I figured. :)

Great to hear

J

Yea I'm glad it all worked out, and they were very helpful making sure it did.
As for your statement Myka
"They ship out hundreds of items everyday. There is NO WAY they can inspect every single thing that goes out, it would take too many man hours. " Thats a pretty crazy thing to say. J&L runs a great online store and I've never had an issue but if doing a job properly would take to many man hours then they need to hire more people or take less orders. Simple as that! You cant do something wrong or incorrectly due to it taking "to many man hours". If I did my job improperly and blamed it on an excuse like that I would be out the door before I even finished telling them that. That’s just my opinion about it.

Having said that, it is an understandable error and I'm happy it was resolved. And this will by no means stop me from placing orders with them

If anything, it gives me confidence in their post sales support. Sounds like they dealt with things in the best way possible.

Look in any industry, once a company reaches a certain size (and often right from the very first day) they don't inspect every item. Do you think every TV, DVD player, and digital camera that Future Shop sells is inspected? No they aren't. You buy it, you take it home, you inspect it, and try it out. If it doesn't work or you notice it's scratched, you take it back. That is a very common procedure.

Ask them at J&L, they'll tell you exactly what I just did.

Does it matter how busy the store is?

IMO there's no excuse for selling used items as new.

Protocols & procedures should be in place for returned items to prevent them being sent out again without inspection.

Frankly, being busy is not a valid excuse.

I understand that new items may not be inspected, but every returned or used item is supposed to be inspected & then either sent back to the manufacturer, re-conditioned or re-sold with appropriate labeling (box opened, re-conditioned item etc.).

If a fridge, microwave oven or kettle was returned used it would be obvious, therefore it wouldn't be sold to a customer until it has been through some kind of reconditioning.

If a digital camera or laptop was returned, would it be sent back out with a memory card full of somebody else's images or a hard drive full of somebody's documents?

A skimmer that has been used is also obvious & should not have been boxed up & placed back amongst normal stock.

In any case J&L made a mistake and have rectified it.

It's just that IMO a mistake like this should & could have been avoided in the first place.

.

I have a habbit of looking in boxes to see if things look okay. This developed as a result of purchasing a 10 year old Weed Eater from Walmart, being sold the same defective kitchen faucet twice ! and buying an empty $ 60 bottle of perfume for my wife for Christmas and as if I didn't feel bad enough,I was treated like a criminal by the store employees and manager when I asked to exchange it the next day. So things do slip through do to human error but the most important thing is how well that company handles the situation and it sounds like J&L did their upmost.

i know there staff are always very reasonable and helpful, i figured they'd work it out quickly

Sorry, it may be common but I don't find that acceptable.

I've had very good service from J&L, and mistakes do happen, but let's put aside that and talk in general terms.

Businesses shouldn't strive to be mediocre and consumers should expect the best possible service/product (within reason). No one expects them to be perfect, but we do expect them to take the necessary steps to correct and improve in problem areas. Our desires to become better is what fuels innovation and success. If we were all like "meh, it will do", we'd still be living in caves (yes a bit dramatic...)

It's great that businesses like FS and J&L will take returns without a hassle, but my time is very valuable and the less I have to spend with returns, the better.

But with all this said, the original OP should have just contacted J&L immediately, and the problem would have been resolved in an instant.