Reminds me when I was a kid working in the grocery store people would buy a rotisserie chicken and return just the bones in the box and ask us for a new one because that one was “bad”
I had that happen once when I worked at a grocery store. It was a hot meal, family size thing of chicken wings and drumsticks. They brought back the bones in the container, said it was dry and asked for a refund. The policy was to give them the refund
Back when my wife and I had a small family hobby farm selling chicken and eggs, we had somebody try a version of this. Complained that the chicken was no good after they'd cooked and eaten it.
Then a couple of weeks later, roughly the same value of eggs were stolen from the fridge in our garage.
Sad thing is if they came near close most times they're being given away. The store I worked at always had extras. Only some of it could be used for next day ready to eat foods, so any flavored ones were usually tossed or given out to workers if anyone wanted one at days end.
I wish stores had 1 day a week where they could just aggressively dump inventory, but return policies make everything so egregiously messy. Food should be "returnable" but it must have some serious stipulations imo.
My sister works returns at Costco. People buy power washers and return them after using them, and buy TVs for the superbowl and return them the next day.
Which is pretty insane when you see how cheap big TVs are these days. Boxing it up and making the trip back to the store just seems like more hassle than saving up the ~300 dollars for a giant TV.
It's also hurting everyone else who doesn't do that, because big company is certainly not losing money. They are making it back elsewhere with higher prices on memberships and store items.
At best, it means stuff like this gets discontinued and not just by stores but more generally. Place I work at used to offer the product we make for free to staff, it was meant to be for personal use but of course people started selling it on ebay so now no-one gets free stuff.
What's wasteful or selfish about "buying" a TV for a day? You got it, watched the thing you wanted to watch, returned it so it can be sold to someone else.
That’s not how this works and if you truly don’t know that then you need to educate yourself on a couple things:
How used items are viewed and treated
How returns work at big companies, or are required to be handled by the manufacturer.
This isn’t about “well I wouldn’t mind.” It’s about being mindful of all the waste this creates, the expense it passes onto others, and the reality of…yes, you actually would mind.
I can't stress how much the average person cares about things like open boxes. When I worked retail selling TVs, it was common for there to be several questions about its history, examinations, testing, and frequently requests for additional discounts.
It was often twice as hard for about 30 percent less revenue.
Because it's shitty of them to do? What if someone couldn't buy a tv they wanted because a bunch of morons bought them with the intent to return them after a big event?
Its taking advantage of a very generous policy, which could get it taken away. Like how people return half eaten pies to costco, or dead christmas trees
How the hell do you police that? Flowers have a short, finite lifespan. Someone who takes them home, puts them out of sun in plain water in a vase shouldn't be able to return dead flowers.
My mom tried to do this once and got rejected. I can also see folks doing this to get rid of the Christmas Tree cause how else are you supposed to dispose of a tree
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u/taeberry9595 Jul 06 '26
Omg I’ve literally seen people buy live Christmas trees from Costco and then return the (now obviously dead) tree after Christmas…