B&H selling used as new? Bottom line..

I am British, living in the Netherlands (= Holland). As I understand it, NL has a general 'buyer's remorse' law which allows buyers to return goods and get the purchase price back (not delivery costs) on goods that they order and then regret having ordered, provided that they do so withn about 14 days (can't remember the exact time limit) and the goods are in new condition.

In terms of 'new condition' vendors can require that all the packaging is present and in its original state; otherwise they do not have to accept the return. They are also allowed up to 30 days from receipt of the returned item to return the money.

I have returned three items (out of, I would guess, about 50 purchased). In one case the video camera had an 'improvement' which meant I could no longer use the camera for my purpose (not foreseeable from the camera specs). In the other case I misunderstood one aspect on normal camera function for malfunction (blush). One of the retailers made a lot of trouble about a missing part of a returned item - which I eventually showed was not packaged with that model. Another took the full 30 days to return my money (fair enough). From my experience, returning stuff is enough hassle that I wouldn't frivolously order stuff that I didn't expect to keep.

So on the whole I think the balance is about right.

One problem with returns is that if you get a defective camera that is returned under guarantee, it has to be sent back for repair: you both have to wait for the camera you ordered, and risk having a camera with a grumbling fault. In this case, if you still have all the bits to be able to return the camera 'as new', it makes sense (if not good morals) to return the camera 'as new' and buy another one from a different retailer.

Lastly, one thing that does happen is that you order a camera body only, and get the kit with the lens removed, or order the lensonly  and get it from a kit. This would really only be an issue if you wanted to resell the item in the box. It does enable retailers to keep prices down, and to supply body only etc when they otherwise wouldn't have stock. And I guess if you were unhappy about it, you could return the item.