you should be able to find your complete order history online. Mine has all the way back to the first DVD's I ordered in '99. Wasted a good 30 minutes last night looking at all my purchases...

Yeah, I looked it up and provided them the information.

I don't think he was implying that that part of the situation was stealing, I think he was referring to the other part of the post. Returning something bought at one store to another.

I see his point, and every situation is unique, but I see no problem with how he did it, or with the practice to some extent.

There have been several situations where I have returned an item with the receipt for the exact item purchased at a different time.

One example was buying something and misplacing it. I knew I wanted to return the item, couldn't find it, but knew that it would turn up eventually It was the day the receipt expired for return purposes, so I bought the item again, and immediately returned it with the old receipt. So I now had another 90 days to find the item.

Now purposely buying things to abuse stores and make "profit", that is stealing in my opinion, even if it does fall within the store's policies.

I still don't see how that could be considered stealing. You are returning the exact same item.

even if it isn't technically "stealing," returning an item to a retailer who didn't sell you the item with someone else's receipt from that store is most definitely fraud. he is costing that retailer money, because there is labor involved in processing the return, restocking, etc and they will likely have to sell it as an open box item for less than the refund that they gave him.

It's not fraud. It's not stealing. It's not even in the moral grey area. Guess what. The person that they have to pay labor to "restock" on the shelf (i.e. just put it back out there) and the person they pay labor for "processing the return" are going to get paid the same whether they are are working or not. As long as you are returning the exact same item, there's no fraud, misrepresentation or theft.

A-Friend X bought a player from Costco
B-DVDTalker bought a player from Amazon
C-DVDTalker returned the player to Costco using Friend X's receipt

As far as the stores are concerned:
Costco has no sale
Amazon has 1 sale

As far as the owners are concerned:
Friend X has a player he paid for
DVDTalker has no player and it out no money back

So not knowing how we got here, it sure looks like Friend X owns a player that Amazon sold, even though there's no direct transaction between these two parties. If Amazon is kicking back $50, while it looks like a great windfall to DVDTalker, I'm thinking that the $50 belongs to Friend X, since DVDTalker has pretty much stepped out of the picture by returning his player.

I'm not pointing fingers, I'm just saying that the whole thing smells bad.

Again. Amazon has stated they are giving these out to everyone. They aren't excluding any purchases. So, I could've bought mine from Amazon, and then taken it out in the street and smashed it to bits. If you purchased the player from them, you get it. What you post above is not a legal issue, it's a moral issue that you may want to take up with a friend. If you are so inclined to hook him up with the extra $50, more power to you.

I hadn't gotten anything so I emailed them about my May 2007 HD DVD player purchase and got my $50 code in about 10 minutes.

Completely awesome.

you've conveniently ignored the rest of my point: they will not be able to sell that item for the amount that they refunded him.

furthermore, we don't have the financial details of his transaction. if his refund from Circuit City was more than what he paid at Amazon, he most definitely committed criminal fraud. i would be extremely surprised if the amount came out exactly even.

face it: he lied to the store (passing off the receipt as his) for personal gain (to get more money than he would have gotten through ethical means such as selling his player on ebay or returning it to the original retailer outside of the full refund window). how is that not fraud even in only the broadest sense?

Of course your point is assuming the item was never opened. EVen if it was, it's the store's policy to take items back.

Criminal fraud! Arrest him! x 3948558

actually, the first point in my previous post assumes that it was opened. on the second point, it doesn't matter whether it was opened or not.

No. It's the store's policy to take items back that were originally purchased from that store. I guarantee there is wording in Circuit City's return policy along those lines.

Got mine! If you didn't, email them.

Didn't get mine yet. I just emailed them.

I e-mailed 12 hours ago, and no response yet.

I sent them an e-mail yesterday, and the $50 was in my account ready to go within an hour or so. Ordered Stardust and Serenity HD DVDs, plus a few knick-knacks. Very cool of Amazon.

Took just 15 minutes to get a reply to my inquiry and they're usually pretty good at responding to them. My $50 was applied to my account and used. Looking forward to my Predator & Juno BD's for $5 next week.

Got my code. Here it is in case you guys don't want to use your own:

You suck I knew you were kidding...really.

I think I'm going to use mine to get another PS3 for the bedroom. $350 for the 40GB isn't bad.

Log into your account at Amazon and click on the PS3 for a couple of days. It might just pop up in your Gold Box. I've had it in the GB a couple of times recently for $379.99.

Google "Amazon Goldbox Trick" if you want to save some cash on the PS3. Ive been doing it and have gotten just about everything I could want a discount.

I just spent my $50 GC. Damn, it went fast.

Thanks for the tip.


EDIT: I ended up paying only $329.99 w/ free shipping.

I had a little trouble getting this. I sent an email, they responded by saying they couldn't find an HD DVD player purchase on my account.

So I called them, and at first the CSR had no idea what I was talking about and put me on hold. Then he came back and said it was valid, but he couldn't find a player purchase on my account. I gave him the order number, and he put me on hold again. When he came back, he told me that the player I bought wasn't part of the promotion (an HD-A2, so... yeah, no). I told him to read me the list of eligible players, and he then realized his mistake and put me on hold again to issue the GC.

Not really happy with that, but eh. I have Juno and The Lives of Others coming to me on Blu-Ray now.