2nd October 2022

I’ve been re-writing the sequel to best-selling Pensioners in Paradis. It’s enabled me to reflect on our past life when Him indoors had his DIY shop.  So many customers would bring items back, expecting an immediate refund, even when they had simply changed their mind. They were all informed that English law stated that customers can have an exchange or be refunded only when the item is faulty. Of course, some larger companies like M & S decided to offer open returns, but that was their personal choice, not the law. Fast forward to today. As a writer, I was always very annoyed at Amazon’s ebook return policy, where readers could buy my ebooks, read them, then get a full refund from Amazon, no questions asked. Wrong on every count, not least by Amazon in offering such a service when ebook ‘faults’ were unlikely, and the item could be fully ‘used’ before being returned. So, a week ago, all writers applauded when Amazon announced a change in its returns policy. It would now prevent a self-service return of a Kindle ebook for a refund if a consumer had read more than 10% of the text. Hurray…..but should Big Brother know how many pages had been read? A different thing altogether.