"boardjunkie" ) writes:
Ok.....found a flat panel monitor at a Salvation Army thrift store
today. At 35$ it seemed it would make a nice little display for a
second machine. Now I know the policy of "as is" from this place and
you should power up and test before hauling anything of this nature out
of the place. Trouble is, this monitor needed an external 12vdc pwr
supply that was not included. So there was no way to test on site. So I
bring it back and hook it up to a bench supply and pwr up only to find
it had been broken due to pressure to the face of the unit. So I take
it back and tell them the story and go so far as to power it up in
front of them tp prove that it was obviously damaged and shouldn't have
been sold to begin with. I get the runaround about store policy
regarding returns on "as is" electronic items. No refund. They issued
me "store credit"......which is more or less useless to me since I
rarely buy anything from them as of late due to increased prices on
what I would call junk. Add to that the rarely have anything close to
good anymore. So in a nutshell I gave them 35$ and have nothing to show
for it. Oh, I even called the head office and got the same bull****
from clueless drones.

I regularly get older audio gear from the local Goodwill shop and have
never had a problem returning anything, although I have never had to
return anything electronic. I just assume I may have to do some work on
it. There's no repairing flat panels.

Needless to say I will no longer frequent the Scamnation Army. The
Goodwills have way better junk at a fraction of the price.

Anyone had a similar experience? Just curious....I'm a little
steamed.....

When buying used, people should never pay more than they are willing to
lose. Obviously this works against the seller, but then if they set
things out for the buyer to actually plug it in, they could make more money
off it.

But in this case, you could look at it as giving money to charity, and then
getting a prize in return. These groups are trying to raise money, not
for profit sake but to do other things that are likely good for the
community. For the buyer, it is indeed better than a straight donation,
since you see some sort of return on the item, but since the group
is given the old items to sell, their overhead is low. (Of course, that
overhead might go up if they had to test everything, and I should point
out that one has to give thought to someone who knowingly gives a broken
something to the Salvation Army.)

So when buying from some group doing a fundraiser, think of it as
giving that group money, and anything you get in return is a bonus.

For years I've gone to one "Meals on Wheels" yard sale. One year
they had an auction, and I bid on an old Mac laptop, and kept bidding
even though it had gone more than I thought it was worth. It was fun,
and I realized I'd much rather have that fun while giving the money
than just giving the money. Turned out to be a more recent Powerbook
than I thought, and was well worth the $40. But I'm not sure I'd have
paid $40 for an old laptop if I couldn't actually try it out at
some garage sale.

And I should point out that you seem to be profiteering off the
items you buy there, so losing some money should be considered
part of the business expence. You might turn around and offer
to test the stuff for them, or to evaluate what they have, which
would help them to raise more money. After all, that seems to
be what you are doing, albeit keeping the profit for yourself.

Michael