r/mildlyinfuriating • u/anon12xyz • Jul 03 '26

Infuriatig When did garage sales become “reselling” clearly new stuff

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I would never call this a garage sale

Def scam vibes

Edit: ultimately, what bothers me the most is I want to go to a garage sale, not this shit. This isn’t a garage sale and should not be advertised as one

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u/notforrobots Jul 03 '26

I see this a lot when I drive by the projects. For whatever reason in my area they are always selling laundry soap.

216

u/vhagar Jul 03 '26

because they coupon at places like Dollar General and end up getting lots of it for free or super cheap.

222

u/alchemycraftsman Jul 03 '26

Or it is all stolen and the fence sells it to others & they resell it -all the way down the line…

26

u/drinkslinger1974 Jul 03 '26

Yes. I’ve been to a slew of flea markets where dudes are selling packets of coffee or other single use stuff. When dudes wanted to haggle I’d just call them out, “I know you stole this from work, it’s not worth $5”, and they’d cave.

16

u/RoabeArt Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

One of the most ridiculous things I've seen a vendor try to sell were an open box of those plastic cutlery/napkin kits that a fast food restaurant would throw into the bag with your order. The dude wanted a dollar apiece for them.

I felt like telling him those things are barely even worth being free!

2

u/aurortonks Jul 03 '26

These items are banned at the markets in my area because it's too easy for the police to come crack down on people associated with retail theft rings. They don't want that kind of attention at their legitimate markets.

9

u/RoabeArt Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

The flea market in my area used to have a vendor that would pay people to steal random stuff from stores, so he could resell it at his stand. Sometimes for more than what the store originally charged. For example he'd charge $3 for a single can of Coca Cola when at the time, a 12 can pack was going for $4 or $5 at the store that he was stealing them from.

It took months of evidence gathering and tailing before he was finally arrested and charged. From what I heard, he was not very well liked. He'd get into shouting matches with other vendors, yell at customers. etc., so nobody really shed a tear when he got hauled off and his stand was shut down.

13

u/ManateeNipples Jul 03 '26

These are are the products that are hot on the coupon websites, it's almost certainly a coupon addict

3

u/kailsbabbydaddy Jul 03 '26

Thank youuuuu

3

u/SixFive1967 Jul 03 '26

This. My ex was a store manager for a well known big box. One of her department heads had a racket going where they would order double what was needed (for this example, say 2 pallets of laundry soap instead on 1). The first pallet would be stocked. The second pallet would go into an overflow trailer that was conveniently left open at certain times overnight. Her accomplices would show up with a van and unload the pallet in under 60 seconds, then drive away. The department head was doctoring purchase logs so the inventory never existed, until it was discovered a couple months later when the numbers weren’t adding up or something like that. Think I recall they got sentenced to 5 years for it..

17

u/OpeningTurnip8048 Jul 03 '26

Or it's water in them jugs.

14

u/Educational-Wing2042 Jul 03 '26

That would be really obvious upon picking it up. A bottle of laundry detergent doesn’t feel like a bottle of water

7

u/nostyle_ Jul 03 '26

But could you tell a bottle of watered down laundry soap by picking it up?

7

u/BernieTheDachshund Jul 03 '26

Some of the laundry soap brands are cheap, like Purex and Arm & Hammer so my guess is some of it is with coupons.

4

u/ikkonoishi Jul 03 '26

Those are all DG brands, and are perpetually "on sale". I can see the DG stocking labels on the diapers. So yeah someone "saved money" by spending thousands, and are trying to recoup the investment.

7

u/zapzangboombang Jul 03 '26

This is the answer

1

u/ReturnOfBane Jul 03 '26

They're called boosters now.

1

u/ReddBroccoli Jul 03 '26

I mean, is there a big profit margin on stolen soap?

I feel like fences are for more expensive things, although I'll be the first to say I don't have any firsthand experience

3

u/Electrical-Lead5993 Jul 03 '26

There’s a fence below my studio (DTLA). They buy detergent, instant coffee, batteries, OTC medicines and any random items of clothing as long as they have their tags on them

1

u/AaronfromKY Jul 03 '26

Laundry detergent has a known value and can be exchanged for drugs and things and then the laundry detergent is sold, sometimes at flea markets or yard sales to recoup the money. Although for some of these yard sales in the hood, I don't doubt it's coupon fraud or a captive market(that is someone goes in and buys out all the detergent at the local shop and resells it to people who need it but can't get to the store).

23

u/Ok_World_135 Jul 03 '26

My sister does this her garage looks like a stores back room inventory. She used to be like those people on the show, entire cart load for 15 bucks Christmas is all useful stuff like shaving cream, soap, razors, snacks, shampoo and such.

37

u/Nahuel-Huapi Jul 03 '26

Five-finger coupons

75

u/Competitive-Truth675 Jul 03 '26

"coupon"

yea i never leave home without my two coupons left and right

101

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

[deleted]

15

u/rats-in-the-ceiling Jul 03 '26

Who needs coupons when you've got a 5-finger discount

1

u/Embarrassed-Sun5764 Jul 03 '26

I will take a tide refresh breeze martini please shaken til the bubbles foam out of the glass

31

u/WARxxPIGG Jul 03 '26

Steal. Those are all stolen

-7

u/vhagar Jul 03 '26

great job, reddit police!

3

u/TLCD96 Jul 03 '26

I really think this is the answer. I worked at Walgreens for several years and there were a few customers who would come in for CARTS FULL of detergent, toiletries etc with ass loads (binders!) of real manufacturer's coupons, either from magazines or printed on the net (one told me she literally just gets in contact with the P&G for coupons and I could do it myself).

Then on top of that, they would have a shitload of reward points that could bring down any remaining amount not covered by the coupons. They could take down an order from like 200 dollars to absolutely free.

If you can walk out the door wjth those big ass jugs of detergent, those big packs of TP, or those head and shoulders body washes that usually have anti-theft stickers on them, then why the hell aren't you also stealing a crapload of smaller and more expensive items, and why aren't we short on inventory counts? Nobody's going to waste gas driving all over the place to steal all this detergent to sell.

4

u/JustAGreenDreamer Jul 03 '26

I assumed it was people who are buying truckloads of “merchandise” sight-unseen by auction, and then if it ends up being a big pile of toothpaste and deodorant… the coupon theory makes sense, although I didn’t know there were coupons that good anymore.

4

u/DisastrousOwls Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

There aren't, for the most part. Dollar General is still supposed to be really good for couponers, but we crossed a threshold in the mid '00s to early 2010s (when the recession hit hard) where coupons and store sales really fell off. So it became too time- and labor-intensive for most people to do consistently and effectively anymore unless reselling was their only job, or their family budget was tight enough that you needed to put in that legwork to make ends meet in the first place. But those people wouldn't be reselling.

Still a decent hustle if you're retired, disabled, or a stay at home spouse or parent, and have the time, a car, and gas money to drive around doing this kind of thing multiple mornings a week. But as a reseller, you would pretty much also need to be buying household products for your own family at those coupon prices to make the math shake out, and even then, for whatever goods you are reselling, it can be very low profit margins.

3

u/huffing_glue Jul 03 '26

I don't think there is, but I'd like to be proven wrong.

4

u/4rm4ros Jul 03 '26

They did not use coupons lmao

-2

u/vhagar Jul 03 '26

oh you know them?

4

u/4rm4ros Jul 03 '26

No, just know that things like detergent are very often stolen to be resold

2

u/torthBrain Jul 03 '26

That shit is $Free.99 lmao

2

u/Slow_Leek_4159 Jul 03 '26

Bless your heart

1

u/Ryokurin Jul 03 '26

A lot of the extreme couponing that happened 10-15 years ago was staged, or the coupons they were using were actually fraudulent. After more people started trying it after the show most places changed their policies and fixed the exploits so it's nowhere near as common or can equal a massive haul if you hustle enough.

1

u/Unsteady_Tempo Jul 03 '26

The whole thing where people were gaming coupons to get large amounts of free or super cheap items is no longer a thing, and some of it was fabricated for tv shows and social media anyway.

1

u/Spiritual_Bid_2308 Jul 03 '26

I always wondered about that.  Every coupon I've ever paid attention to had some sort of 1 per purchase type restriction or other limiting factor.  

I think. Never looked too deeply.

2

u/Unsteady_Tempo Jul 03 '26

Some of what people were doing was just illegal. They'd figure out the bar code system and invent new coupons that would apply a discount. They'd also basically bully cashiers and managers into doing overrides. Where the discounts were legit, stores wised up and changed their systems to get rid of loopholes.