I knew exactly nothing about it, but I had a specific instance where I bought some things, about $20 each (they were cheap, wireless network extenders) and they were absolute crap.
So I tried to arrange sending them back to the company, and the company just told me to keep them and returned my money.
This puzzled me. What the hell was with that? Just keep them?
And when this Universal Postal Service thing came up during Trump’s Presidency, as I read more about it and drilled into it, that made all the sense in the world.
It is one of the reasons we have difficulty competing with them head to head (and it is just one of many factors)
If you are an American manufacturer, you have to have customer support to handle returns, broken product, etc. and shipping costs are a good portion of that.
Chinese firms don’t have the same issue with shipping costs to us, only from us to them, so they can just say “keep it” and come out ahead.
It is a bizarre dynamic.
Not from the MFG view point. They know their cost including shipping and percentage of refunds. So it is more profitable to just refund then any other option. Also the CCP loves this, steal business from American companies putting them out of business. Reduce tax payments to US government, no profit no taxes. Also take US dollars out of USA further hurting the USA.
This makes so much sense. While we were building our home and ordering some things on the web, several came damaged. When we contacted the company they said, just keep the item damaged and we’ll send you a new one. Hummmmm...are you sure? I knew something was up but we were in the thick of building.
When I read your synopsis, the word came to me..BINGO!!! That’s why. Plus now, this being known, one can have free back up pieces for free...if they are not ethical persons. This will kill the American venders soon enough.
We must return to a moral and ethical society before we kill each other over cheap goods.