Stewart spent $105 on what he thought was a spindle of Memorex burnable DVDs. What he actually received was one burnable DVD sitting proudly atop a stack of CDs.

My friend Sam told me to send you my story about a recent spindle of Memorex DVD-R discs that I bought from Best Buy. It was an expensive spindle ($105) of dual-layer discs. When I got it home, I opened it up, and used the first disc. Then I tried to use the second disc, but it wouldn’t work. I struggled for about twenty minutes, trying to figure out why it wasn’t writing correctly. Finally I checked the physical disc, and realized that it wasn’t a DVD at all. Only the top disc was a DVD. The remaining 49 discs were run-of-the- mill blank CDs, which are worth about 1/8 the price I paid. At a cursory glance, though, they look exactly the same. It was just as if I had been given a roll of one-dollar bills, with a single twenty wrapped around the outside.

I don’t think this is Best Buy’s fault, since the discs were factory sealed. Presumably someone who works at Memorex thought this would be a good way to steal some expensive DVDs without anyone in the quality assurance team noticing. And I guess they were right!

Now I have to see if the folks at Best Buy will accept it as a return, or if they’ll assume that I’m the one scamming them.

See, just one DVD:

Surprisingly, Stewart tells us that Best Buy asked several “reasonably questions,” and then issued a refund. What a refreshing change of pace for Best Buy.

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.