Just Fred wrote:
(Only slightly related) A customer came into the store I work part-time at and wanted to return an item they'd bought online. From another vendor.
They got angry with us when we refused to accept the return.
I kid you not.
I was in retail for 40 years and I definitely believe it. Just before I closed my store in 2010 I had people buying Chinese crappy trumpets in bright royal blue, pink, and yellow from eBay for $159 with free shipping (a real trumpet was $575 to $750 at the time if it was a brand name). Then they were bringing them to me for repair because the slug of soft brass looking metal that was spray painted didn't play - right out of the box. When I said no politely because there were no internal parts available for their no-name piece of garbage, they'd be mad at me and tell me I should contact the eBay seller for parts to do it under warranty even though there was no name or serial number on the thing. Not only was that not possible but why would I? The repair would have cost almost 1/3 of the original price of the thing plus parts and they wouldn't be happy with that either.
In another case, I had a carefully selected Chinese beginner's violin hanging on my wall for $79 - assembled, tuned, and including an excellent zippered case. A guy ordered a Chinese piece of crap from eBay, it had a velcro closure case, the bridge was thrown in the case wrapped in plastic, the worthless Chinese strings were still in their package, and he paid $59 plus a bloated $25 shipping and handling charge for this. He brought it to me proudly (he had been at my store and I showed him the $79 one several days before) and wanted me to assemble his, string it, and tune it for free. I said that would take about 45 minutes of my time so I'd only charge him $20. He got upset at ME for his buying a piece of un-assembled crap and left. He went home, tried to string it himself, and broke one of the terrible strings. He also didn't know how to put the bridge on or where to put it. When he came back again, he wanted me to do it for the $20 I had quoted. I said no, it needed one string for an additional $3.50. He had no choice and paid the $23.50. So to "save" money on the Internet he spent $97.50 instead of my $79, ended up with an inferior product that was polyurethaned badly instead of a varnished body and a velcro closure case. Idiot.
I had a decent brand of imported drumsets for $329. An Internet-addicted Dad bought his kid an "un-assembled" used set on eBay for $250. Paid shipping to get it. Brought it to me to put it together. I opened the box and every single screw, lug, bolt, piece of hardware, rim, head, and everything had been removed and the wooden shells were barren except for the sprayed on color. I said it would take about 5 hours to rebuild the whole thing to usable condition so I'd do it in my spare time during a couple days for $50. They had no choice and begrudgingly agreed. I could have charged a $100 (like another store quoted them) but I didn't. When done they had $250 + shipping + $50 in it. They had to buy a set of cheap cymbals to even use it for $75. Total about $400-425. No warranty, not new, not a good finish, not a brand name. Idiot.
The list of these stories is endless. Buy online with no clue, no research, and no ability to rationalize the purchase properly. Then blame everybody else except themselves. I'm sure behind my back, I was always the villain blamed for their stupidity even though I had nothing to do with the transaction.
I can't tell you how many times I dealt with jaw-dropping stupidity. I'm glad to be out of retail and would never do it again.