My wife has been addicted to watching dumpster diving videos where people end up finding brand new expensive things thrown away by retailers. It made me remember reading somewhere that the reason they do this is because it’s cheaper for them to throw away or destroy their inventory than it is to give it away or sell at discount. HOW???
I don’t see how they could possibly save money by destroying inventory rather than putting it on extreme discount. Surely they could make more money selling at an extreme discount versus no money at all by destroying .
In: Economics
I didn’t see this reason in the replies, but it’s an important one: Often the retailer doesn’t actually own the product.
Big box stores like Home Depot often only purchase the product from the wholesaler at the moment they sell the product to a customer.
Which means it isn’t Home Depot’s merchandise in the store, and Home Depot doesn’t get to decide what happens with the unsold merchandise.
This also happens with brick-and-mortar bookstores. Usually the books still belong to the publishers until they’re brought to the registers. If the book doesn’t sell, the publishers have the bookstores rip the covers off the book and return the covers, because the covers are small and don’t weigh much. The pages are thrown out.
An unsold cabinet is big and heavy, so shipping it back to the wholesaler is expensive. So wholesalers have Home Depot destroy the cabinet instead.
“Why doesn’t Home Depot donate it?” it’s not Home Depot’s cabinet, so they can’t. The wholesalers aren’t interested in vetting hundreds of charities around the country, nor arranging for transportation for the cabinets. So they get smashed and thrown into the compactor.
Latest Answers