Spaghetti western
 

Couple Gets Pasta Sauce In Camcorder Box

ST. LOUIS -- The Rittenbergs are pretty steamed over their sauce.

Jim and Melisa Rittenberg said they bought a $1,600 Sony camcorder at a suburban St. Louis Best Buy.

But when they opened the box, the Rittenbergs said they found a jar of Classico pasta sauce, a telephone cord and an outlet cover where the electronics were supposed to be. According to the couple, store officials told them the box was sealed, so the switch couldn't have happened at the Best Buy.

So far, the Rittenbergs are stuck without a camcorder.



http://www.wdsu.com/news/10406617/detail.html?taf=no

oh dear..

I wonder how that happened?

Obviously the jar of sauce was intended to give the box the same weight as the camcorder, so nothing would be suspicious just from handling the box. It's obviously a case of theft from somewhere within the distribution chain.

Nice to see that Sony is stepping up to accomodate these folks, according to CNN.

Maybe its just me. But any time I buy something even its just for $5 bucks. I open the box to make sure its not broken.

Maybe one of the factory workers wanted to give their family a little present for Thanksgiving?

Years ago a friend bought a vhs player "sealed in it's box" from two cats on a motorcyle. He paid $50 dollars for a brick!

Apparently this is a somewhat common scam where a person purchases a product, carefully opens the box and replaces the item and then reseals it before returning it to the store for a refund. The next customer unwittingly buys what amounts to a big paper weight.

Pasta sauce in camcorder carton is just one example of common scam

That's got to be really disappointing to plunk down your hard earned cash only to open the box and discover you've been had.

Yeah, it is a pretty common scam. I used to work at an electronics retailer and we had to take to opening all returned computers - regardless of having to mark them down to sell them later - because we had people buying computers and returning their old computer in the box. A lot of the guys that run this scam are very good. You have to have a clerk at the return desk that really checks all the seals on returned merchandise to make sure that there isn't two layers of tape on the bottom of the box. If anybody was wondering, this is one of the reasons that there are restocking fees at most major retailers.