Welcome to shopping on line there is IMO no way to really see quality online unless it is the exact same thing you have seen in person.

So if it comes, and it is junk, am I stuck with it? Or have to pay exorbitant $ to return it?

pretty much, give it away or pay to ship it back. Some vendors will provide a pre-paid shipping label upon request and they pay shipping, some will deduct the return shipping from your refund.

If you buy big ticket items online that are also "big" and want to return, you will have to either make arrangement for the carrier to come and load the return, or take it to the shipper yourself. I ordered kitchen chairs online and when unpacked, we discovered there were no holes drilled for assembly nails and pieces were missing. Apparently, they came directly from China. It was a pain in the butt to return them. Never again.

I recently bought counter stools online (allmodern/wayfair) and one didn't have plastic protector plugs on the legs. They sent a whole new chair and told me to keep the old one as it was "defective."

Every company has different rules on returns. Look through the specific policies for the online store you are looking at.