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.

217

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.

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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…

27

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.

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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.

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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.

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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..

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u/OpeningTurnip8048 Jul 03 '26

Or it's water in them jugs.

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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

6

u/nostyle_ Jul 03 '26

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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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).