proposal needs to be tested first hand before it can be safely disregarded.
I am confident that ethernet hardware is comfortably on that list. You disagree. I’m willing to have my opinion swayed, but in all the years that this has been debated there’s been not one single shred of compelling data that would invite me to re-evaluate. Nobody has done a blind test that I’ve ever seen which had positive results. Nobody has even proposed a plausible theory about how ethernet hardware can influence the sounds I hear from my system. One is left wondering why that’s the case. After a certain amount of time the absence of evidence for improvement can be treated as evidence for absence of improvement.
I’ve just come across this thread. So 1200 odd posts later outcome is what I expected on seeing the title.
Yes
No
My dad’s bigger than your dad.
Axolotl
You’ve just come across this thread and you’ve already read 1200 odd posts? You’re an impressively fast reader… (BTW, not all of the 1200 posts are “odd” -> pun alert!)
