Stolen Merchandise
458 words eaten alive on April 1, 2009 - Filed Under Business, sellers, thieves -
I’ve written often about shoplifters we catch or find in the store, but I’ve never written about what happens when someone sells us stolen goods. It happens from time to time, and short of strapping everyone up to a lie detector there’s really no way for us to know ahead of time. One such incident happened a couple months back.
2 kids came into the store with an Xbox 360, a small stack of games and a couple controllers, saying they were selling it for a friend who was at work or something, don’t remember their exact excuse, but since it was a large purchase amount I asked how old they were. 15, no id, so I refused to buy and told them that whoever owns it would have to bring it in along with his ID.
A few hours later a different guy came in with what I assume are the same items. He said that he just doesn’t play it anymore and wants to sell it. He confirmed that he owns it all, so I bought the lot for $220.
Later that day someone else comes into the store to say his apartment had been robbed. He doesn’t know the kids, but he knows the guy who sold the stuff to me. I called up the seller and he claims he didn’t know it was stolen and that some kids had paid him $20 to sell the items to me.
So, the owner wants his stuff back but he doesn’t want to give me the $220 I paid for it all. he also doesn’t want to go to the cops to press charges against the guy who sold it to me. The guy who sold it to me refuses to give the money back because he says he already gave it to these kids who no one seems to know. Someone must be lying about that though otherwise how would the owner have found out who the seller was?
Now here I am sitting on $220 worth of goods that I can’t sell because they were stolen, but that no one wants to either pay for or go to the cops about. If I just give it back I’m out $220, which is a lot of money to me. It’s my quarterly auto insurance payment, hell, it’s half my regular car payment. Business is ok but it’s not so good that I can throw away money.
What would you do in my shoes? Give it back and take the full loss? Call the cops yourself to press charges against the seller? Tell the owner to either buy it back, give it up or call the cops?
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2 Responses to “Stolen Merchandise”
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Seems like a mess,maybe is app was broken into or maybe was just a scam to get some money and thinking he could get money and the xbox back from you,if indeed it was stolen i guess best thing to do would be to give it back, but be nice to have some sort of proof that the apparment was actually broken into,,,next time someone wants to sell anything over 100$ ask for I.D ,,,cant you see his xbox live gamer profile if he registered it wont it say the serial number and owner of the xbox address,if he did not buy it from someone else that is.
I think that it might be a whole scam.
If someone came in and tried selling it to me without and I.D., I would have done the same thing.
Even if it was theirs, their parents could have brought it to you. Now with this guy coming in with it later on, and selling it to you and then someone mysteriously says that their place was broken into and their X-box 360 was stolen, I myself would find that a little fishy!
Why would someone call you right away and say that their X-box was stolen and wondering if you had purchased it, when you had just bought it within the hours preceding.
Like I said it seems fishy to me and I think that if the guy really wanted his X-box back than he could at least give you some money as a reward for finding it for them, even if it was unknownly. I mean sure, maybe you would still lose some money, but in the end I think that it would be better to lose say..$100 than $220.
I hope everything works out for the better, and that you dont lose any money or business for this. I know that I will be continuing to shop at Gator-Byte, seeing as I have had some great courtious service and lots of useful tips and info.