I moved a few months ago, and I’m not as young as I’m used to.  We didn’t get much help moving this time, so I ended up doing the majority of it by myself.  I did too much.  My elbows have been hurting ever since.  I finally went to the doctor’s office the first week of January, and was told I have lateral epicondylitis (tennis elbow) in both arms.  Fun.

So the nurse practitioner told me to buy a “counter brace” for each arm.  I went to CVS, and the guy said they didn’t carry them.  I went to Amazon.com and ordered a set of braces for $16 each from “The Therapy Connection.”  Meanwhile, I went to another pharmacy and found a cheap set for $8 each to use while I waited for the good ones to arrive.

Fast forward a week.  The “good ones” arrived, and when I pulled them out of the box they were just about the same as the ones I had been wearing.  So I decided I would return them.  Having not used them, I put them back in the display boxes they came in, and stuck them in a shipping box to send back.  I got credited back for my return yesterday.  They gave me $23 back.

Now I’m no math genius, but I paid $32 for them, and then paid about $6 to ship them back.  I had no problem paying the shipping, because it was my choice to return them. But why did they short me  $9?  I contacted Amazon, who graciously told me they didn’t know either, so they decided to give me a courtesy credit of $9, which was nice of them.  They put me in touch with the company who sent me the braces.  I received my answer.

They said that the $9 is a total stemming from two points. The first was their claim that I ordered the braces with a shipping promotion.  Yes, I did.  I used my Amazon Prime free shipping that I get with my Amazon Prime account.  They say the promotion required that I spend over a certain level in order to qualify for free shipping.  Since my order was over that level, I qualified for free shipping.  But since I returned “something”, my order fell below the “free shipping” threshold, and so I was retroactively charged for the shipping.  What they failed to realize is that I returned the entire order so there was nothing to charge me shipping FOR.  But they decided to charge me anyway.

The second thing they charged me for was a “twenty percent restocking fee.”  Really?  You needed to charge me over six dollars so that you could accept the two braces back at your warehouse and have someone walk them over to a shelf?  Considering that this action would most likely take about five minutes at most (let’s say it’s a really big warehouse), then I want to work at your warehouse where your mail clerks make $60 an hour, assuming they restock two braces every five minutes.

But seriously, I understand restocking fees for physically large items, for expensive items, and for dangerous items (chemicals and whatnot), but I don’t understand charging me over $6 for restocking two nylon straps that weigh less than an ounce a piece and are worth $16 (but are obtainable elsewhere for half the cost).   They aren’t charging me because they need to.  They are punishing me for returning merchandise.  And so I say to you, “The Therapy Connection“, I will not buy anything else from you.  You can keep your overpriced products in that warehouse, and I can keep my money, thanks to Amazon.com.