Over the holiday weekend, I met someone that “purchased” a number of Christmas gifts at a big box retailer since the store has easily exploited rules for returns. This form of stealing needs to be carefully examined by stores because it is far too easy for people to exploit. We all know of ways of getting promo codes by searching sites like Fatwallet but those are legitimate ways to save some cash. The method I saw used this past weekend is simply stealing but the companies completely condone it through their exchange methods.

Over the weekend, this big box retailer had a sale on 2GB Sandisk flash cards for use in digital cameras. The cards normally sell for $49 but were on sale for a mere $19! The $30 savings was phenomenal and helped a number of people get some great gifts. However, through the store’s return policy, people can easily exploit the store for their own gain. Here’s what happens:

1. Customer purchases the $49 card for only $19 since it is on sale.
2. Customer waits for store to end the sale and customer returns the card to the normal $49 price.
3. Customer returns the flash card to the store and claims they do not have the receipt.
4. Store hands the customer a $49 gift card in lieu of returned cash.
5. Customer nets a gain of $30 per card purchased on sale.

Now, that’s just one card. What happens though is that people return four or five of these cards and then have a huge gift card to use in the store!

What Can Stores Do To Stop This?

How can stores avoid this type of scam? This really is a huge problem–if a business demands a receipt for every return, many customers will be discouraged from purchasing due to a tough return policy. If the store only gives the most recent sale price back in case of a return, some customers that purchased the item before the sale would actually get robbed of their cash.

I really don’t know what can be done to stop this scam but this is definitely something that needs to be looked into immediately. It is frightening how easy this is for someone to pull off and I’m sure it is going on all over the place. What do you think?