Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This was to be a gift for my husband so I made the mistake of focusing on hiding it from him and not fully testing it out immediately. Somewhere I got the idea that Amazon's return policy was at least 60 days, but it's only 30. My bad for that. Pros: it's an aesthetically pleasing piece for a room, sound quality is OK, and has many features. Cons: some of those features only partially work. Popped in a cassette tape, and could only seem to play it, not fast forward or reverse (I've seen on other reviews there is a FF only but I'm not spotting it). Some of the tapes are older and the sound was doing well then fading out, which we assumed to be the tape since we were finally able to find one that worked OK. Mainly I bought this for the turntable and that has a major flaw - EVERY record we have put on skips, older but clean ones and ones freshly unsealed. Some portions play OK, but there is a considerable amount of skipping, you can't get through any single track without it happening. I kept looking at the records, cleaning any fuzz, etc, but couldn't resolve it. I've read some other suggest the needle is too light and to place a penny on the arm, so I will try that and report back if I can edit this. However you should get a device that doesn't need your own "popsicle sticks and duct tape" to make it work, really. If at least the turntable was flawless, I could have been content and given 3 stars. Update- I contacted Amazon and asked them what I should do, hoping maybe they would put me in contact with the manufacturer or send a replacement needle, in case that helped, and they said they would make an exception and let me return it. So never be afraid to ask nicely for help. :)