by The king learns that modern purchases, unlike wives, may simply be sent back
On A Parcel That May Simply Be Sent Back
Good people, I have this week learned of a modern custom called the free return, wherein a subject may purchase a garment, a chair, or indeed any manner of goods, and should it fail to please them upon arrival, may simply place it back in its box and send it whence it came, at no cost and with no explanation required beyond a small printed label. I confess this news has struck me rather personally, for I spent the better part of four decades attempting precisely this arrangement with considerably less success and considerably more bloodshed.
Verily, had the church of Rome offered a free returns policy on marriages within thirty days, no questions asked, I should have saved myself an entire schism, a dissolution of the monasteries, and no small quantity of awkward correspondence with mine own daughter regarding her mother’s legitimacy.
On The Matter Of The Printed Label
This label, I am told, requires no royal seal, no witness, and no bishop’s signature, merely a small code that a machine may read. Compare this, if you will, to the considerable legal architecture I required merely to remove Catherine from the position of wife, an effort involving two universities, several cardinals, and ultimately an entire new church founded chiefly so that I might, in modern parlance, process a return.
On The Twenty Eight Day Grace Period
I am further informed that most retailers permit twenty eight days in which to reconsider a purchase. Anne of Cleves, by contrast, received considerably less grace, being declared unsatisfactory within a matter of weeks and dispatched with rather more paperwork than a simple parcel. I note, with some shame, that she at least received a generous settlement and kept her head, which by mine own historical standards represents something approaching a customer satisfaction triumph.
The King’s Verdict On Modern Commerce
I do hereby declare the free return policy the single most civilized advancement this nation has produced since mine own reign, chiefly because it achieves in a cardboard box what once required an act of Parliament, a papal dispensation, and in at least two cases, an executioner. Had Selfridges existed in mine day, I daresay the Church of England need never have been founded at all.
I am further informed that many modern subjects purchase garments purely to photograph themselves within them for the benefit of distant acquaintances, then return the garment entirely unworn the following morning, a practice the young people apparently call “wardrobing.” I confess I too once commissioned an entire suit of gold cloth purely to be seen in it at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, though I did, to mine credit, at least keep the suit afterward.
Full and glorious source of this tale, as ever, upon The London Prat: https://prat.uk/free-returns-online-shopping-habits/
