Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 328 posts

Re: Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged

#231

Post by dmortin »

vishnugupta wrote: post #134
Waterluvian wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think good return policies is good for business IF the business is operating in a society that generally behaves ethically on that matter. If the majority of returns are good faith, just swallow them and keep everything moving smoothly with happy customers. If you have a critical mass of customers who disregard right vs. wrong and just see a mark to be exploited, you're pretty much forced to behave adversarially, a…

This is right on the money. I worked at a startup catering to Indian consumers. It was a typical transactional product coupled with offers. The time and energy we spent on fighting different kinds of abuse was outright insane. The fraudsters would come up with a new trick each week to abuse offers. No matter what check we placed (based on e-mail, phone number, IP etc., etc.,) they would beat it. Based on my experienc…

> Order a smart phone, return a faulty/old one of the same model, sell the new one. Profit.

Don't sellers there record the serial number of phones? I thought it was routine everywhere.

If the serial number is recorded for the transaction then they can't just send back any other phone with a different serial number.

Re: Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged

#232

Post by floatingatoll »

hi41 wrote: post #207

I am an Indian. I can attest that a lot indians are extremely corrupt and will abuse the system as as possible for their own benefit. I am so ashamed of being an indian. Indians are the people who don’t put the shopping cart back in its place and just leave it in the parking lot and the rest of the people can’t park their cars. They unload the cart into car and don’t bother that traffic is backing up.

If it’s of any comfort, there are people who specialize in this in the United States as well. Retailers that still offers “receiptless returns” now requires a photo ID so that they can ensure you aren’t playing fraud games with them, and some will openly deny returns to certain customers if shadowy reputation services that no one knows exist deem it too high risk.

Re: Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged

#233

Post by wccrawford »

pow_pp_-1_v wrote: post #224
hi41 wrote: post #207

I am an Indian. I can attest that a lot indians are extremely corrupt and will abuse the system as as possible for their own benefit. I am so ashamed of being an indian. Indians are the people who don’t put the shopping cart back in its place and just leave it in the parking lot and the rest of the people can’t park their cars. They unload the cart into car and don’t bother that traffic is backing up.

There are self-centered people from all countries. I used to feel good/bad depending on what people from my country/region/group etc. do. But it's so silly. Why do I care what another person does - whom I don't even know? It's the same with long lost ancestors. So now a days I notice such thoughts quickly and remember that it's a silly heuristic that my brain uses and I should ignore it.

I've always been kind of an outcast, so it's always been my policy to worry about myself and let others take care of themselves.

As a result, I think my moral compass is quite a bit stricter than most people. I definitely have people telling me I'm being too hard on myself.

But I don't turn that compass on others. They have to make their own choices, and live with the consequences, both internal and external.

Re: Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged

#234

Post by sf_rob »

hi41 wrote: post #207

I am an Indian. I can attest that a lot indians are extremely corrupt and will abuse the system as as possible for their own benefit. I am so ashamed of being an indian. Indians are the people who don’t put the shopping cart back in its place and just leave it in the parking lot and the rest of the people can’t park their cars. They unload the cart into car and don’t bother that traffic is backing up.

Please don't be ashamed of your ethnicity/race/geography. You are an individual and ought to be treated by yourself and others as such. All groups have their cultural and historical baggage. I say this as someone who had quite a bad experience on work trips to India haha.

Re: Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged

#235

Post by tedunangst »

sperrholz wrote: post #173
sss111 wrote: post #31

Apple had a lot of trouble with the Indian market back the early 2010s. They had to pull AppleCare+ out of the country because people were abusing it a lot. [†] Same goes for the country's biggest online retailers, both Amazon and Flipkart also switched to a replacement-only policy in India. "Most analysts agree that many many buyers were abusing the company's refund policy. With many buying latest smartphones, and r…

> people were abusing it a lot Why frame it so negatively? You could as well say "people saw that Apple was ripe for disruption".

Well, why are people upset Apple doesn't allow returns anymore? Maybe the people returning the items were ripe for disruption.

Re: Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged

#236

Post by wccrawford »

hi41 wrote: post #226
kburman wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a troll?

No, I am not. I grew up in Mumbai and emigrated to USA. Those were my genuine feelings.

As a non-Indian, my impression (after hearing something like that multiple times about Indians) is that people in India may be raised to be more apt to over-use a system (and even abuse it), but it's not unique to them. Every country has people who do it far too much, and everyone does it to some extent.

So don't feel so bad.

Also, these kinds of things are usually a trade off. Your culture has a lot of beautiful things that are unique to it, too. No culture is perfect, and pretty much everyone is just trying to get by.

IMO, be the best you that you can be, enjoy the beauty of life, and don't feel responsible for others.

Re: Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged

#237

Post by thitcanh »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #216
gentleman11 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this scamming or abuse? There is a return window that people are taking advantage of whose purpose it to let unsure people decide whether they want the device or not. People are using this promise at face value and then being called abusers and scammers

Yeah I'm having understanding how this is a scam too. Are they rebuying the same phone a week later? If not, they are using the system as intended.

I think the answer is not “not”

It’s abuse because people buy it with the intent to return it. Buying it and then honestly changing your mind is fine, but Amazon probably determined that wasn’t the case here.

Re: Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged

#238

Post by ohazi »

mavelikara wrote: post #161
ohazi wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This disconnect is precisely why you can get a refund in the US but not in India. There's the "letter of the policy" interpretation, where anything the text of the policy doesn't explicitly forbid is A-Okay. And then there's the "socially acceptable norms" interpretation, where you're only supposed to ask for refunds when a product is actually defective, and if you go any further than that, society and HN comments wi…

> In the US, we have a thriving culture of shaming people for anything and everything, so companies can have generous policies and lean on the social norms interpretation to keep people in check. Consumers in US can buy a product without the anxiety of not having read the fine print, knowing that the seller will honor the return policy. Sellers also end up selling more because most buyers like the product they buy. S…

Oh I agree, this is definitely a tragedy-of-the-commons situation. I was mostly joking about the shaming bit because of all the sibling comments.

Re: Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged

#239

Post by thitcanh »

easton wrote: post #102
truth_ wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew of a guy who "bought" Apple Laptops from Amazon and used it as his DJ laptop and worked some gigs where the Apple laptop was a status symbol of how big a deal he is. He used to perform in small town and rural India and organizers paid him ₹3k-30k per night. He returned his laptop after doing 3-4 such gigs in the "marriage season" in India. He did this 7-8 times from different addresses and different accounts.

After 21 gigs (3 gigs * 7 laptops) he would've made around 21k USD (presuming he was making at least 10k rupees per night, which between 3k-30k would've made sense). Seems like at that point you just buy the darn laptop, it's not like you need something more than an Air for DJing, and 1/21th of your revenue to be legal seems like not a bad idea.

You’re missing the point. Why buy something if you don’t have to? That’s the reasoning here. You don’t spend money, your product doesn’t depreciate, you always have a brand new product. You only have to deal with your guilt and ethics or lack thereof.

Re: Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged

#240

Post by stale2002 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #218
zhaowang wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely abuse. The policy is there does not mean customer can use it in whatever way you like. The company honor the policy also does not mean the consumer is not abusing the policy. Remember Costco permanently blocked some consumers due to abusing the return policy? Costco honors the policy, but those consumers were still considered as abusing the policy.

Exactly. That's Costco's right, and it's an example of the system working as intended. Let me ask you this. Do you agree with illegal copyright infringement being classified as "piracy"? My issue here is the terminology. It's deceptive to classify this behavior as "abuse," as if someone was kicking a puppy. It's an asshole thing to do, but it's not abuse. No one is doing anything illegal, and everyone is free to feel…

Actually you are wrong. There are absolutely laws against return abuse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_fraud

This is the problem when people go around pretending like they are technically correct, when they aren't.

Everyone else, intuitively understood the problem with return abuse, except for you. Which is why you got this wrong.

If you had focused less on trying to find some clever hack or technically, then you wouldn't have been so misinformed on this issue.

Post reply on HN