I know it is unethical, but isn't it illegal, too?

[Russianwolf]

online store or brick/mortar store doesn't mater, these companies are in competition with each other. If you can't compete, then you go out of business. The better deal will win out. Especially in this day of 2 day shipping.

As was mentioned, I stopped considering it unethical when I opened a "new" tool and found that only the shrinkwrap was new. The box had been retaped, and the tool inside was damaged. Wasted my time and energy, not to mention the gas money. Since then I delight in "ripping off" the box stores.

I would feel diferent if it were a mom and pop, but how many of those are left now a days.

[footprintsinconc]

i am also of the opinion that its a forced price matching. if business can manipulate their products numbers so they can brag price matching knowing that its gong to be hard for the consumer to prove, isnt that fraudulant advertisment. i am sure there are many more things that they do that would be unethical, but it doesnt stop them.

i understand that local stores -vs- online retailers have different overheads, but if you are in business in todays age, where we live in a global world, then its about time that local stores make themselves more economical. secondly, i could be wrong, but store chains, i think get better pricing because they can buy many times more than what a single online retailer can buy, and thus their markups are outrageous. you can see that when they put the stuff on clearance, they rarely will sell under their cost.

if a certain business has a return policy that is too open, then i believe that its up to them to revise that policy and they should as deemed necessary. they have done cost/benefit studies that show what types of policies are beneficial to them and what are not. so, i wouldnt frown upon anyone benefiting from such a policy.

rebates, is an example of this. items are sometimes sold at a slightly higher price, promising x off or free after rebate. 'free' in itself is false advertisment, because you pay taxes. but they actually bank on a large portion of people not filing their rebates, then on not doing it properly and some business, dont bother mailing you the checks until you call them inquiring about their rebate status.

what gets me more are that a lot things that are deemed unethical for the general public, but corporations and politicians get away with much worse.

[rjwaldren]

After reading through the comments, I think my original thought of it being unethical are shifting. Forced price matching...that's interesting. But really you'd just be purchasing both then returning one at purchased price. So long as it's the same item in sealed in the package its a wash for the store it's returned too. It's more of an impatient consumer issue. The internet is a viable competitor - I've actually seen circuit city price match New Egg at one time.

Should we really cry for the Brick and Mortar box stores being unable/unwilling to compete with lower overhead online stores such as newegg or amazon? Lowes, HD and Walmart certainly don't show concern for the Mom and Pops that they destroy when they flood themselves throughout a city.

[LCHIEN]

in a way this relates to the post the other day about Amazon being cavalier about correcting its descriptions.

If I can get adequate descriptions, pictures, manuals and valid user critiques from the on-line stores and feel comfortable purchasing the item sight unseen then I'll take advantage of the on-line shopping. The time comes when the amazon descriptions become untrustworthy, manual links broken and the user reviews full of spam then I'll have to frequent the B&M stores to get a hands on.

But OTOH so frequently these days the items or boxes are sealed in that hermetic plastic that I can't even cut with scissors or knife to handle the item and look at the instructions and restrictions then the B&M stores have lost their lookie-feelie edge and I'll be just as informed buying on line for less.

The other factor is the price of gas and traffic. Sometimes the on-line store and $6 S&H is better than driving 45 minutes across town in heavy traffic.

The bottom line is that if the B&M stores give you a bit of service and convenience for the money I can buy from them, but if the on-line stores can give me enough to match that service, I'll go with the low price and no-hassle.

[jking]

online store or brick/mortar store doesn't mater, these companies are in competition with each other. If you can't compete, then you go out of business. The better deal will win out. Especially in this day of 2 day shipping.

I don't disagree with this statement. The brick&mortar stores or mom & pop stores that stay in business usually do so by providing some kind of added service.

As was mentioned, I stopped considering it unethical when I opened a "new" tool and found that only the shrinkwrap was new. The box had been retaped, and the tool inside was damaged. Wasted my time and energy, not to mention the gas money. Since then I delight in "ripping off" the box stores.

I would feel diferent if it were a mom and pop, but how many of those are left now a days.

So, because the store did something unethical that gives the rest of us a pass on ethics, too? I've had a similar experience. I bought a "new" cordless phone & answering machine only find out it already had someone's greeting recorded. The receiver looked a little dirty, so, they didn't even bother to take it out of the box to check it before they put it back on the shelf. My responsibility in that situation is to return the item & inform the store of the situation. What they do after that is their responsibility. It doesn't give me a right to look for opportunities to rip the store off in return.

[Gator95]

Actually, I'm suprised anyone is going thorough the trouble of replacing a purchased item bought at a B&M with a new one bought online. Guess it depends on what it was, but BORG used to take stuff back even if it has been used a couple times.

Maybe it has changed now, but I remember jokes about 'HD's 30 day free rental'- buy a tool, use it for 30 days, bring back for refund.

Anyways, I guess I've got mixed feeling about this. Seems kind of cheesy, but as long as the item bought online was the same it's hard to tell who's really being hurt here.

[jhart]

I see comments all the time about lack of knowledge of products of store clerks. Part of that reason is the competition from the Internet and a need to reduce costs for the B&M stores. Keep in mind that if we force them out of business by buying everything on the net, we won't have anyplace to go to touch/feel/drool the products.
I do a fair amount of comparison shopping on the net, but generally go to a store to see it/feel it, etc. If the price is reasonably close from the local retailer, I buy it there rather than the Net. It does get harder to do it this way though as the Internet pricing is usually much better.
As for returning the Internet purchase to the local store, most of the boxes that are shipped are pretty beat up and labeled alll over so not too hard to tell that it wasn't the same one purchased from the store.
Years ago, late 70's - early 80's, I owned an electronics store. A guy brought in a VCR that wasn't working that he had just purchased mail order and asked if we could fix it. Being curious, I asked him how much he paid for it mail order, he told me and then I told him that we sell our defective ones for a few dollars under that. He go pretty upset and walked out of the store, but I felt good.

[LinuxRandal]

Some stores have a policy, that you can buy it from them online, and return it to their B&M store. So it isn't always clearcut. (had one store, that locally, then NEVER had what I went in for (space, never filled), but they carried it online)

That said, serial numbers were mentioned. Most goods are sold using the UPC bar code ONLY. But electronics (things like routers, Nat boxes, etc), have at times had packaging, that the serial numbers were bar coded on the outside. This could be incorporated into UPC-2, or scan a second bar code when selling.

[vaking]

I personally believe that price matching is a ridiculous policy and many stores are dropping it oficially. I know of anecdotal situations caused by it. Example: Panasonic makes 2 similar models of Plazma TVs. Model XXX-Q is lower end, model XXX-QM is higher (Regular prices are $2000 and $1600). Sears puts model XXX-Q on special sale for $1200, puts an ad for it, prints all technical characteristics of a TV but makes a typo and says model XXX-QM in the ad. Sears then discovers the typo and puts signs in stores saying that model XXX-Q is actually on sale, not XXX-QM. For Sears, that is the end of the problem. Circuit City, however, tries to price match Sears published ad (plus 10%), so Circuit City is selling higher end model with regular price of $2000 for $1120 because of Sears typo. This is an actual case, I know of online forum community that capitalized on this case heavily.
As for buying the product at B&M store when you need it fast, then buying the same product online for less money and returning the first purchase - I believe this is both unethical and illegal. If somebody wants the legal foundation for this opinion - it is very simple. The most generous return policy in stores says that you may return the product to the store for a refund if you are dissatisfied with the product for any reason. If you return the product to the store while buying identical product at another place - you are satisfied with the product. You are returning the product because another place sells it cheaper but this has nothing to do with product satisfaction. If you want to get better price - you may try to convince store to match price of online establishment. If the store agrees - you are lucky. If not - the store is within its rigts and returning the item pretending that you are unhappy with product itself constitutes fraud. If you are returning the product in used condition - that makes it even worse.

[pacwind3]

It's not a moment I'm proud of, but I was 15 years younger, and a lot poorer: I used to work for a discount store. No regular inventory, just items that were lost during shipping and we sold the items to try to recover some of the loss to the shipping company. I came accross a box of Nintendo Gameboys. The were priced about $20 below normal retail. I bought about 4 and then proceeded to return them to local stores around me and was getting full retail as my return price. Of course I made a quick $80 in a day. When you make $6.00 an hour, that was over a days pay.
Who was hurt? The trucking company? No, they'd already taken their loss. The local stores? Maybe, but they could sell the items for full retail. Their only loss was the time of the employees processing my return.
I am not saying it's right, and I would never do it now days. I just feels very wrong to me. But I don't feel like it was theft, or anything illegal. Just very immoral.
BTW: I did end up on some "black list" at the retail store and couldn't return anything without a reciept for years. In the end, I totally deserved it.

[Russianwolf]

I personally believe that price matching is a ridiculous policy and many stores are dropping it oficially. I know of anecdotal situations caused by it. Example: Panasonic makes 2 similar models of Plazma TVs. Model XXX-Q is lower end, model XXX-QM is higher (Regular prices are $2000 and $1600). Sears puts model XXX-Q on special sale for $1200, puts an ad for it, prints all technical characteristics of a TV but makes a typo and says model XXX-QM in the ad. Sears then discovers the typo and puts signs in stores saying that model XXX-Q is actually on sale, not XXX-QM. For Sears, that is the end of the problem. Circuit City, however, tries to price match Sears published ad (plus 10%), so Circuit City is selling higher end model with regular price of $2000 for $1120 because of Sears typo. This is an actual case, I know of online forum community that capitalized on this case heavily.

For Sears to legally avoid false advertising, they would have had to put out a News Paper ad informing the public of the error. CC would have been able to use that to avoid selling the more expensive brand at the deep discount. CC's failure to find the ad was managements fault (I know I would have called Sears to confirm the accuracy and They would have told me "We advised about the error in today's Post").

Sears would be required to put something in the paper about the error or they could be accused of false advertising. Store signs mean nothing if not accompanied by a public ad. I've seen these correction ads periodically throughout the years in both papers and posted next to the item in stores.

Oh, and Alex, If I'm not satisfied with the price. I'm not completely satisfied, Am I? What happens if you buy something, take it home and your wife says "take it back, we can't afford that right now".

[Russianwolf]

It's not a moment I'm proud of, but I was 15 years younger, and a lot poorer: I used to work for a discount store. No regular inventory, just items that were lost during shipping and we sold the items to try to recover some of the loss to the shipping company. I came accross a box of Nintendo Gameboys. The were priced about $20 below normal retail. I bought about 4 and then proceeded to return them to local stores around me and was getting full retail as my return price. Of course I made a quick $80 in a day. When you make $6.00 an hour, that was over a days pay.
Who was hurt? The trucking company? No, they'd already taken their loss. The local stores? Maybe, but they could sell the items for full retail. Their only loss was the time of the employees processing my return.
I am not saying it's right, and I would never do it now days. I just feels very wrong to me. But I don't feel like it was theft, or anything illegal. Just very immoral.
BTW: I did end up on some "black list" at the retail store and couldn't return anything without a reciept for years. In the end, I totally deserved it.

But your case is different. You didn't buy the item in the store then return an identical item to them. You returned an item they stocked that you did not buy from them. Now that I see as immoral.

There was an article a couple years ago about people going in and buying clothes (usually formal), wearing it once, then returning it. That is also not right in my opinion. Returns should be unused by the returner (either still new, or damaged, or item was sold as new but was actually used (FRAUD))

[pacwind3]

There was an article a couple years ago about people going in and buying clothes (usually formal), wearing it once, then returning it. That is also not right in my opinion. Returns should be unused by the returner (either still new, or damaged, or item was sold as new but was actually used (FRAUD))[/QUOTE]

I agree, if you bought something and used it: you own it. In my opinion it can only then be returned if it's defective.

[LCHIEN]

...
Who was hurt? The trucking company? No, they'd already taken their loss. The local stores? Maybe, but they could sell the items for full retail. Their only loss was the time of the employees processing my return.
....

I'm not passing judgement or anything here, but in reality the loss to the store is more significant than a few people's minutes.
Basically each store "Bought" inventory (the returns) at full retail and then sold it at full retail making $0 profit on those and losing the profit margin on each item which for a $100? gameboy might be $50. Or in other words, they lost $50 per each item or $200 for four. because those were four sales they could have made with units bought at wholesale prices ($50 lower each).

[pacwind3]

I hear ya LCHIEN, you are right, they ended up with 4 items that they sold at $0 profit. Don't misunderstand my post, I am not in anyway saying it was right. I can only tell you my reasoning that I used at the time to justify it.
I was pretty nervous doing the whole thing too. If it didn't work, i was out a bunch of money and sitting on 4 gameboys I didn't need.