What happens to returned products that are in almost new condition?

November 17, 2014 6:46 AM

Say I bought some fancy electronic gadget on Amazon. I took off all the fancy protective packaging, unwrapped the cables, etc. Then after using it for an hour or two, I decided it was actually a piece of junk they never should have released, and I returned it for the cost of shipping. It's virtually new, but not in factory condition. What happens to that item now?
posted by smackfu to Work & Money (10 answers total)

Sold at a discount as refurbished.
posted by HuronBob at 6:47 AM on November 17, 2014

Ideally sold as refurbished but it will often be repacked and sold as new.

Amazon will return it to the manufacture who then does whatever they do with it.
posted by srboisvert at 6:51 AM on November 17, 2014

It may be resold by Amazon as part of their warehouse deals.

Amazon Warehouse Deals is a part of Amazon.com that specializes in offering great deals on returned, warehouse-damaged, used, or refurbished products that are in good condition but do not meet Amazon.com rigorous standards as "new." We also offer products in new and open-box condition.
posted by amarynth at 6:56 AM on November 17, 2014

You might find this interesting, from Reddit a few months ago:
IamA Amazon warehouse returns associate. I process the things you were not satisfied with. Ask away!

Q: What happens to items that get returned in excellent condition? Do they get sold as new?

A: If the manufacturer seal is broken, no. If there is an issue with the item it'll be graded and sold reduced. If it is new and in excellent condition like you said, then I believe the manufacturer takes it back and repackages it, but I'm not totally sure.

posted by BurntHombre at 7:15 AM on November 17, 2014

I've seen stuff like this sold (not necessarily on Amazon) as "open box", "floor model", or "demo model."

Also, in a more general application (based on my experience working in music instrument retail quite a few years ago), how a retailer deals with these kind of returns may depend on the terms of their contract with the wholesaler/distributor/manufacturer. There were some products my store could return to the wholesaler or manufacturer for credit towards future orders, others we had outright paid cash for so it was on us to sell the customer returned product in order to make any money at all.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:27 AM on November 17, 2014

I was told (second hand) that the manufacturer will test it, make sure all the parts and cables are there and sells it as refurbished.
posted by 724A at 8:04 AM on November 17, 2014

This doesn't apply to Amazon, but I know REI sells all their gently used merchandise at annual Garage Sales for their members.
posted by Grandysaur at 9:29 AM on November 17, 2014

WOOT.com ended up with so much of Amazon's open-box and refurb tech that Amazon just went ahead and bought them.

I think the main difference between Amazon's "warehouse deals" and WOOT is that Woot is a no-returns, no-backsies, it's-so-cheap-what-did-you-expect final sale site.
posted by Kakkerlak at 5:17 PM on November 17, 2014

I know several people who swear by Apple's refurbished items department. Apparently they test the hell out of those machines before they resell them, to the point where they're statistically more reliable than new ones off the shelf. And a bit cheaper. Of course, they tend to be a bit older, too.
posted by mumkin at 6:26 PM on November 17, 2014

My friends younger brother had a job testing this stuff for a while, for amazon. It basically gets sorted in to categories of working with all the stuff, working without the package/all accessories, and broken in some way or useless without all the parts. The line for broken was pretty high too, so we ended up with a lot of awesome shit that was too scratched/dented/dirty/etc to resell and was just gonna get trashed. To this day i still have an awesome set of headphones from that.

Not all of it ended up as amazon warehouse stuff. Some items seemed to get a specific amazon warehouse category(like certain bluetooth speakers, the kindles, etc) that always showed up under buying options. Other things would just get posted as a one-off.

The weird thing is i've heard of people getting pretty trashed stuff from warehouse deals, but at least when he was doing it none of the trashed stuff went anywhere but well... the trash. the standards must be different for furniture and lamps and stuff, he only did electronics.

Some of that stuff ended up being a really really good deal though. The markdowns could be awesome if something say, didn't have the box or any cables. It also amazed me how much stuff people presumably got away with returning that they had totally dropped in water/otherwise totally broken in a way that was their fault.

Oh yea, and nothing got repackaged and sold as new. Ever. That's illegal anyways, but yea, amazon seemed to just not care that much about stuff getting returned. The inventory tracking was insane though.


also seconding the apple refurbished department ruling, my friends who got ipad refurbed 3s when i got mine lightly used still have way better battery life than me. and you get the full warranty, and can buy the extended warranty, and everything. i really wish they offered refurb iphones...
posted by emptythought at 7:36 PM on November 17, 2014