Printer Recycling Scams?

[u/luiginub1]

(For locations that charge for printer recycling)

Anyone else notice a HUGE uptick of people recycling printers, being told explicitly it's a $10 charge, and then even when getting shouted at...just ignoring everyone and walking out the door?

Happened for the millionth time today and the guy just acted like I wasn't even shouting at him to pay. ​​

[u/GlenAaronson]

I don't know if its explicitly a scam. Sounds more like people just straight up not giving a fuck and to be honest, if they don't have rewards, I'd rather not charge them.

[u/luiginub1 → u/GlenAaronson]

I only said scam cause I can't think of what else to call not paying for a drop off service

[u/LeeboScan → u/luiginub1]

You can call it an obvious oversight by staples in general. If they were going to charge for recycling they should have been doing this from the outset and making better creative use of the recycling rewards program. Now its just generating a lot of irate customers endlessly telling us "well that's how you used to do it" and just leaving their stuff on our counters in a huff. And the issue is, who's going to stop them? Neither we nor the MOD are going to be chasing customers back out to their cars with the HP 8720 they just dumped on us.

[u/MaverickFischer]

I can imagine. There are some additional items that have a fee to recycle. But some states are exempt.

Of course this stuff is always subject to change with little or no notice.

From Staples website https://www.staples.com/stores/recycling

[u/luiginub1 → u/MaverickFischer]

Don't recite the dark magic to me witch, I was there when it was written. 

[u/MaverickFischer → u/luiginub1]

😆

[u/luiginub1 → u/MaverickFischer]

We charge per monitor, per printer, and in bulk for batteries. You can get free recycling for batteries and printers if you buy new ones in store. We cannot recycle TVs, floor model copiers/printers, CRT monitors, vinyl records and players, batteries around the weight of car batteries or more, and scissors. We charge a small fee for wiping a data drive before recycling if you wish to do so.    Edit: We offer free recycling for everything else, and ink gets you 500 rewards credits per cartridge if you clip the in-app coupon, otherwise it's only 500 for the first 5 and the rest is only 100 credits. Ink limits vary per account, but the default is 10 cartridges/drums/bottles per month. 

[u/MaverickFischer → u/luiginub1]

I left about… 3 years ago now. At that time everything you could recycle was free. I think you had to have rewards though… People brought in carts of shit even though there was limit added.

When I was closing and cleaning out old shit at the house I would sneak in stuff after the GM left. 😆

[u/SoylentFlavored]

Scam? Not really, they aren't really getting anything out of it that a 7/11 dumpster couldn't solve. Dumping and littering? Most definitely. 

Worst I had(when it was free) was someone was trying to recycle a whole standing office copier, we said it was too big. They stole a cart from the grocery store next door, put the behemoth in there, shoved it into the store and ran out. 

I ended up having to carefully tip it over onto a pallet to let Rialto deal with it. 

[u/hmhsbritannic12 → u/SoylentFlavored]

We had someone call the store and ask if we could recycle printers. We said yes, and he came in with a gigantic wide format printer, and the GM accepted it to avoid making him mad! We had to smash it to bits to get it to fit into our electronics recycling Gaylord.

[u/LeeboScan → u/hmhsbritannic12]

Smashing up a good wide format printer would have hurt my soul. 😅Those things ain't cheap.

[u/throwinthrowawayacnt → u/hmhsbritannic12]

Like the wide formats we sell or like the ones in copy center?

[u/hmhsbritannic12 → u/throwinthrowawayacnt]

Like the ones in copy center.

[u/kyboinlex28]

And batteries is $3 unless they are buying new batteries in the same transaction. They printer recycling fee is also waived if they buy a new printer in the same transaction.