They'll get it eventually

With inflation the way it is the shingles might be worth more than the tablet.

Free roofing shingles!

If they fail, take them to the Leak Squad.

Maybe not.

Most likely a return scam being run through the stores in the area that has been successful because no one bothers to check the returns.

If you pull this crap you should be publicly beaten with a rubber hose

Scammers in the area take note?

I’ll take a box of slate shingles over a tablet any day.

Had a return been properly verified this wouldn’t have happened.

Just the attempt though, rubber hose time

Scammers been keen on the fact that brick & mortar stores/Amazon do not check returns for a long time. That's why Amazon third party vendors have started going to a "We'll just issue you a refund, you don't have to send the item back" policy. They know that Amazon will just take that returned item and throw it back on the shelf.

I know they often don't check returns, but now we know some specific stores that definitely don't. So there goes the risk in the scam.

They'll probably check returns for a couple of weeks, just for show, and then go right back to not checking. By that time, this story will have long been forgotten and they can still just write-off the inventory loss to their insurance.

Every time I purchase an expensive electronic item at a store, we open it at the register. If I am paying over $500 dollars, I will be damn sure I am not purchasing a brick...

Solid LPT

Maybe the person filling the boxes was new and thought tablets meant novelty ten commandments, you never know.

Apple or whoever can track the tablets through wifi, and read the emails sent through them.

It might be worth checking those video games, too. It's possible to get a shrinkwrapped video game case with no video game inside.

Isn't that the norm now - what you get is usually just a download code and no physical media (and even if you do the 24/7 online even for single player mode and day 1 patch of gigs and gigs will mean a day of downloading anyway).

Sucks to be a kid these days. No open, plug in, and get playing. It's open, plug in, have a parent with a credit card stumble through the registration process then child lock setup, update your system, then the next day start downloading your games, then have Christmastime internet slowdown take you into the new year, then suffer holiday online licensing server overloads block you from playing, and finally get ready to play and hear "time to go to bed, tomorrow is school - you can play more with your present when summer break comes if I don't tell you to play outside instead.

Yeah, I can see why tabletop gaming and mindless mobile gaming is booming.

You got that right! I bought a video game at Best Buy as a Christmas gift for one of my sons. When he opened it on that morning, it was filled with 6 blank CD-R’s instead of the real disks. Best Buy refused to make it right since we had already opened it. That was the last time I bought anything from them. It was over 15 years ago.

Best Buy is notorious for this problem. Used to be a website that documented people’s issues with them and bogus items.

PC games maybe.

Console games come with a disk that has at least a portion of the game on disc. Usually there is an update though, and you have to wait for the game to install as well (its considerably faster than my download speeds though.)

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They might be used though 😮

Pringles would be fine, but shingles ? That’s a new low.

"Yes I purchased this tablet last week but when I opened the box, there was no tablet and instead it was filled with Pringles."

"It looks empty sir..."

"Well, I was hungry."

I once saw someone try to return an Xbox 360 at Walmart. Employee opens the box to check it and there's a binder of paper In it.

Store employees with access to shrink wrap. We would make a copy of the software but always put original back in the box.

BS

In some cases I think it's an inside job.

In the long run it’s probably cheaper for the stores to take the approach of not checking returns, and just paying refunds to people who end up with these kind of fake returns.

So I have done this before retail stores don't care and I have even had a box opened but they don't and they can't prove whether or not you did it so it's just something they move on with. I was much younger and stupid at the time and do not do anything like this anymore as a side note because it's bad Karma and hopefully these people were able to brush it off and laugh and just get a new one.

It's the stores fault for not checking the returns but maybe inside job as bestbuy is very strick on store returns...

I do that too for especially for phones/tablets to make sure that it isn't locked or anything like that. Too many stories of people returning the wrong thing on purpose or stolen devices and the buyer being SoL

Had a lady sputter excludes at me that the ipad box was full of tiles when she bought it years ago. I proved she rewrapped by pointing out that the top of the box and the bottom of the box had different serial numbers or something like that.