Store refuses to give refunds to customers, malicious compliance gets them a refund.

Return policies are sometimes incredibly predatory! Stores want to ensure your money spent never goes back into your wallet. Vouchers, final sales, and no-return policies are all ways companies try to ensure you don't give back what you buy.

On a popular Reddit thread in the Malicious Compliance Subreddit, a customer maliciously complies with a store's return policy to force them to take a return.

They write:

This happened in a large store in a European country. When you purchase something from them and want to return it, their policy is that they never give money back. They only give you a voucher same redeemable day.

I went to the store today and purchased a long list of items. I got home, and my wife looked at them and said that we didn't need some of them.

I go back to the store, and barely twenty minutes pass. The returns manager smiles as I tell her I've just purchased these and would like to return them. She tells me I stepped out of the store, so she can't refund me. Only give me a voucher, and I must buy something else.

I'd already bought everything I needed. Then she told me to take the products home and keep them for the next time I would need to purchase buy something; then, I could come and get the voucher and redeem it. Imagine keeping a pair of shoes and a bowl and remember to bring them with you the next time you happen to need something.

I tried to reason, but she was adamant: 'Those are the rules. You stepped out of the store; you don't get a refund.' And then it clicked. I asked, 'so if someone wants to return an item without leaving the store, they get the money back?'. 'Yes.' You see where this is heading. Malicious compliance is kicking in.

I ask to return the items and get the voucher. I take the voucher, enter the store, and find a product for the same amount. Buy it with the voucher. Right after the cashier, there's the returns manager. Straight from the cashier, I go to her. Hand her that random product I'd just bought and say, 'I would like to return this; I don't want it. And I never left the store.'

She looks at me with barely contained rage in her eyes; I kid you not. The awkward pause was getting longer. And then her manager comes along. I smile at him and say, 'I never left the store, and I would like to get a refund for this, please.' He nods. Silent and not looking at me, she proceeds to refund me cash. Company policy, right?

The internet loves getting one over on a corporation.

gumnos says:

This has the audacity of a dog staring at you while it poops on the carpet. An 'I know you don't like this, and there's nothing you can do about it without making matters worse.' Very nicely done.

gopiballava says:

I’m surprised that worked. Most stores only refund the original payment method. Great job, though.

pixiepoops9 says:

Superb. They do this at a well-known low-end sports store in the UK; however, they also have a policy that you only get refunded in credit unless it’s an online purchase.

OP, very solid job! Don't be surprised if they change the policy to make voucher purchases non-refundable.