It’s a corporate store with a unified return policy, which unfortunately lists acceptable reasons for return and a TV that works but has bad backlight bleed is not one of them. The lesson learned here is pay closer attention to the warranties and return policies when you buy things. Unfortunately I didn’t anticipate backlight bleed that bad even being a thing that could happen. There is often a small amount when buying LED TVs so I expected there to be some.

Unfortunately this strategy depends on you having access to a retailer with a better policy, many may not.