It turns out that human beings are often inclined not to lie for selfish gain, and there is often a certain degree of social pressure not to lie for selfish gain.
In my experience, it depends what the size of the gain is and/or which environment you are in.
Certain countries I've been to, it's perfectly normal to assume the opposing party is lying for selfish gain, and in return you expect it and act accordingly. In these places, there are no stores with return policies that will just take a customer's word for it.
Certain places have a higher trust society, and that allows some stores to be able to offer returns for refunds leniently...as long as the proportion of scammers stays low. However, even in these "high trust" places, I see that while people are hesitate to lie for selfish gain in small transactions, there is plenty of unscrupulous behavior in large transactions concealed by plausible deniability, aka white collar crime. A lot of it is in the form of you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours with someone else's money. There's almost no way to prove it unless it happened to be written down or recorded on audio/video.
To restate: “It will be used by a minority” — yes, we agree on this.
I absolutely feel social pressure when I’m alone on the phone with some faceless customer service employee. If you do not, that’s your choice, but it’s not universal.
