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I don't know what it's like now, but, when I worked at Best Buy in the 90s, we had a couple of shoulder height palletized bins in the back. If a customer brought something back with a "didn't work" reason, it went in the bin.

We threw items in the bin from a distance, so they were definitely unsellable. I'm sure that lots of merchandise that would have been functional/sellable ended up being thrown out.

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Devo!

I remember as a pc tech (before they did that geek squad stuff) having to validate computer returns. The amount of stuff people would pull daily always amazed me. Putting bricks in a computer box, an old video card for a matrix vga card, the most wild was some video equipment where they replaced it with a two liter bottle of urine. I remember confronting people once I opened it and they would always pull the "well my son packed it and gave it to me" and promptly leave (with their item). They usually worked multiple stores in the area and sometimes we'd chat with the other stores, but usually that was for the bigger scams (people using altered receipts, asking for cash refunds on multi thousand dollar purchases).

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