No such thing as a free return

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2022

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lenient policies have shoppers making more returns than ever — around half a trillion dollars worth of products. Today, we find out the fate of some of those returned goods.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:06.6	A couple weeks before Christmas, around 5.30 a.m. on a Friday morning, I went down to a
0:10.9	little strip mall in Raleigh, North Carolina to meet up with Aslan Spencer.
0:15.9	Good morning.
0:16.9	Are you Aslan?
0:17.9	Yeah.
0:18.9	Hey, Alexi.
0:19.9	Nice to meet you.
0:20.9	This is our tenant.
0:21.9	Aslan and her friend, Michaela Ridgeway, have camped overnight in near freezing temperatures
0:27.0	under the awning of the Treasure Hunt bin Megastore.
0:30.3	We peer through the store's front windows to scout out what's inside.
0:33.5	Got a robo vacuum, a air fryer.
0:37.1	It's a big open space filled with rows of long black bins stacked high with all sorts of
0:43.0	consumer goods.
0:44.0	Just ready to be plucked.
0:45.5	It sounds like some people just see an instant pot, but you see an instant pot could be anything.
0:51.2	Yeah.
0:52.2	It's fun.
0:53.2	Instant pots, so it's $30, $40 in our eyes.
0:55.2	Yeah, we really see money that we see.
0:57.4	I don't, I'm like, there's an instant pot, that's $30 right there.
	...

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