Remember that sometimes the order you place for a book goes to one company who has jobbed out their stockroom to a licensed warehouse who does the shipping for them, and a lot of other customers as well. Their attention to your book as opposed to -- say-- socks or underwear will usually be of the same level.
Working in industry and being familiar with this for a long time the problem is widespread.
Example, Hippo-bippo Books for a long time has had its own warehouse and stockroom where they shipped their books. They sent them in nice stiff reinforced boxes because they were proud of their product and concerned about their reputation.
Well Bennings who was the COO retired and they hired Snotnozer who thought up this great idea to save money by doing away with the warehouse, sending their printed books directly to AviaNacht warehouse who would ship them for a quarter of the rate that the old in-house warehouse could do it for. Towels, books, socks, grandma's old crystal- the folks at Avia-Nacht didn't care and put it all in the same boxes and packed it with peanuts or air bags or whatever. They also hired people for a buck-three 80 and hour who were paid by the piece.
So complaints started rolling in-- to Hippo-Bippo books not to Avia-Nacht warehouses, and these were only a fraction of the complaints because most people just put up with it and didn't want to complain. Wouldn't have mattered a hill of beans anyway because when the complaints came to Buttlikker, (Snotnozzer long ago having taken his much enhanced resume and moved on) Buttlikker says to the head of customer service in the presence of the CFO, "Well I spoke to Avia-Nacht Warhouse and they say they would have to charge us a "special handling fee if you want us to play like we give a crap" which will raise our costs $2 USD per book.
What I haven't told you is that between the time of Snotnozer and Buttlikker, they had 
spanker the sales manager who convinced the CEO that all that extra money they kept in the bottom line which Snotnozer had gotten was chickenfeed to what HE could get if they allowed him to drop the price point to something like 5% above costs which would mean all the sales would go to Hippo-Bippo and starve out the competition. His battle cry in management meetings was "YEAH! We'll lose 10 cents per book, but LOOK AT THE VOLUME!!!!"
Rather than doing to spanker what they should have done, taken him to the wall at the back of the plant and shooting him like the NKVD would have done, they did it because they let greed get in the way, so now if they invest in a better packing system, they'll lose $40.10 USD instead of 10 cents per book and no one's going to have that on their watch. At this point Buttlikker notes that they only get 100 or so complaints a year from people tight-butted enough to complain and it's cheaper to simply send them new books for a total cost of $500 USD per year than the cost of rebuilding a responsible warehouseing facility.
That's in general what happens.
Now I'll tell you OTHER half of the story, from the people who complain. This is true.
One day in the winter I was driving home from work and I had promised my wife hot chocolate for a pleasant favor on a cold winters night. This was the one, but I had no unsweetened chocolate at home so I went to an A&P to get a bar.
Well- I find the stuff and am trying to dig it out (it was in a very difficult place and couldn't be gotten at easily (it was behind a clear screen, and in wedging it out, I pushed the whole row and a jar of ginger-juice fell off the rack a few feet away. The cap broke. There was no spillage, but the piece was no longer salable, and so I picked it up, put it into my cart and took it to the check out counter.
I explained the dilemma to the clerk and I said to him "I'll pay for it, but I don't want it, so if you could throw it away that would be fine."
"Oh, don't worry we have breakage all the time and we have a box here which we send back to the supplier."
"No, that's for breakage in transit, all your stock is shipped FOB destination, which means once it hits your dock, it's yours not theirs. So you sending it back as breakage is stealing from the manufactur."
"Oh don't worry we do this all the time."
Icily I said "People murder all the time, that doesn't make it right. I'll pay for the giner juice, put it on my bill then throw it away."
So I paid for it and he put it under the counter. I said "Why didn't you throw it away? He said under his breath "I'll do it later."
"No you won't you lying sack of (crap) and I looked under the counter and I saw the returns box.
I said Give me that back. He said he couldn't do it as it was already in the box.
I said now he was stealing from ME as he had taken my money and had not done what I wanted. Further he was then stealing twice once from me and once from the manufacturer- he had already been paid, with profit for the ginger juice and he was now doubly a thief.
He called the store manager who tried to blandly assure me with a smile that this happens all the time…. yadda yadda yadda… and there's no reason to worry over a simple accident… kids pull stuff off the shelf and break it… At this point I said to him. So now you're insulting me and saying that I am no better than some snotty, yowie, feral little monster whose parents cant control him because they're too squeamish to use a cattle prod and a tire iron. You're insulting me because on each step of the way I have tried to do the responsible thing, and you have attempted to make me a thief or a person who does irresponsible things. So now you are adding insult to injury. Let me ask you, pointing to a huge display of spaghetti sauce in apyramid, If I ran my cart into that and sent it flying I suppose you'd just shovel it all into the returns…
He looked at me at the pyramid and I guess decided that if he pushed me I might actually do it. Then he decided to get huffy-- "If you don't leave I'll call security." I told him call away, then I took out a dime and tossed it into his face and said "call the police too!" I'd love to get into court to explain to the judge about how I was arrested because I wanted to be a responsible citizen and pay for something I broke, The court will love it, and even better the court reporter for the newspaper will make a front page byline story out of it.
Of course by this time there are eight or nine people on the check out line, most of which are enjoying this immesely.
Finally he broke and asked me what I wanted to do.
"I want to throw out my ginger juice that I paid for."
He said he would throw it out.
"no you're not you knuckle dragging neanderthal, you're only saying that to get me out of here. Give me the giner juice now and I will take it out and dispose of it myself.
"I'm sorry it's against the rules for employees of the A&P to take things out of the return box once they're in. I looked at him, reached down and picked up the ginger juice and said "Fine I'll do it." He was shocked and said "That's stealing I could have you arrested. " "Go ahead, remember I've got the receipt-- court-- judge-- receipt-- ginger juice-- court reporter. "
So I left the store and tossed it into a litter basket five miles away.
The check-out line was cheering when I left.
gets his DNA results, and starts thinking about wargaming.
