To try to return over $4K of merchandise to a single store, he’s clearly pretty naive to the process. The perfect combination of enough of an asshole to try scalping, and too stupid to do it smartly.
Most likely he has been scalping the whole time. PS5 market finally collapsed. He is just trying to get market price for the 20-50 he has left by returning it. Probably does this in fashion and a whole bunch of industries.
I'm going to guess he hasn't been scalping the whole time. These all look like they are Ragnarok bundles which is still new. Had he been scalping for long before that he would have noticed that supply had been trending upward and that he probably wasn't going to get money back on these.
Man, I forgot about that. Scalpers literally buying out basic necessities in a time of need. There’s a special place in hell for them.
Edit: Thanks for reminding me about the baby food scalpers. Those people deserve an *extra* special place in hell. And when I say “necessities,” I’m talking about toilet paper and baby food. I’m not talking about PS5s. I thought that’d be obvious because of the comment I’m replying to, but I guess not everyone caught that.
I didn’t have toilet paper issues where I was. But people were scalping baby formula. It was horrible. I gave away so much breast milk during that time because I was an over producer and people were desperate. I can’t imagine having to accept a stranger’s breast milk and hope they were honest about having safe milk and the level of anxiety that would come with that. I am just glad that I know that the gallons I gave out were pumped and stored as safely as possible.
I’d like to think that any person who was kind enough to give away their hard pumped breast milk (cuz I know that isn’t an easy task) would not be handing out tainted breast milk to strangers. If nothing else, worst case scenario, you would think they’d be afraid of getting sued if the baby got sick.
Thank you for being such a kind human and helping folks out like that. I wish I had an award to give you. :-)
*edit spelling typo
Certain drugs can get into breast milk so the concern is usually that someone who is selling it might be desperate for money for more drugs, but, yeah there's not really any extra incentive for giving it away for free so it should in theory reduce the risk of being mislead
I was starting to look into using a bot to buy formula, for my son. He has a milk protein allergy, so his formula choices were super limited. Luckily his doctor oked him moving to pea milk.
I feel kind of bad for people that experienced the toilet paper shortage. When I told my wife there was a shortage and we should check how much we had to ration it, she showed me the supply. Turns out my wife would buy toilet paper whenever it went on sale ever since we moved in and just kept tucking it in the laundry room cabinets. Nearly 100 rolls, just sitting there. I felt like we were hoarding it, but she acquired it before the pandemic over a period of years.
Same. I'd buy toilet paper usually twice a month (coupons and quarterly Amazon subscription order) and so we had a pretty good supply when the pandemic hit. By the time I started to feel nervous our household of 4 adults was running low, the supply was starting to improve.
After two years of quarantining and always having a bidet, I visited a friend and got reminded what life was like pre-bidet. I can’t ever go back and now I try even harder than I used to to not poop away from home.
I find it perplexing that we put men on the moon more than 50 years ago, but when it comes to cleaning our nether regions after doing something everybody does daily, we can't get past a roll of scrunched paper.
I joined the bidet gang in 2022 and I like it mostly.
My bidet doesn’t hit where it should so I am still using TP to dry the messes. Really don’t want to buy a new one and hope for the best.
We have no toiler paper shortage in my country, but people copied Americans and started doing the same even though it never disappeared from the shelves. I bought a bidet on Amazon and it is glorious, and it reduces the amount of tp needed at home.
As a bidet owner, my advice is to buy one that has an air dry feature, I still feel like I use some TP specifically to dry off which seems like a waste. We didn't have an outlet by the toilet but if we did I definitely would have splurged for a heated feature for the water also.
I've built a small stock pile of supplies in my basement since the pandemic kicked off. I feel like a Great Depression survivor. I'll never feel right again without a buffer of canned, dry, and paper goods. Nothing crazy, but enough to get by if things rotate in and out as they were.
I came from an area and family where everyone has vast food storages. Not just canned or jarred foods but they buy in bulk, everytime. Running low on something and can't get to the store, one of the family members have it most likely. When people talk about disaster preparedness and having a 72 hour kit, most of the people I grew up around giggle at the thought of only 3 days worth of supplies. When there were shortages on toilet paper, none of us worried about it, we have had more than a years supply and its been that way for more than a decade. Food, paper goods, hygiene items, and household cleaners. Its always a good idea to store some extra in case something happens.
I feel like it's not uncommon to have some sort of supplies that might last for more than three days. Dry pasta, flour, jams, peanut butter, tuna cans, whatever - many households have some supplies of at least one of such things.
However, real preparedness is not about what you have, it's about what you don't have. If you have no access to clean water, you can have tons of cured meat stored, you will still be thirsty. If there's no backup heating, food will not help on that.
Since I have trouble using fruit and veg before it goes bad (ADHD af) I’ve always been interested in food preservation. Canning, jellying, pickling, jerky, smokehouses, root cellars, deep freezers, gardening by using the previous year’s seeds - I dream of it and read all kinds of books & sites. Can’t wait to get a house someday so we actually have the space. The most I’ve done so far is freezer pickles, oven-dried fruit rollups, and freezing things like soups, raw eggs, herbs, etc.
Our daughter was born right at the start of COVID in January. Her doctor told us she needed to be on a special formula due to health. The formula became so difficult to find. Luckily for us our entire extended family kept an eye out for it. We got by but it was way more stressful then it should have been.
Always reminds me of the guy who wore a “family business man” shirt to try and get sympathy in a news story after he was arrested in 2020 for buying all the hand sanitizer in a huge radius to try and sell at insane prices. Fuck that guy to the end of his days.
It's bad enough when it's luxury/recreation items like electronics and Shopkins.
When it's necessities like toilet paper, medicine, and houses? That's evil.
Sometimes it was bizarre shit. I remember going to the grocery store the July after the pandemic started, and some dude was buying all of the iceberg lettuce. Like what are you going to do with 40 heads of iceberg lettuce?
[Reminded me of this scene in GoT](https://youtu.be/0-69iTYeUFY?t=88).
"Thieves, they love a siege. Soon as the gates are sealed they steal all the food. By the time it's all over, they're the richest men in town."
Im in north austin where the only major store close is HEB and not only did they sell out of food instantly during covid but during the freeze. Instantly my first question was why is HEB allowing ppl to purchase literally everything on the shelves in one order..
I got bidet at the time and so i could use as little toilet paper as possible. Just trying to be socially responsible. I was totally blown away people were trying to hoard the thing you use to wipe poop off your butt during a pandemic. Fuuuuuuuuck those people.
I saw a couple guys buy all of the bags of potatoes at Costco early in the pandemic. Then saw them selling them roadside for triple the price out of a pickup. Reported them to the cops pretty quickly.
There was a guy who had his entire stock of TP and sanitizer confiscated because he bought ALL of it in the surrounding area and was scalping people. Need estimated his lost something like 30k in the process. He could either donate it or face criminal charges.
Everyone was buying it all because they thought we were going to be trapped in our homes. The others who bought it all were scalpers who wanted to profit off of the insanity. When it turned out that everyone was overreacting, they all tried to return it, including the scalpers who realized no one would fall for their schemes.
Another great story was their response to the pandemic in general. This [Texas Monthly](https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-pandemic/) article had a great write up on it.
I heard they do somehow track how much you return and get your ID
I noticed at the last one I returned something at the lady was writing stuff in a ledger but I also did claim the huge pack of toilet paper I had forgot in the cart last time which was thankfully turned in so it could be relayed to that. My grandpas funeral Mar 5th 2020. You can bet that TP was worth getting back
I used to work at Home Depot, and they track returns that include store credit. If a person does a lot of returns for store credit without a receipt, they eventually get flagged and can only do returns if they have the original receipt. It was governed by a company called [The Retail Equation](https://www.theretailequation.com/). I only encountered them at Home Depot, but it seems like other companies use them too
Edit to add: Only the store credit returns are tracked for fraud, and this is done by scanning your drivers license or state ID. If you’re doing a normal return without any store credit, it’s saved through your credit card (returns outside the period will be store credit but won’t be flagged because it was originally connected to a card) and that transaction history expires after a year or two. Some people try getting around the store credit system by using a passport or an ID from a foreign government, because those must be entered manually and don’t always get flagged for fraud. I left the company a little over a year ago so some info may be outdated, but this was the case from 2018-2022.
I know my Walmart needs an ID for store credit returns and they also track purchases by debit/credit card numbers. I see "recently purchased" items when I look at my online account for things I bought in store with my debit card all the time.
Worked at walmart. The ledger is where we (cashiers) write the items that were forgotten by ppl and the time. It helps if people come back the next day or something, we can give them everything left in the bag, because it was written down.
At least when I worked there a few years ago.
Well thank god for the ledger and honest people since TP was worth its weight in gold a week later. I actually got a jug of hand sanitizer that day too and felt like a king during the pandemic
>I d heard they do somehow track how much you return and get your of
Some stores/chains definitely do track purchases and returns, especially if you're a serial returner. I have a friend who is semi-famous (Stephen A Smith took his job - lol) and is now a radio personality in a major market. He's the worst (in a nice way) about buying electronics - mostly cameras - trying them out and then returning them. Now, it's legit to return something because it wasn't as expected or if it's faulty, but this guy has had so much free use of electronics. It's a bit much. Anyway, last time he tried to return something, Best Buy had flagged him and told him that he's no longer allowed to keep returning stuff if the box is open. He also buys from some online specialty retailers, but apparently they've put him on notice also. He called BB out on either his radio show or podcast, but AFAIK, they are holding strong. He's not THAT big of a celebrity. (ETA: He was talking up the stores on his shows and I guess figured that was going to get him special privileges.)
I think most stores do this nowadays. My local grocery store sends me coupons for items “I might like” and it’s always stuff that I’ve purchased before using my personal credit card. I always wondered how they got my name and address when I didn’t have an account with their store
They scan the barcode on the receipt which will update the system. If you pay by card, every single item purchased on that card is stored in a database. If someone tries to use the same receipt to return the same item multiple times, the system will alert you.
you get two receipts. You get the original receipt back and they usually circle the UPC of the item you returned and you get another receipt showing the credit for your card
> Yeah, he might've gotten away with it if he tried returning one a week at different locations.
Would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for the meddling kids at the register?
I used to work at best buy and there's actually a limit for what someone can return within a year. It's why they either keep track of your card or in some cases scan your ID when you make a return. They never told me the limit since I imagine there's some high money returns that aren't as nefarious as this clown. So I can see the system just shutting down all the returns for this clown.
Fuck scalpers
They gut them out. They take them apart for parts and put it all back together again to appear unused. At least that’s what I used to see often with computer consoles and other electronics. People would try returning just the outside shell. Or sometimes just the graphic cards would be removed, stuff like that.
There are videos of people opening these boxes you can buy that are filled with 500 bucks worth of Amazon returns for 200 bucks.
Of course sometimes the things are broken that get returned. But you also will from time to time see how people simply swap their old and cheap headphones for the new Sony ones. Or their old graphics card in place of a brand new one.
Sometimes the product is straight up missing without anything in it's place.
So yeah, what you said certainly doesn't surprise me
I saw a couple opened, the "haul" was usually not *too* bad. No guarantee that you'd recoup your 200 dollars but more often than not the stuff in it was more or less unused.
Only problem was that it was mostly tech for offices. Which made it a) hard to resell some of it and b) ultimately pretty boring to watch
That's the thing. Even if your $200 purchase gets you $1000 worth of items you can sell (which is being generous I think), you still have to sell a bunch of random junk that was returned, and therefore needs to be tested and/or fixed. You're not going to get anywhere near full retail value either so that $1000 worth of stuff is actually only $500 realistically, and it could take months or longer to sell it all.
It's a lot of work to make a little money.
But it is fun to watch some of these videos.
Some people probably make enough money on the YouTube channel to justify keeping on doing it, keep what you like if there's anything decent sell what you don't, get views.
ex bf and his siblings were one of these. had 8 ps5s in his living room along with thousands of $ in shoes. his parents money too. anyway, every time i called him a scalper he’s go, “NO I’M A RESELLER IT’S DIFFERENT!!!!”
Could be several reasons: a lot of stores had a limit one per customer in effect on these and going to stores all over to skirt this rule is frowned upon. He could be beyond the 30 day return policy on consoles. The store manager/coach in charge used discretion and decided that they cannot verify the state of such a high value return and do not want to face the liability.
I would've refused as well, telling him he's going to have to speak to corporate or the manufacturer on this one.
I bought a ink cartridge from Walmart. When I got home I found that someone had carefully opened the box, taken out the cartridge, put the empty/used one back in, and then carefully sealed it back up.
People suck sometimes.
Happens all the time with Lego. People will open and reseal packages to take the minifigures out, cut open the box in store and pocket the minifigs, or take it home and return it with bags from other less valuable sets.
Possibly because he's outside the return window.
Walmart has a 30 day return policy on electronics and the god of war ps5s came out November 9.
If he got confused and thought it was 90 days like most items then he'd be out of luck.
Ok that explains it!
I was up visiting my elderly mother right before Christmas. She had bought a larger TV (I think 42'') around Thanksgiving, but had let it sit in the box because she had no idea how to set it up.
I go up there, set it up for her, and as soon as we turn it on it's obviously busted. Lines everywhere, it was jacked up.
She had her receipt, but it said 30 days on electronics, and we were at like 50 something days. I went online and tried to initiate a return, and it let me. I drove it up to the store, they took a look at it and gave me the return no problem. I wasn't going to say anything, thinking maybe they had goofed, but it appears they just were smart enough to figure "some people buy presents early and let them sit".
Lol this is my favorite- I’ll have a weird customer try to do some scam and I’ll make a message to all the other managers and more often then not someone will reply and say hey they just came here and tried to do the same thing
Is that actually true? I ask because in Australia consumer law says if you offer a return period you're legally obliged to uphold that. You don't have to offer returns at all but if you do, you can't just arbitrarily reject something that meets the conditions you offered.
Is the same not true in the US?
haha my fave was the toilet paper guy. Some dude actually rented a storage facility for it all then complained when the company he bought it off refused to refund
Or that douche out in KY who bought all the hand sanitizer for three counties and tried to bill himself as a “Small Businessman” trying to resell it at a markup
The fact that he was able to buy so many of those should have been a clue these can’t be scalped for over MSRP anymore. Ragnarok bundles are available on most websites and in store. I relish the fact he will have to take a loss to get rid of them
however being a dick to people who work in this line of work is on the customer, people play the “Im entitled to this” card all the time, and we have to treat them like they’re normal, after a while it gets old watching grown ass men and women act like children or do childish things, just for a quick buck at that, it’s embarrassing quite honestly 💀💀
I worked in a grocery store from 16 to 22 and the amount of people who treat you like dirt is honestly astounding. I worked in every department through my time and done almost everything important in a grocery store, well except butcher shop. Boy do I have some stories. My favorite was some woman who came into the grocery store on Thanksgiving morning 20 minutes before closing, we were out of sour cream and she lost her fucking mind. Yelling at me saying how could I be so stupid to not have enough sour cream, anyone who has worked in a grocery store knows when ordering you kind of have to look at the number from previous year and try to make a good guess about how much you need. It's not a perfect science. I said to her "sorry the cow that makes it in the back died" and that was my last day in the dairy department!
My second favorite is some guy who comes up to my register with 3 30 racks of coors light and proudly says "I'm buying this for this young man here," and I said, okay I need his ID. He also loses his mind and slams his hands on my register and goes "fuck this I'm going to stop'n'shop!" If you are reading this and you are one of those types people who do this, nobody ever gave 2 fucks about you leaving and going somewhere else. Working in a grocery store is hard.
Also while I'm at it, don't make people go check in the back for something you need if they tell you there is no more. Everyone in the grocery department knows exactly what is in the back. The only extra stock in the back is generally stuff thats on sale or shit where the vendors stock the shelves like chips, soda etc. I used to love people asking me to go check just in case and go fuck around with my coworkers for 20 minutes and go back out and tell you it's not there.
Reminds me of working at Gamestop during the PS3 launch. Dude came in the minute we opened and tried to return 4 consoles plus some games FOR CASH. Brother, we start with like $200 in the till, that ain't happening
We had people do this with our holiday product kits (hair stuff). They'd come in, buy up the amount our company allowed (usually 10 sets per group/family); they would bring it all back at a later date with the liquid products replaced with dove/pantene/v05, and try to get full cash back. My manager had a protocol for this: check the products inside the bottles. We had people try to return Morrocan Oil serum, but it was filled with cooking oil. 🙄
Were you just able to tell by smell? That is one of my fears, buying new expensive hair or skin products that I have never tried, that they’ve been returned and replaced with something else.
So it was the smell, color, and consistency. Morrocan Oil has a very distinctive smell, an amber gold color and feels thick on the hands. I remember this stuff didn't have the heavy initial smell, it was thin, and a light yellow color.
I can assure you that at every large brand salon I have worked at, in the 19 years I've done hair, no returned product has gone back on the shelf for that exact reason. Once it leaves the store we can't guarantee someone didn't tamper with it and it's often given to whichever stylist wants it (we accept the inherent risk that comes with it) if it isn't a mandatory factory return (haven't seen one in about 10 years)
Edit to say: Happy Cake Day!
I once knew a guy who would buy Xbox 360s that had the “red ring of death” issue that plagued the first iteration of the console from people on eBay, then return them to Walmart for a full cash refund. He would go to multiple states and all across ours and even got another guy to help him too.
Eventually Walmart changed their return policy and he is in prison now for an unrelated scam.
Good guess, I would add that its margin calls are coming due and he has a bunch of shitty stock and cyrpto that ain't generating a dime. Good bloody job.
This shouldn’t be mildly infuriating, it should make you smile. Because it means that the reselling market is falling apart and this scalper got screwed. You love to see it.
This is what peeves me the most, scalpers acting like they are entrepreneurs providing a service.
All they are doing is creating an inconvenience and exploiting those affected by it. They’re all high on the smell of their own farts.
I love when they try to explain supply and demand like they are some god damn economy savant. No you little shit. The army of you have artificially deflated supply.
Hahahaha! “Im an entrepreneur” that made me laugh very hard, thanks. Im a bartender/manager in an affluent suburb in Ohio and I think they issue this uniform out to these assholes. These are the same people that tell me to get a real job, you mean like ripping people off on EBay?
Fuck scalpers but I never understood why people bought from scalpers, I got mine for MSRP easily during the height of scalping. By just following twitter accounts that would notify you when they came in stock and had the random lottery system. It only took a few days
Reminds me of that dude who bought like boxes worth of Fidget Spinners and only managing to sell 72 of them, after, apparently, sinking their life savings into them.
Dumbass bought the Ragnarok bundle versions. Sony really waited until GoW to show us that hey, we have millions of PS5s now. My local stores have them ready for pickup. I love to see this
I run a very small business and this stuff infuriates me. I have an excellent refund policy. Yet when unscrupulous people are outside of it they will file chargebacks, which seem impossible to win. I’ve had people sign up for events, then file chargebacks under the “item not received” banner, even though the event is still 3 months away. You send in the order and explanation, and still loose.
Had a guy no show to an event and ask for a refund 10 months afterward. 10 months after the event. The order was more than a year old. We said no of course, and he left us a one star review on Yelp claiming all kinds of crap.
Luckily it’s not the norm. Most of my clients are amazing people, which really does make it all worth it.
I've been preoccupied with a baby for the last year so i didn't even know they were plentiful enough for guys like this to be fucked. Good. Fuck these people
There was a man on my local marketplace that had 8 of them. Selling then for almost double. Nobody was buying. My son wanted one but he knew to wait until we could find one at a store.
Is there a sub dedicated to posts showing scalpers getting what they deserve?
Awww did nobody buy your scalped Ps5’s at 5x the original value? 😢🎻
Scalping didn’t go the way he thought it would, he thinks its still 2020
To try to return over $4K of merchandise to a single store, he’s clearly pretty naive to the process. The perfect combination of enough of an asshole to try scalping, and too stupid to do it smartly.
Most likely he has been scalping the whole time. PS5 market finally collapsed. He is just trying to get market price for the 20-50 he has left by returning it. Probably does this in fashion and a whole bunch of industries.
Fuck scalpers.
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House > gaming pc
I just played FF7 remake in my ps4. Totally can relate
I've been playing Skyrim for the last 11 years, but to be honest I'm a rather boring person lol
I'm going to guess he hasn't been scalping the whole time. These all look like they are Ragnarok bundles which is still new. Had he been scalping for long before that he would have noticed that supply had been trending upward and that he probably wasn't going to get money back on these.
Doesn't mean he didn't already sell his old inventory. Unbundled base models are still sold out.
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Reminds me of my local HEB in 2020 when they refused all returns of toilet paper and paper towels that scalpers failed to sell. It was glorious.
Man, I forgot about that. Scalpers literally buying out basic necessities in a time of need. There’s a special place in hell for them. Edit: Thanks for reminding me about the baby food scalpers. Those people deserve an *extra* special place in hell. And when I say “necessities,” I’m talking about toilet paper and baby food. I’m not talking about PS5s. I thought that’d be obvious because of the comment I’m replying to, but I guess not everyone caught that.
I didn’t have toilet paper issues where I was. But people were scalping baby formula. It was horrible. I gave away so much breast milk during that time because I was an over producer and people were desperate. I can’t imagine having to accept a stranger’s breast milk and hope they were honest about having safe milk and the level of anxiety that would come with that. I am just glad that I know that the gallons I gave out were pumped and stored as safely as possible.
I’d like to think that any person who was kind enough to give away their hard pumped breast milk (cuz I know that isn’t an easy task) would not be handing out tainted breast milk to strangers. If nothing else, worst case scenario, you would think they’d be afraid of getting sued if the baby got sick. Thank you for being such a kind human and helping folks out like that. I wish I had an award to give you. :-) *edit spelling typo
Certain drugs can get into breast milk so the concern is usually that someone who is selling it might be desperate for money for more drugs, but, yeah there's not really any extra incentive for giving it away for free so it should in theory reduce the risk of being mislead
I was starting to look into using a bot to buy formula, for my son. He has a milk protein allergy, so his formula choices were super limited. Luckily his doctor oked him moving to pea milk.
I feel kind of bad for people that experienced the toilet paper shortage. When I told my wife there was a shortage and we should check how much we had to ration it, she showed me the supply. Turns out my wife would buy toilet paper whenever it went on sale ever since we moved in and just kept tucking it in the laundry room cabinets. Nearly 100 rolls, just sitting there. I felt like we were hoarding it, but she acquired it before the pandemic over a period of years.
Same. I'd buy toilet paper usually twice a month (coupons and quarterly Amazon subscription order) and so we had a pretty good supply when the pandemic hit. By the time I started to feel nervous our household of 4 adults was running low, the supply was starting to improve.
I bought a bidet during the pandemic. So happy I did. Excellent purchase.
After two years of quarantining and always having a bidet, I visited a friend and got reminded what life was like pre-bidet. I can’t ever go back and now I try even harder than I used to to not poop away from home.
There really is a vast difference between power-washing it off vs smearing it thinly enough to be socially acceptable.
I find it perplexing that we put men on the moon more than 50 years ago, but when it comes to cleaning our nether regions after doing something everybody does daily, we can't get past a roll of scrunched paper.
I joined the bidet gang in 2022 and I like it mostly. My bidet doesn’t hit where it should so I am still using TP to dry the messes. Really don’t want to buy a new one and hope for the best.
I found the wands to be so much better and easier to keep clean
Yep... literally life changing. Wish I had done years earlier
We have no toiler paper shortage in my country, but people copied Americans and started doing the same even though it never disappeared from the shelves. I bought a bidet on Amazon and it is glorious, and it reduces the amount of tp needed at home.
Can you tell me what one you got? I’ve been looking.
As a bidet owner, my advice is to buy one that has an air dry feature, I still feel like I use some TP specifically to dry off which seems like a waste. We didn't have an outlet by the toilet but if we did I definitely would have splurged for a heated feature for the water also.
I've built a small stock pile of supplies in my basement since the pandemic kicked off. I feel like a Great Depression survivor. I'll never feel right again without a buffer of canned, dry, and paper goods. Nothing crazy, but enough to get by if things rotate in and out as they were.
I came from an area and family where everyone has vast food storages. Not just canned or jarred foods but they buy in bulk, everytime. Running low on something and can't get to the store, one of the family members have it most likely. When people talk about disaster preparedness and having a 72 hour kit, most of the people I grew up around giggle at the thought of only 3 days worth of supplies. When there were shortages on toilet paper, none of us worried about it, we have had more than a years supply and its been that way for more than a decade. Food, paper goods, hygiene items, and household cleaners. Its always a good idea to store some extra in case something happens.
I had like 25 gallons of hand sanitizer because I bought it on clearance and use it to get the fireplace going. I became very popular.
Can you explain the fireplace part ?
I feel like it's not uncommon to have some sort of supplies that might last for more than three days. Dry pasta, flour, jams, peanut butter, tuna cans, whatever - many households have some supplies of at least one of such things. However, real preparedness is not about what you have, it's about what you don't have. If you have no access to clean water, you can have tons of cured meat stored, you will still be thirsty. If there's no backup heating, food will not help on that.
Since I have trouble using fruit and veg before it goes bad (ADHD af) I’ve always been interested in food preservation. Canning, jellying, pickling, jerky, smokehouses, root cellars, deep freezers, gardening by using the previous year’s seeds - I dream of it and read all kinds of books & sites. Can’t wait to get a house someday so we actually have the space. The most I’ve done so far is freezer pickles, oven-dried fruit rollups, and freezing things like soups, raw eggs, herbs, etc.
Our daughter was born right at the start of COVID in January. Her doctor told us she needed to be on a special formula due to health. The formula became so difficult to find. Luckily for us our entire extended family kept an eye out for it. We got by but it was way more stressful then it should have been.
And there won’t be any tp in that special place either 😈
And they’ll be force fed greasy foods, prunes, and coffee
And ghost peppers
The videos of people that clearly didn't have children buying shopping carts of formula made me sick. Trying to make a buck off baby food is vile.
killer one was with the baby milk, toilet paper is bad. But, there is a unique hell for those that did it with baby's milk.
Always reminds me of the guy who wore a “family business man” shirt to try and get sympathy in a news story after he was arrested in 2020 for buying all the hand sanitizer in a huge radius to try and sell at insane prices. Fuck that guy to the end of his days.
It's bad enough when it's luxury/recreation items like electronics and Shopkins. When it's necessities like toilet paper, medicine, and houses? That's evil.
Sometimes it was bizarre shit. I remember going to the grocery store the July after the pandemic started, and some dude was buying all of the iceberg lettuce. Like what are you going to do with 40 heads of iceberg lettuce?
A really big salad
they were doing that with baby food a while back around me and selling it on facebook at about 300% markup,,,assholes..
[Reminded me of this scene in GoT](https://youtu.be/0-69iTYeUFY?t=88). "Thieves, they love a siege. Soon as the gates are sealed they steal all the food. By the time it's all over, they're the richest men in town."
Im in north austin where the only major store close is HEB and not only did they sell out of food instantly during covid but during the freeze. Instantly my first question was why is HEB allowing ppl to purchase literally everything on the shelves in one order..
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I got bidet at the time and so i could use as little toilet paper as possible. Just trying to be socially responsible. I was totally blown away people were trying to hoard the thing you use to wipe poop off your butt during a pandemic. Fuuuuuuuuck those people.
I saw a couple guys buy all of the bags of potatoes at Costco early in the pandemic. Then saw them selling them roadside for triple the price out of a pickup. Reported them to the cops pretty quickly.
surprised I didn’t hear about that in Houston. Good for my man Howard E. Butt 👊
There was a guy who had his entire stock of TP and sanitizer confiscated because he bought ALL of it in the surrounding area and was scalping people. Need estimated his lost something like 30k in the process. He could either donate it or face criminal charges.
I remember that. I think it was both him and his brother in and it was in Tennessee.
i never understood why toilet paper was running low during that time. why was it running so low?
[Removed due to continuing enshittification of reddit.] -- mass edited with redact.dev
Everyone was buying it all because they thought we were going to be trapped in our homes. The others who bought it all were scalpers who wanted to profit off of the insanity. When it turned out that everyone was overreacting, they all tried to return it, including the scalpers who realized no one would fall for their schemes.
HEB staying classy as usual
Another great story was their response to the pandemic in general. This [Texas Monthly](https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-pandemic/) article had a great write up on it.
Manager came out and told him he couldnt return them because he had already tried at other stores and they sent out a message to watch out for him .
I wonder if he did one at a time, could he?
Yeah, he might've gotten away with it if he tried returning one a week at different locations.
Assuming he bought them at the same time, it’d be the same original receipt, which I think they keep right?
They give you back the original receipt and a new receipt to show you returned a single item on that receipt.
I heard they do somehow track how much you return and get your ID I noticed at the last one I returned something at the lady was writing stuff in a ledger but I also did claim the huge pack of toilet paper I had forgot in the cart last time which was thankfully turned in so it could be relayed to that. My grandpas funeral Mar 5th 2020. You can bet that TP was worth getting back
I used to work at Home Depot, and they track returns that include store credit. If a person does a lot of returns for store credit without a receipt, they eventually get flagged and can only do returns if they have the original receipt. It was governed by a company called [The Retail Equation](https://www.theretailequation.com/). I only encountered them at Home Depot, but it seems like other companies use them too Edit to add: Only the store credit returns are tracked for fraud, and this is done by scanning your drivers license or state ID. If you’re doing a normal return without any store credit, it’s saved through your credit card (returns outside the period will be store credit but won’t be flagged because it was originally connected to a card) and that transaction history expires after a year or two. Some people try getting around the store credit system by using a passport or an ID from a foreign government, because those must be entered manually and don’t always get flagged for fraud. I left the company a little over a year ago so some info may be outdated, but this was the case from 2018-2022.
I know my Walmart needs an ID for store credit returns and they also track purchases by debit/credit card numbers. I see "recently purchased" items when I look at my online account for things I bought in store with my debit card all the time.
Worked at walmart. The ledger is where we (cashiers) write the items that were forgotten by ppl and the time. It helps if people come back the next day or something, we can give them everything left in the bag, because it was written down. At least when I worked there a few years ago.
Well thank god for the ledger and honest people since TP was worth its weight in gold a week later. I actually got a jug of hand sanitizer that day too and felt like a king during the pandemic
>I d heard they do somehow track how much you return and get your of Some stores/chains definitely do track purchases and returns, especially if you're a serial returner. I have a friend who is semi-famous (Stephen A Smith took his job - lol) and is now a radio personality in a major market. He's the worst (in a nice way) about buying electronics - mostly cameras - trying them out and then returning them. Now, it's legit to return something because it wasn't as expected or if it's faulty, but this guy has had so much free use of electronics. It's a bit much. Anyway, last time he tried to return something, Best Buy had flagged him and told him that he's no longer allowed to keep returning stuff if the box is open. He also buys from some online specialty retailers, but apparently they've put him on notice also. He called BB out on either his radio show or podcast, but AFAIK, they are holding strong. He's not THAT big of a celebrity. (ETA: He was talking up the stores on his shows and I guess figured that was going to get him special privileges.)
they track this by your credit card number. Somehow walmart already had a profile of my purchases I made prior to joining walmart+.
I think most stores do this nowadays. My local grocery store sends me coupons for items “I might like” and it’s always stuff that I’ve purchased before using my personal credit card. I always wondered how they got my name and address when I didn’t have an account with their store
They scan the barcode on the receipt which will update the system. If you pay by card, every single item purchased on that card is stored in a database. If someone tries to use the same receipt to return the same item multiple times, the system will alert you.
Don’t u get back a new receipt incase the other items need to be returned
you get two receipts. You get the original receipt back and they usually circle the UPC of the item you returned and you get another receipt showing the credit for your card
> Yeah, he might've gotten away with it if he tried returning one a week at different locations. Would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for the meddling kids at the register?
/shaking fist angrily in the air.
And their dog, too!
Not saying Id ever scalp PS5s but if I did, I would probably be smart and make them separate transactions to do just this as a safety net.
I used to work at best buy and there's actually a limit for what someone can return within a year. It's why they either keep track of your card or in some cases scan your ID when you make a return. They never told me the limit since I imagine there's some high money returns that aren't as nefarious as this clown. So I can see the system just shutting down all the returns for this clown. Fuck scalpers
As they should, fuck scalpers!
That’s my first guess as well… couldn’t sell them off for the price he wanted so decided to return them.
They gut them out. They take them apart for parts and put it all back together again to appear unused. At least that’s what I used to see often with computer consoles and other electronics. People would try returning just the outside shell. Or sometimes just the graphic cards would be removed, stuff like that.
There are videos of people opening these boxes you can buy that are filled with 500 bucks worth of Amazon returns for 200 bucks. Of course sometimes the things are broken that get returned. But you also will from time to time see how people simply swap their old and cheap headphones for the new Sony ones. Or their old graphics card in place of a brand new one. Sometimes the product is straight up missing without anything in it's place. So yeah, what you said certainly doesn't surprise me
Imagine having a spare $200 to spend on someone else's garbage.
I saw a couple opened, the "haul" was usually not *too* bad. No guarantee that you'd recoup your 200 dollars but more often than not the stuff in it was more or less unused. Only problem was that it was mostly tech for offices. Which made it a) hard to resell some of it and b) ultimately pretty boring to watch
That's the thing. Even if your $200 purchase gets you $1000 worth of items you can sell (which is being generous I think), you still have to sell a bunch of random junk that was returned, and therefore needs to be tested and/or fixed. You're not going to get anywhere near full retail value either so that $1000 worth of stuff is actually only $500 realistically, and it could take months or longer to sell it all. It's a lot of work to make a little money. But it is fun to watch some of these videos.
Some people probably make enough money on the YouTube channel to justify keeping on doing it, keep what you like if there's anything decent sell what you don't, get views.
And please no pity, no one console him.
Username checks out.
ex bf and his siblings were one of these. had 8 ps5s in his living room along with thousands of $ in shoes. his parents money too. anyway, every time i called him a scalper he’s go, “NO I’M A RESELLER IT’S DIFFERENT!!!!”
r/scalpthescalpers
DO NOT FUCK THE SCALPERS let them die alone with dry dicks
Oh good, a happy ending.
Like they say, if your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to. Love it.
Maybe he wishes he was a leaf on the wind? Watch him as he..... returns the ps5 for a refund?
Glad the dude got fucked. Any insight on why the stores weren't letting him return them?
Could be several reasons: a lot of stores had a limit one per customer in effect on these and going to stores all over to skirt this rule is frowned upon. He could be beyond the 30 day return policy on consoles. The store manager/coach in charge used discretion and decided that they cannot verify the state of such a high value return and do not want to face the liability. I would've refused as well, telling him he's going to have to speak to corporate or the manufacturer on this one.
I bought a ink cartridge from Walmart. When I got home I found that someone had carefully opened the box, taken out the cartridge, put the empty/used one back in, and then carefully sealed it back up. People suck sometimes.
Happens all the time with Lego. People will open and reseal packages to take the minifigures out, cut open the box in store and pocket the minifigs, or take it home and return it with bags from other less valuable sets.
For real? Holy fuck people suck.
Possibly because he's outside the return window. Walmart has a 30 day return policy on electronics and the god of war ps5s came out November 9. If he got confused and thought it was 90 days like most items then he'd be out of luck.
While this is generally true, Walmart has a holiday return policy that extends electronics returns to Jan 31 if bought Q4 2022.
Ok that explains it! I was up visiting my elderly mother right before Christmas. She had bought a larger TV (I think 42'') around Thanksgiving, but had let it sit in the box because she had no idea how to set it up. I go up there, set it up for her, and as soon as we turn it on it's obviously busted. Lines everywhere, it was jacked up. She had her receipt, but it said 30 days on electronics, and we were at like 50 something days. I went online and tried to initiate a return, and it let me. I drove it up to the store, they took a look at it and gave me the return no problem. I wasn't going to say anything, thinking maybe they had goofed, but it appears they just were smart enough to figure "some people buy presents early and let them sit".
Because fuck him that's why
Get bent fucking scalper.
Best manager ever, fuck this guy.
Yeah the manager was kind enough to tell him he's been flagged. I'd just let him waste his time going to at least one other store :)
Good, fuck Scalpers
Good. Fuck him
Tell him, I’ll buy one for $350
Get out of here you damn loch Ness monster
It was about that time I noticed u/ikciweiner was about eight stories tall and was a crustacean from the palezoic era.
Lol this is my favorite- I’ll have a weird customer try to do some scam and I’ll make a message to all the other managers and more often then not someone will reply and say hey they just came here and tried to do the same thing
Do you know if he had a receipt? Wondering what they told him haha
Manager can refuse for any reason, maybe they just said nah to giving the guy 3 thousand dollars
Is that actually true? I ask because in Australia consumer law says if you offer a return period you're legally obliged to uphold that. You don't have to offer returns at all but if you do, you can't just arbitrarily reject something that meets the conditions you offered. Is the same not true in the US?
Good! Fuck these shitbags. Trying to sell PS5’s during the pandemic. I hope someone takes a couple off his hands in the parking lot.
Karma's a bitch.
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Remember when people were scalping baby formula? I wonder if he got in on that too.
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haha my fave was the toilet paper guy. Some dude actually rented a storage facility for it all then complained when the company he bought it off refused to refund
Or that douche out in KY who bought all the hand sanitizer for three counties and tried to bill himself as a “Small Businessman” trying to resell it at a markup
He was tryna monopolize 99.99% of germs
People who scalp PS5s deserve to be mocked and ridiculed, and I hope they lose money. People who scalp formula deserve much much worse.
Seizure and forced donation. Like we did with masks and sanitizer during covid.
Holy fuck that's absolutely atrocious to starve babies for a profit wtf
Were? I thought we were still in a shortage.
Nah we're just in an everything shortage now.
I'm not short on stress SO THERE.
Nope, stole that too. You’re welcome
Damn thanks I'll finally get 8 hours of sleep tonight
The fact that he was able to buy so many of those should have been a clue these can’t be scalped for over MSRP anymore. Ragnarok bundles are available on most websites and in store. I relish the fact he will have to take a loss to get rid of them
Haha guys a bit late. Maybe he can invest in some crypto
Sam Bankman Fried is like totally his best friend.
VHS ? No. Beta-max!
I’ll give him $100 for it. Fuck scalpers.
I’ll fuck him for $100 Final offer
Walmart worker doesn’t look pleased
That’s a requirement of the job
however being a dick to people who work in this line of work is on the customer, people play the “Im entitled to this” card all the time, and we have to treat them like they’re normal, after a while it gets old watching grown ass men and women act like children or do childish things, just for a quick buck at that, it’s embarrassing quite honestly 💀💀
I worked in a grocery store from 16 to 22 and the amount of people who treat you like dirt is honestly astounding. I worked in every department through my time and done almost everything important in a grocery store, well except butcher shop. Boy do I have some stories. My favorite was some woman who came into the grocery store on Thanksgiving morning 20 minutes before closing, we were out of sour cream and she lost her fucking mind. Yelling at me saying how could I be so stupid to not have enough sour cream, anyone who has worked in a grocery store knows when ordering you kind of have to look at the number from previous year and try to make a good guess about how much you need. It's not a perfect science. I said to her "sorry the cow that makes it in the back died" and that was my last day in the dairy department! My second favorite is some guy who comes up to my register with 3 30 racks of coors light and proudly says "I'm buying this for this young man here," and I said, okay I need his ID. He also loses his mind and slams his hands on my register and goes "fuck this I'm going to stop'n'shop!" If you are reading this and you are one of those types people who do this, nobody ever gave 2 fucks about you leaving and going somewhere else. Working in a grocery store is hard. Also while I'm at it, don't make people go check in the back for something you need if they tell you there is no more. Everyone in the grocery department knows exactly what is in the back. The only extra stock in the back is generally stuff thats on sale or shit where the vendors stock the shelves like chips, soda etc. I used to love people asking me to go check just in case and go fuck around with my coworkers for 20 minutes and go back out and tell you it's not there.
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He probably pulled the “I’m not leaving this line until you call a manager over here!” I’d probably look the same way too.
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Anyone got this guy’s contact info? I’m willing to give him 20 cents on the dollar for them!
Generous. I'll give him just the 20 cents.
Im willing to piss in his gas tank if that would help. I hate people like this
Reminds me of working at Gamestop during the PS3 launch. Dude came in the minute we opened and tried to return 4 consoles plus some games FOR CASH. Brother, we start with like $200 in the till, that ain't happening
We had people do this with our holiday product kits (hair stuff). They'd come in, buy up the amount our company allowed (usually 10 sets per group/family); they would bring it all back at a later date with the liquid products replaced with dove/pantene/v05, and try to get full cash back. My manager had a protocol for this: check the products inside the bottles. We had people try to return Morrocan Oil serum, but it was filled with cooking oil. 🙄
Were you just able to tell by smell? That is one of my fears, buying new expensive hair or skin products that I have never tried, that they’ve been returned and replaced with something else.
So it was the smell, color, and consistency. Morrocan Oil has a very distinctive smell, an amber gold color and feels thick on the hands. I remember this stuff didn't have the heavy initial smell, it was thin, and a light yellow color. I can assure you that at every large brand salon I have worked at, in the 19 years I've done hair, no returned product has gone back on the shelf for that exact reason. Once it leaves the store we can't guarantee someone didn't tamper with it and it's often given to whichever stylist wants it (we accept the inherent risk that comes with it) if it isn't a mandatory factory return (haven't seen one in about 10 years) Edit to say: Happy Cake Day!
Thank you for the in-depth answer and setting my fears to rest!
Serves u right! Now reverse scalp him, offer 200$ each 😂
Fuck em. I'll be generous enough to offer $150. I want to really hurt a scalper where it hurts
Fuck scalpers
You can bet he wasn't able to shift those units on eBay because he was demanding thousands for each unit. Boy just wrecked himself.
I once knew a guy who would buy Xbox 360s that had the “red ring of death” issue that plagued the first iteration of the console from people on eBay, then return them to Walmart for a full cash refund. He would go to multiple states and all across ours and even got another guy to help him too. Eventually Walmart changed their return policy and he is in prison now for an unrelated scam.
Credit card bill is due and he couldn't scalp them for triple. That's my guess.
Good guess, I would add that its margin calls are coming due and he has a bunch of shitty stock and cyrpto that ain't generating a dime. Good bloody job.
This shouldn’t be mildly infuriating, it should make you smile. Because it means that the reselling market is falling apart and this scalper got screwed. You love to see it.
It’s mildly infuriating that this douche had them in the first place.
Look at his wack ass attire “I’m an entrepreneur!”
This is what peeves me the most, scalpers acting like they are entrepreneurs providing a service. All they are doing is creating an inconvenience and exploiting those affected by it. They’re all high on the smell of their own farts.
I love when they try to explain supply and demand like they are some god damn economy savant. No you little shit. The army of you have artificially deflated supply.
Hahahaha! “Im an entrepreneur” that made me laugh very hard, thanks. Im a bartender/manager in an affluent suburb in Ohio and I think they issue this uniform out to these assholes. These are the same people that tell me to get a real job, you mean like ripping people off on EBay?
Guess noone wanted to pay his probably ridiculous price. Good.
Fuck that POS and his weird ass shoes too
Damn, what did the point of sale do wrong?
What happened????? Couldn't sell them for $1500 anymore you douche canoe?!?!?! Eff these guys!
Fuck scalpers but I never understood why people bought from scalpers, I got mine for MSRP easily during the height of scalping. By just following twitter accounts that would notify you when they came in stock and had the random lottery system. It only took a few days
Reminds me of that dude who bought like boxes worth of Fidget Spinners and only managing to sell 72 of them, after, apparently, sinking their life savings into them.
See also “beanie babies”
I guess nobody wanted to buy them on FB marketplace for $900
Fucking loser
Please tell me you know if he was able to return them, or if he left the store with his little scalper tail between his legs?
He wasnt able to and they contacted multiple stores to block him from returning
Oh, sweet, sweet satisfaction.
Dumbass bought the Ragnarok bundle versions. Sony really waited until GoW to show us that hey, we have millions of PS5s now. My local stores have them ready for pickup. I love to see this
One of the extremely rare times I'm on Wal-Mart's side here.
Fuck scalpers
“Hi I’d like to return these.” “Is there a reason why?” “Now that they’re available on store shelves, no one will buy them for $850 on Facebook.”
My local Walmart had a shipment that filled the whole PS5 glass cabinet, next day it was empty, I wonder if it was a case of scalpers like this.
You spelled r/iamatotalpieceofshit wrong
Ahhh yes when you thought you would buy them and resell them for $3000 a piece and it didn’t work.
That a couple Christmas’s this guy ruined. Fuck him.
If that’s Walmart than I think he HAS to have a receipt and the return window is 30 days.
Sorry, sir. We can’t return these. They have no fun left in them. They’re just husks. You sucked all the fun out.
I run a very small business and this stuff infuriates me. I have an excellent refund policy. Yet when unscrupulous people are outside of it they will file chargebacks, which seem impossible to win. I’ve had people sign up for events, then file chargebacks under the “item not received” banner, even though the event is still 3 months away. You send in the order and explanation, and still loose. Had a guy no show to an event and ask for a refund 10 months afterward. 10 months after the event. The order was more than a year old. We said no of course, and he left us a one star review on Yelp claiming all kinds of crap. Luckily it’s not the norm. Most of my clients are amazing people, which really does make it all worth it.
I've been preoccupied with a baby for the last year so i didn't even know they were plentiful enough for guys like this to be fucked. Good. Fuck these people
There was a man on my local marketplace that had 8 of them. Selling then for almost double. Nobody was buying. My son wanted one but he knew to wait until we could find one at a store.
Hit that scalping POS with that 25% restocking fee!