[Joe8Bit]

Had limited experience of this while doing strategy work for a large UK fasion retailer.

A significant proportion of items from a new range had been returned as faulty. When they investigated they realised a new factory they were using for this range had slipped a huge amount of bad items through the reatilers QA process. They ended up writing down the whole line and donating it to Oxfam/Redcross to be sold in their charity shops, very similar to Goodwill. It was 100,000's of items.

They were already writing the goods down as a loss against their balance sheet and they managed to recoup a small percentage of that loss as a tax deduction for the charity donation.

It didn't happen often, but it wasn't the first time they'd done it

[Joe8Bit]

FWIW this is also a relaitvley common practice for administrators when dealing with bankrupt companies. Donating goods they can't sell is often cheaper than storing them or paying for them to be disposed of!

[lozaning]

Being wrote off an entire 787 Dreamliner and donated it to the Pima Air And Space museum. It was going to cost to much to fix and have recertified after it went through testing, so they gave the whole thing away.

[frandroid]

Possibly the second largest donated item ever, after the aircraft carrier Russia "donated" to India (I think it was in need of $2B worth of repairs...)

[oh_sigh]

The family that started the Patagonia brand donated 1600 mi^2 of land to Chile to form a national park. That's way bigger than a boat(and probably cheaper to maintain too)!

[kayfox]

The first 3 flight test aircraft were donated:

ZA001 Went to Nagoya, Japan.

ZA002 Went to Pima Air and Space Museum (as you noted).

ZA003 Went to the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

As for the other three:

ZA004 may still be with Boeing.

ZA005 was scrapped.

ZA006 appears to have been sold to Mexico for a VIP transport.

[wincy]

If you try to return a mattress you bought online this happens too. They'll have a truck from the Salvation Army stop by. Small write off I suppose. I "returned" an Amazon mattress but my wife didn't like it, and because of COVID they just refunded the money and told me I could keep it. I don't know what I'm gonna do with this extra king sized mattress though, guess I'll make a rather luxurious guest bedroom.

[throwaway0a5e]

I wonder if any of the price increase OP noticed is from liquidation retailers (both brick and mortar and online) buying and reselling a greater fraction of these runs of "faulty" items since that lets them recapture a greater percentage of what would be a loss.