I’d probably dispute the charge with my bank first … let them potentially lose all of the cost , or make it right


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And also minimizes the number of "managers" that must be on call around the clock to make decisions about refunds. Plus of course this way they're also betting on customers being too lazy to send back the original at least some, so more $$$ outright there. Logically I'd intuit possibly some also get better rates with shipping companies they work with for having this policy/MO, because more stuff gets shipped! That could be a whole racket, quite frankly.

The loss prevention side is that larger companies don't want to 'deputize' lower level employees to hand out refunds after the fact (which is what you were asking for, even if it's a credit card, same idea), let alone let bots do so (at least, not for now, that could change). Too easy for employees to rip their employers off is the long and short.

By kicking this whole thing up the chain to the ordering/delivery system, wherein all you as the customer are getting is a DISCOUNT on a second purchase, that's a different liability level versus a refund after the fact. Basically they can entrust lower-level employees (and bots) to effectively facilitate "refunds" via this functionality with less risk. And there might be kickbacks from the shipping companies, as mentioned above.

As an aside, you ever wonder why many stores ask you to sign to confirm you returned something to the store? That's actually because they don't trust their employees.

Now I’m being charged for two items when I only wanted one. I did not ask them to start another order. If I go to a store and buy something and they overcharge me at the register, they don’t make me go get another one to ring up again at the lower price and then return the overpriced item.

I don't understand your subject line in this context though, could you elaborate there?

In-store is a different scenario. There's cameras for one thing. You will often find you still have to sign that you got money back, there's often a manager that has to come over and approve the refund or you may be dealing directly with people in the return department, who often have a fair bit of seniority, may have had a stronger background check than regular employees, those kinds of things.

I'm just saying, low level employees, esp. when they're bots, very often do not have unsupervised customer refund ability for overcharges, and it's at least partly a loss prevention thing. Empowering them to provide a discount on a 2nd sale and allow the customer to do a free return on the old item is calculated by the bean counters to be a lower risk proposition.

Also, I actually have been to stores where they say "you have to return the item, then we'll resell it to you with the appropriate discount" for something like this. And it's for this same reason. In some cases, their systems simply just don't allow outright 'refunds' without the product coming back into the company's possession. I'd guess their theft insurance costs probably go up unless they have restrictive refund policies, too.

People in general underestimate how much of a problem employee theft is for corporations. Of course, they steal back, I'm not crying that much on their behalf, and it still sucks for the customer, I didn't mean otherwise