The lower risk of ordering from known vendors was a thing all the way back to the days of the Sears Catalog and other big mail-order houses. That wasn't new with the internet.

With Amazon, there is a whole tier of customers who order stuff, use it for their one-time need, and then return it. All for ultimately no cost to them, but all the rest of us pay for it.

That's not just happening on Amazon, tho. Hang out on /r/smallbusiness and you'll find tons of tiny retailers asking for help on how to deal with the same problem.