Today, I stopped by the local Staples, which is going out of business, to pick up a bunch of miscellaneous supplies (labels, Rolodex cards, and the like). They happened to have a pile of Tensor booklights, too, and I needed one, so I bought it. When I got home, I found that the light didn’t work; foolishly, I thought that they might make an exception to “All Sales Final” for merchandise that was instantly defective.
So I went back to the store and asked the cashier, who called the manager, who told me that “Staples doesn’t own the merchandise in the store any more, the liquidator does, and they say no returns”, and went on to say that I should have tested the booklight before buying it (which would have required opening the blister pack and having had the foresight to have brought batteries along).
I could have tolerated being told “no refunds”. But I was angered by the manager’s “blame the customer” attitude, hence this posting (and the letter I’ve just mailed to Staples’ CEO), and my plan to avoid Staples from now on.