[Spooky23]

Lol. I worked there in college and someone had the great idea to put things like hard disks and video cards on the shelf instead of behind the counter to reduce labor costs.

People ran all sorts of scams, most commonly putting a $500 video card in a $20 box. I’d catch them all of the time, but if you reported it you had a chance of losing commissions when loss prevention people interviewed you.

Solution: avoid the aisle.

The other crazy one was what we called the crime bus. A charter bus of Asian people, usually Chinese, would pull up and flood the store with like 30 people on a weekday, pinning down every employee with stupid questions. Another group would loot the aisles of hard disks, various video/other cards and certain inks. I was there for one — it was absolutely insane.

They put that stuff back behind the counter a few months later.

[icedchai]

They'd also accept returns of software if you gave a plausible excuse. My friend would usually say one of the floppies had a read/write error, and he changed his mind.

Too bad they went broke! In the 90's, CompUSA was one of the only local places that had a large selection of computer parts.

[reilly3000]

This is why we can't have nice things like local computer stores :/

[mjayhn]

Losing the ability to rent PC games when I was about 8 rocked my world. I'll never forget the last game I ever rented, SimTown. Going to that rental store was almost as exciting as walking through a computer expo.

[pkaye]

Years back a coworker was telling me his scheme for buying a video card and returning it with an older model in the box. Only thing was when he opened up the box his card was already swapped with an older one by a previous customer. So he had to go back to the store and plead that he was the victim. They eventually accepted the return if he testified to the police officer (probably for an insurance claim.)

[icedchai]

It's sad how many stories of these sorts of scams there are, even in this one thread. Retailers really get screwed, and we all pay for it.

Also, I wonder how many customers even failed to notice they wound up with an older card. Probably not all of them!

[Spooky23]

It happens in enterprise space too. Over the years my team or I have caught all sorts of shady shit from resellers.

[geofft]

> People ran all sorts of scams, most commonly putting a $500 video card in a $20 box. I’d catch them all of the time, but if you reported it you had a chance of losing commissions when loss prevention people interviewed you.

Wait, what? The loss prevention people wanted you to not prevent loss?

[Spooky23]

No, they would basically interrogate you.

Sitting in some windowless office at $5.75 an hour for two hours basically cost me $100-300 in commissions from lost sales.

Those jobs were great in the 90s. One year I paid for my College tuition in the week before Christmas.

[S_A_P]

ahh the good old days when college tuition was actually reasonably affordable. My tuition at Texas A&M was IIRC between 1 and 3 grand a semester...

[danielfoster]

I guess they would take away the commission for this sale and maybe question past sales?

[nkrisc]

Their job isn't to prevent loss, it's to catch people.