Chacham's Journal: Verbiage: OfficeMax rebate, buying early to return to re-buy

Someone told me about SlickDeals which is reporting that OfficeMax having an in-store special for a Western Digital 80 GB Hard Drive for twenty dollars after rebate.

The part that gets me is

It is very likely that the HD will be out of stock in the first 5 minutes the store opens. Some stores are already out of stock because people are buying it early, returning and re-buying tomorrow.

People buy it early and return it? That just seems inappropriate. Then again, if someone bought it early *without* knowing about this, they should be able to return it and get the rebate. Or at least it would be nice.

Hmm...

Humans are unscrupulous by nature

[Trolling4Dollars]

I knew someone in the mid-90s who used to go to CompUSA and buy something to use for up to 30 days. He would then return it saying that it wasn't what he needed and get his money back. In the mean time he had been using the equipment for commercial purposes. I saw him do this with flatbed scanners, various internal cards (video capture, SCSI, etc...) and even HDs. I found the practice deplorable. CompUSA changed their return policy to 14 days and eventually ten days thanks to people like him. So now..

Re:Humans are unscrupulous by nature

[Chacham]

Wow.

Thanx for the comment.

Re:Humans are unscrupulous by nature

[DAldredge]

Instead you work for the slimeballs that take money from people at gunpoint! Not much difference their!

Re:Humans are unscrupulous by nature

[Trolling4Dollars]

Let me put it another way:

Private Sector = The capitalist elite (less than 20% of the population)

Public Sector = The rest of us (more than 80% of the population)

I have no fantasies about how I can be a part of the private sector and "make it" in this world. Unfortunately, there are a lot of Americans who are deluded that they can be part of the capitalist system. Sorry, but it's a Ponzi scheme designed to keep the rich at the top and the fools who think they can get rich at the bottom. I'd far rather

You're surprised?

[dmorin]

Remember, people do not want what is right. They want what is best for them. The question that's always come to my mind in situations like that is how much you rate your time and energy, in dollars. Like the folks who drive two towns over to get gas for 2cents less per gallon. You have to decide how much effort (in terms of time, scruples, etc...) you're going to put into saving the $$. Sometimes it is borderline ethical (as is the buy, return, rebuy), other times it is flat out dishonest -- "Did you w

You'd think the stores would stop this

[Kris_J]

Any twit annoying enough to try this should find themselves the newest entry on the "do not sell to these morons" list.

And for 80Gig? Not that I have anything larger, but if you're going to add some capacity to your PC it's hardly worth using up a drive bay for anything less than 200Gig.

Re:You'd think the stores would stop this

[FroMan]

Geesh... I have servers at home with a 40GB drive for data. Even another with only a 3GB, but that one is only firewall and NAT box.

As far as buying 200GB drives only? Bah, nonsense. The one drive I have that is 80GB is one in my desktop that I do audio cleanup of our church sermons on, but it wasn't the size that sold me, but the 8MB cache.

I can see folks that have large multimedia collections buying 200GB drives, but your average end user is not looking for that when they add a new drive.

Anyways, b