Target Inova XO3 theft!

How is this for sleezy, someone bought an Inova XO3 and a black Mini Mag and carefully removed the inova from the package and replaced it with the Mag and returned it to the store! Wow I hope that lowlife enjoys the light.:thumbsdow

Rosser:shakehead

You mean, the Target employee didn't even notice the Difference ?

:sigh:

_

Wait.. Target sells flashlights that are >$30?

Most expensive I've seen in there is the rechargeable River Rock thing.

They must have caught customer service napping. I took the package to cust serv and showed it to them. She scanned it "yes 45 dollars" shrugged her shoulders and asked is the 45 dollar light the same size?

I am the sleezy dirtbag, and I do enjoy my new XO3!































:laughing:Just kidding!
The returns dept. would have probably accepted a crayon drawing of a flashlight in the package, in my exp Biggiemart employees just don't care.

I hate that!!! In Lynn, Mass I took the M@g package with an Incaden 2AA in the 2AA LED Package off the shelf for many employees. The "fill in word for less than caring and qaulified" emmployees put it back out like I was a nut!!!!


Weeks...and weeks.. it sat there.... I gave up after about the fifth time..


Crooks!!!

so true....

I think the practice is more common. At Target, I once found a Dorcy 1AAA light inside an Inova X1 blister pack. An older Dorcy, back when the rubber sleeves had long grooves rather than checkering.

At Wal-mart, I found a .99 cent light (minus the head) carefully inserted inside the blister pack of a far more expensive light. Don't recall which light, but close to the price of a X03. I know the cheap light inside was a .99 cent model...... Wal-mart had that light right next to it on the shelf!

People get away with such garbage cause store employees just don't give a sh**.

I have found incan PR base bulbs in place of NiteIze and Craftsman PR base LED upgrades.

Shame that the stores get ripped off, and shame on those who do things like that, but if the store doesn't have people who really know their products then they will be taken advantage of like this. When I worked in retail, at a camera /video store, we had people try to switch product sometimes, but all exchanges and returns went through a manager, such as myself, that knew our products, and knew to look for scams, so we'd always catch them. A common thing was people would by a top of the line camera kit from us, go buy the low end version of the camera somewhere else, then try and return the kit to us with the low end camera, keeping the higher end model for themself. They must have felt like a fool when we'd call them out on it. We probably should have called the cops on them for trying to scam us, but I don't know if it's a crime, or a crime that the poilce would want to be bothered with.

i saw one also, XO3 but in the box is river rock. the tiny one. what a *******!

target store in newington CT.

Khaytsus said:

Wait.. Target sells flashlights that are >$30?

Most expensive I've seen in there is the rechargeable River Rock thing.

Click to expand...

My Target carries the $54 Inova with K2 LED.


I hate scumbag, divisive stuff like that...and no, the employees don't have a clue about that stuff. I had to return an Inova there once because of a tail cap problem. When it came up as $54 she though it was wrong. She said, "I didn't even know there were flashlights that expensive!" I just smiled and nicely said, "yeah, that's a pricey little sucker isn't it."

WadeF said:

Shame that the stores get ripped off, and shame on those who do things like that, but if the store doesn't have people who really know their products then they will be taken advantage of like this. When I worked in retail, at a camera /video store, we had people try to switch product sometimes, but all exchanges and returns went through a manager, such as myself, that knew our products, and knew to look for scams, so we'd always catch them. A common thing was people would by a top of the line camera kit from us, go buy the low end version of the camera somewhere else, then try and return the kit to us with the low end camera, keeping the higher end model for themself. They must have felt like a fool when we'd call them out on it. We probably should have called the cops on them for trying to scam us, but I don't know if it's a crime, or a crime that the poilce would want to be bothered with.

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I love hearing about how you were catching scamers that way. Even though you'd have to prove it and it would be a waste of time for the cops, it would be fun to at least scare them and then tell the customer that their name and credit card number would be put onto a red flag list. Maybe it would frighten some of them out of their manipulative ways, or at least discourage them from coming back to your store. ...jerks!

They are so dumb, people that do that,it has been known for them to do it in our local pound shop.:green::lolsign:

What do you expect from retail clerks? These are the people that didn't meet the prerequisites for community college.

Dobbler said:

What do you expect from retail clerks? These are the people that didn't meet the prerequisites for community college.

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easy does it:thumbsdow
theres community college go-ers here that may be in retail you know

I think I know why these scumbags are substituting cheaper lights for Inova models. (Besides the quality aspect, since Inovas are sometimes the highest quality lights you'd find in a community's B&M stores). It's the blister packs Inova uses....

Technically, Inova models come in clam shell packs. A blister pack is sealed with glue. To get to the item inside, you have to cut into the blister pack. Makes it obvious if someone tries to use the cut-open pack for a substitution scam.

But Inova packs literally open AND close, just like a clam. No glue is used, just plastic indentations around the packaging. I've got a few Inova models. My last purchase was a 2007 T3 w/ reflector. The clam shell pack was easy for me to pop open, examine my new purchase to see if it worked properly, and then (because I didn't need to use it right then and there) I just put it back in the clam shell pack, and locked it by pushing down on the indentations.

Obviously, I'm not the only one who discovered just how easy it is to reseal an Inova clam shell pack. (And I used to wonder why so many products come so tightly sealed in blister packs that use glue all along the edges. Yeah, it's a headache to tear into them. But now I see why they are used).

I've also always wondered why retailers will sometimes only let you return an item if it's unopened. Wouldn't a customer want to try out an item, to see if he wants to keep it?..... Now I realize it's because a bunch of low-lives pull this sort of $#^% all the time. Can't pull a substitution scam if you can't open a sealed package that makes it obvious the package has been opened. (Ex. Anything that has shrink-wrap on the outside of the box).

Inova should consider making their clam-shell packs, a headache to open.

I HATE seeing stuff like that. At my local Target, I brought a Leatherman package to a clerk because it clearly had a two-dollar stamped steel looking folding knife in there that did not match the thing that originally came in that package. Of course, to a light/knife/gun nut like me, that was SCREAMING fraud, but to the average everyday sheeple, it was not out of the ordinary.

Retail stores that accept returns do so for customer service. I worked at a grocery store, and I could not FOR THE LIFE of me understand why we took whatever the heck we were given. People would return expired orange juice that was the store brand juice for a different chain of stores!

I learned a marketing aspect to the problem and a potential reason for loose guidelines on returns: Of the people who know they can bring crap into your store and get a refund, a certain average percentage of those people will shop at your store for the added convenience. Bringing customers to your store is worth a certain amount of money per year. For instance, at the grocery store I worked at, a new customer was worth $5000 a year. If you have to take back a $2 carton of juice, or a $25 turkey from customers to make a certain percentage of them come back as regular customers, then it's worth it to take the hit on bad returns. I don't know what a customer is worth per year to a retail chain like Target, but it's probably more than $5000. If they have to take a hit every now and then, it's most likely just seen as the cost of doing business.

It stinks, but the alternative would be to have a more restrictive returns process that would in turn inconvenience the other thousands of good, honest people who need to return defective or unwanted, wrong-sized products and make them jump through hoops and produce receipts and have the items scrutinized which makes people wait in line, which makes them unwilling to take a chance and buy things that they might otherwise purchase if they knew "the could just return it for any reason". It's a trade-off.

sween1911 said:

I don't know what a customer is worth per year to a retail chain like Target, but it's probably more than $5000. If they have to take a hit every now and then, it's most likely just seen as the cost of doing business.

It stinks, but the alternative would be to have a more restrictive returns process that would in turn inconvenience the other thousands of good, honest people who need to return defective or unwanted, wrong-sized products and make them jump through hoops and produce receipts and have the items scrutinized which makes people wait in line, which makes them unwilling to take a chance and buy things that they might otherwise purchase if they knew "they could just return it for any reason". It's a trade-off.

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You raise some excellent points. And I can definitely see why a small Mom & Pop grocery store would take the occasional hit. I can see why a well-off business owner with one or two stores would take the occasional hit. But to a place like Wal-mart, Target, and Lowes; the AVERAGE customer is worth zero to them.

Items that have been substituted for cheaper ones are accepted as returns for an entirely different reason..... Store clerks either don't give a damn, or are not properly trained to look out for such scams. It's one thing to take back a product you know was substituted, for the sake of the Big Picture. Quite another because a clerk doesn't know it's a scam or wouldn't care if he did! And they don't care because they get paid crap wages by the penny-pinchers in Corporate. Is it any wonder that a retail clerk is likely to not care or to do a half-@$$ed job? As for training, you think Corporate is going to spend more money to improve the very basic training that many clerks get?

Go to Wal-mart on any Saturday or Sunday. The line for returns is indeed long, customers ARE made to jump through hoops, and Corporate doesn't care. Why? Cause they know those very same customers are going to keep coming back, anyway. Wal-mart has stores all over America, they do indeed have a great selection at cheap prices. Customer service is a joke, and Corporate doesn't care!

"Those customers will be back, where else will they go for selection and cheap prices?"

And it's true...... Big places don't care if they lose one customer or even a few. Unlike a small business, it won't effect THEIR bottom line.

Can people who do this actually get arrested?
It seems like they could just say "oh, I'm sorry, my mistake, you're completely right, here's the model I really wanted to return" and hand you the more expensive flashlight/camera/whatever.
They make no profit this way, but they end up looking clean and no cop would ever bust them.
They can then go ahead and do the same thing at another store.

Monocrom said:

Is it any wonder that a retail clerk is likely to not care or to do a half-@$$ed job?

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I think many retail clerks hate the places they work in so much that they often don't say a thing even if they do notice a scam, for the sheer pleasure of knowing Corporate is getting screwed over something.