A Moral Consumer

So as I briefly mentioned in my last post that the current TV I own was purchased from Costco. One of the reasons I decided to make my purchase through them is because Costco has an unbeatable return/warranty policy. On every time they sell, there is a lifetime satisfaction guarantee. No questions. So, if I have a problem with my TV 3 years after the purchase date, I can just take it back to Costco and get a new one. Now this is where the dilemma comes in. Technically I can take my TV back at anytime, for any reason. In the year that I’ve owned my TV the price on it has dropped about $500 dollars. That’s quite a bit of money, but nothing too surprising for a tech item like a 50″ Plasma. But, I could return the TV, get my full original paid price and then purchase a new one for the lesser cost (plus the fact that it’d be a year newer). Now technically this is within the written rules of Costco’s policy, but it is not at all how it was intended to be used. A year from now, there is a good chance the TV could be down to $1000 cheaper than when I purchased it. Would I feel more pressure to return it then? I’ve pretty much decided it would be morally wrong to do so, and so I probably won’t. They’re not making it easier that they are building a Costco here in Columbus which would make returning such a large item 10x easier than hauling it down to Cincinnati. I’m still glad to know that if I run into any problems with the TV I’ll be able to get them resolved anytime.

This past weekend I ran into another situation involving “working the system” but for a substantially smaller item. I ended up giving in, but I’ll let you determine if it was wrong of me to do so. Anyway, last week Toys R Us ran a promotion in their video game department where if you bought 2 games at full price you get a 3rd one for free. I hadn’t bought a new 360 game in quite a while and a few had come out that I was interested in purchasing so I made my way down to TrU. Unfortunately once I got there, none of the games I wanted were in stock. I was somewhat bummed because I was really looking forward to playing some new games. I thought about it for a bit and an idea came to me. Why couldn’t I buy some games I didn’t care about, get gift receipts for them, and then once the games I did want came in stock, go exchange for those? I decided this was a valid option and went ahead and purchased 3 new xbox360 games. Soon I realized that this would not suffice as I had just dropped the cost of 2 brand new games and still didn’t have anything to play. So another idea came to me. Why not go ask another store if they’ll accept a no receipt unopened video game exchange and get one or two new games that I would play? I trekked on over to Target, saw that they had both the game I would exchange and the game I wanted, and went up to the customer service desk. The girl there was somewhat unsure if they were allowed to do a no receipt exchange on video games, but her co-worker said it was ok as long as it was un-opened. Apparently with Target you are limited to doing 2 exchanges a year (they take your driver’s license number). I didn’t want to do 2 games at the same spot, so later I went to Meijer and did the same thing and they had the same situation. Now I have brand new copies of Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Splinter Cell: Double Agent, as well as a gift receipt to take back to Toys R Us once Gears of War comes out. Honestly I don’t feel bad or like I did anything wrong. Sure it wasn’t how the system was designed to be used, but I don’t think it’ll hurt Target, Meijer or Toys R Us. If anything, I am now a very pleased customer with all 3 stores.

What would you have done in both situations?
Reviews on the games to come at a later date.