"thankfully for our reader, policies aren't laws."

One of the best lines I've read on this site. So true.

I bought a cheap desk chair from Best Buy while in college. The box seemed heavier than it should be so I opened it up in the store and instead of a $35 chair there was a $500 Sony HTIB. I went to the customer service desk and told them about it and the employee seemed really pissed - first claiming that I had switched them.

1) why would I switch a cheaper item with a more expensive item and then try to return it
2) how could I have Houdini'd this right in the store with cameras and what orifice could I have smuggled a 5.1 HTIB in?

So I returned the purchase and haven't really set foot in Best Buy since unless there is a great bargain on a DVD or something. Methinks the employee I reported it to was the person that put that stereo in there and was probably planning to buy himself a "desk chair" that day.

I'd even go one step further and open the package before making the purchase (if possible). Video game consoles can easily be opened without disturbing the packaging. If they're not on the sales floor (like at places like T'r'U), then maybe ask the employee behind the counter to make a quick visual inspection while you look on.

I had a friend once who did stuff like this with software. Essentially he would:

1) Buy the item
2) Carefully cut the box down the seam with an Xacto knife (preserves the box seal)
3) Take the CD & Key (if applicable) out
4) Replace with a Chumbawumba CD or other suitable replacement.
5) Reseal with Elmers glue
6) Take item back for a full refund.

The retailer probably assumed it was an unopened product and put it back on the shelf. Then when unsuspecting Joe Customer went to buy that item, they got a big surprise and more than likely get the tampering blame.

Or.. get a membership at Costco. The price of membership can be seen as paying for a lifetime warranty on most products. For computers, TVs, iPods, and digi cameras, you get a 90 day tryout/return period and a free 2 year extended warranty. The only question asked when returning items is "Do you know when you bought this?"

@thnkwhatyouthnk: Just to add to what I just said, why are we jumping through hoops to buy items from companies that treat us so poorly? Shouldn't we reward companies with good customer service records by shopping with them instead?

@David M: Probably it was that employee stuck the HTIB into the chair box to later "buy" the "chair" and take it home.

You forgot the last step;

Should all else fail and you find yourself lacking backup from the credit card companies, vandalism and destruction of private property is fully encouraged on any grounds owned by Best Buy, Circuit City or WalMart.

Of course, this might very from state to state. Municipalities and such, tricky stuff.

@Jesse: This is the whole reason nintendo instituted the 5-star screws on all its cartridge games.
People would purchase a cheap-ass game, Rent a more expensive one, switch the inner circuit boards and return the rental with the cheap game inside.

I echo the Costo sentiment. We have had to return a few items of the hundreds we've bought from them and they're always happy to take the merchandise back. Customer service is absolutely stellar there.

But on this story everyone that buys anything that could have possibly been opened before should open it up to check it in the store. That way you avoid this kind of stuff. I know a lot of people HATE to look at it from the store's point of view, but there ARE "customers" that just want to screw the store by scamming them with returns. As someone said, if the store thinks the product was unopened they normally WON'T open it to check to see what is in the box. That's so they can still sell the product at it's full price as new instead of making it an open-box piece.

So I say it's a two way street, the store has to protect it's assets and it also have to try and provide customer service. If I was in charge I'd have a hard time giving someone their $2000 back if they say bought a laptop and came back to say "it was a phone book inside." It would be a free for all and people would use that to screw the stores over and over again.

It's an inconvenience but it's not THAT hard to open the box and look inside while standing at the register. The minute you pay for the item it's yours, so open it up and make sure it's there when you have the store employee watching.

@y2julio: *that stuck the HTIB

@Jesse: "I had a friend once who did stuff like this with software."

Your friend is a scum bag.

I'm afraid I may have started this trend in the early nineties. I worked at a software store with a shrink wrap machine, and realized nobody questions a sealed return. I feel a little bad about it now, but I was a poor college student then.

@Oranges w/ Cheese: Psh, when we were kids we had already figured out how to melt the end of a pen to mold it in the shape of the screw.

DON'T just consider reporting it to the AG of your state. DO REPORT, and as SOON as you find out about the fraud. Take it from an attorney (State of Texas) that a report to a governmental entity will be an exception to hearsay, and thus be admissible in a court of law, and will show your state of mind, that you were in fact defrauded. It is extremely valuable evidence on your side, and as an attorney, that is what I would like to see. It increases your chances of winning ten-fold. So ALWAYS report fraud to your state's Attorney General.

@mdoublej: Hardly. I'm pretty sure it was retailers like Gamestop/EB/Babbage's that starting the re-shrink-wrap-and-sell-as-new fad. One employee even told me that he would take brand new games home to play for a week or so, then bring 'em back and re-shrink 'em. He even said that he would put the games in the wrong cases by accident sometimes, leaving the customer to sort his own mess.

Part IV: Don't take an Xacto knife to the seal and replace the movie you just bought with Pat Boone's "In a Metal Mood", don't buy a second Playstation 3 and return your old, broken one in the new box saying you didn't want it after all, etc.

If those items make it back onto the shelf for somebody else to buy, then congratulations - you've helped perpetuate this issue and you should be ashamed of yourself.

DON'T just consider reporting it to the AG of your state. DO REPORT, and as SOON as you find out about the fraud.

Don't just consider reporting it to the AG of your state.
Do consider reporting it to the AG of your state.

???

@wiggatron:Yeah, I worked at one of the places you mentioned and we were actually encouraged to take home software so we could be more informed when we talked to the customers. When we brought it back, it was of course resealed and put back on the shelf. Fast Hack'em for the C-64 ruled!

@mdoublej:

"I was a poor excuse for a college student then"

fixed.

Man there are some sorry folks out there.

@gmoney: Whatever...college kids are stealing CD's today without leaving their dorm room, at least I used a little ingenuity. Not saying either is right, but I did grow up.

@timmus: He said "Don't just consider it... do it." Or for the Star Wars fans.. No! Not consider! Do... or do not. There is no consider

If you bought the product from big-name stores, you can always try again at another store of the same brand. Not every returns manager is a paranoid psychopathic nazi war criminal. Some are even decent folk. Just don't tell the jerk who won't cooperate that you're going to the other store. He'll call ahead and rat you out.

It's not nice, but I've exchanged items without a receipt using the following method: Take faulty item to store & try to return. If that fails, put faulty item in car then buy another of same item. Go back to car, put new (hopefully not faulty) item in car, take out faulty item. Go back in store and return faulty item using new receipt. This only works if you simply want a working version of them item, not a refund. Also, items with serial numbers can be a pain if the serial number is listed on the receipt. Most returns clerks don't check, though. Obviously, you only need to do this if the store requires a receipt for a simple one-to-one exchange. Some don't.

So, does anyone have a list of cards with these warranty protections embedded? And please include "Gold" "Platinum" "Visa Select" or whatever level of the card is.

well i sure am glad i live in the uk!

this happened to me at a best buy and they took back the broken mp3 player without any problem at all.

Squeaky wheels get the grease. Be as squeaky as possible, threaten lawsuits, reports to the police AND the media, and, if necessary, refuse to leave until you are given satisfaction. Or you can do what I did and call your friends at the local health department for a spot inspection of their occupational health and safety requirements.

Revenge is best served with a side of pleasure.

Here's one case where you can use the receipt checker to your advantage. If you buy something that might be subject to this, stop at the receipt checker and insist that they watch you open the box to make sure it contains what the receipt does.

Pedantic, perhaps, but you figure a) the area's covered by some kind of camera, and b) this way the store can't try to claim you took the item and replaced it with bricks.

@bagumpity:

Go back in store and return faulty item using new receipt. This only works if you simply want a working version of them item, not a refund.

Not necessarily - once you've gotten the exchange with the new receipt, you can simply return the nice, shiny, unopened new one at another store using the original receipt.

@bagano: Why? What benefit (in this context, of course) is bestowed upon you by simply living outside the U.S.? Do people not steal in the UK?

oh sorry it was a used broken mp3 player with 5 gigs of chinese language music.

I bought an open box Radeon X800XL that turned out the be a Radeon 9200 in the box. Took it back to Future Shop, After some complaining I managed to get them to switch it for another open box X800XL and checked it in the store with them. They didn't believe me but persistence paid off.

I worked at Wal-Mart back in college - more than once we got "returns" of computers or game consoles that when opened contained a brick (no, like a REAL brick) or some other weighted item instead of the actual electronics. We had to gripe at the returns desk for a long time before they learned they had to actually open and check the returns they got back.

I also had a friend who bought a sealed CD, and when he opened it the CD inside didn't match the cover. He took it back to the store, who treated him like a criminal - a few days later it hit the news that the manufacturing plant had messed up a run and put the wrong disc in over 10k copies of this particular CD...

Me:
Go back in store and return faulty item using new receipt. This only works if you simply want a working
version of them item, not a refund.

@TinyBug:
Not necessarily - once you've gotten the exchange with the new receipt, you can simply return the nice, shiny, unopened new one at another store using the original receipt.

Good point- I forgot the fact that the returns clerk usually gives you another receipt. I suppose there's nothing stopping you from going back and returning the working item with that receipt.

@mdoublej: Advocating theft is beyond the pale, and you're trying to start a fight. Knock it off.

I bought a DVD at walmart out of the bargain bin one time and when I got it home and opened it there was nothing inside. I took it back to complain and they were quite understanding... I just wanted a straight exchange. When I went to look, every single copy of the movie in question was gone. I think that in that case, perhaps it was a factory error...

Wow, talk about timely. I recently purchased a new VisionTek ATI Radeon HD 2400 graphics card from the Best Buy on Clark near Diversey in Chicago since my old card was fried. Long story short, it didn't work, I had to buy adapters, etc. When I spoke with VisionTek's tech support, the techie and I realized that the card was actually a 2600, NOT the 2400 that the box says it should be, and it looked to be a busted one at that.

I returned it to Best Buy and after waiting 10 minutes while the guy lost my original receipt without moving 2 feet (surprise, turned out it was the receipt I kept pointing to that he kept saying wasn't it), I went to go see if I could get an actual 2400 card. According to Best Buy, the only way to actually open the box and check the card was to open it, so I did so and we checked and voila, another 2600 card, probably also busted. A couple others were 2600's as well, and fortunately I found one actual 2400 in the lot.

I then told them that this looks like an inventory problem and the MANAGER tells me, and I quote: "it's not our problem, its VisionTek's."

After pausing for a moment at the sheer stupidity of his statement I replied, "You are selling incorrectly packaged and likely non-functional product on your shelves--it IS your problem."

End of the day I got my card replaced and it worked on my machine, but only after having spent over an hour dealing with moronic Best Buy employees. They got some real "special" people working there.

I bought a desktop from Best Buy a couple yrs ago, and decided to return it within 10 days or whatever it was. They had to unbox it, turn it on, and be sure it hadn't been stripped in the meantime.

I guess it would be reasonable to unbox and turn on any computer you buy from them before you leave the store too.....

@Meg Marco: Are you seriously suggesting we open everything before we leave the store? I'd hate to be behind you at the exit of an IKEA.

In Panama most stores open boxes and check the contents, If it is electric they turn it on to make sure it works. It is hard to buy light bulbs, they check to make sure each one works. Time consuming, but never a box of rocks.

@DeanOfAllTrades: I think you can trust IKEA though. After all, most of their boxes are pretty obviously the object you are intending to purchase.

@chipsndip: The cd issue has gotten a lot better over the years, but I ran a record store in the late 80's/early 90's and at least a couple of times a year we'd get a run of Kenny G discs (for example) that had the Kenny G packaging, the disc said Kenny G, and when you put it in the actual content of the disc was Duran Duran or Sepultura or something.

Because of stories here, we started implementing this several months ago. The first major purchase after the spate "rocks in the box" stories we made was a Wii. We asked to open the box before purchase to match serial numbers and the clerk (at Wal*Mart) said he understood and was completely happy to do it.

Since then, we've bought a digital SLR and several other things, and have always asked to have the box opened before purchase and have always been accommodated.

So far, it hasn't been a problem, but we have an agreement that if we can't see the item, we don't buy it.

@A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: Woah! That's pretty awesome :)

I wasn't there, I just wrote a report about the entire history of video gaming in College.

Another thing that I just thought of...even back in the early 90's there was a site that talked about how to upgrade a slow modem to a fast one for free. (back when even a 28.8 was REALLY expensive). Buy a fast one, swap the board with your slow one and return it.

So, this kinda thing has been advocated on the net for at least 10-15 years...

@wiggatron: Yes, as employees you are allowed to borrow games, and yes we had a shrink wrap machine in the back.

@RenRen: That doesn't always work. Remember the Target that sent the squeaky old woman to the hospital then banned her from the store?

When I worked at Best Buy, I exchanged a GPS unit for a customer that was actually a bar of soap for a brand new unit, with no hassle.

@revmatty:

I don't think anyone would complain...

"God Damn, Kenny's new song 'Notorious' fucking ROCKS!"

...

"Where's the soprano sax solo?"