Legalities of Rewrapped Games?

TheQuantumShift asks: "I'm part of a small video game retail franchise, and as such deal with corporate competition on a daily basis. Usually this is not a problem as we undersell the big corporate chains most of the time. One thing that really bothers us is the fact that these stores take opened, clearly used games, re-shrinkwrap them and sell them as new. One customer opened a shrink wrapped 'new' GBA game, only to find the previous owners receipt. Ex-Employees have confirmed the practice. This seems a little more than dishonest, and we would like to get them called on it. The trouble is, we have no idea where or who to start with. And exactly what proof we should have ready. We've been toying with the idea of contacting Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc... directly, but I believe this isn't the way to go. As long as these big corps order tens of thousands of systems and titles, is Sony really going to care? Any insights would be much appreciated." Caveat, Consumer.

Comments

Storefront or warehouse or middle-man wholesaler?

[innocent_white_lamb]

I think it would be difficult to demonstrate where the problem lies. Did the store employees do the re-wrapping? Or did the wholesale jobber that the store purchased the software from do it? Or someone else?

A while ago I read about a fellow who purchased a new retail-box hard drive from Best Buy and got it home and unwrapped it to find that it contained a can of tuna instead of the hard drive he was expecting! That particular can of tuna had been sent to the country where the hard drives were being manufactured (according to the tuna distributor) so someone at the factory had heisted the hard drive.

This could be a similar situation.

But of course, you said that one customer found the previous customer's receipt in the box, so that rules some of this out.

The software stores around here have signs up that say "No Return on Opened Software, Exchange for Exact Same Title Only".

Testing

[LordLucless]

One of my friends worked at a small retail store that re-wrapped their software. AFAIK, they didn't accept returns, but they encouraged their employees to take the games home and play them, the reshrink them, so that their employees would know what they were talking about when asked for help by the customer.

Of course, most employees took the software home, copied it, and never played it again, but hey. It's the thought that counts, right?