Hmmm . . . I'll have to think on this one for a bit.
Buying something with no intention of ever using it, and then taking advantage of return policies to cover your losses if you can't sell it still strikes me as something that's not entirely above board. It costs the store to stock the merchandise and process the return. It also costs the store sales that they would have otherwise made (but won't be able to because they're out of stock). You're directly hurting the store by doing this . . . which seems wrong.
The only difference between my example with the TV and this is some opened packaging.
There is an assumption that the store is either (a) going to sale the unit or (b) is unable to sell the returned unit. If the store does sell the returned unit, no sale was lost and the store still had the float from the original sale. So they weren't really hurt by it. If they are unable to sell the unit, there's no guarantee they would have been able to sell it before.
I'd assume that if you're selling the unit for more than retail that there's enough demand that the store would sell the item easily. Actually, that's an assumption that you pretty much have to make if you're expecting to resell at a higher price. Most electronics stores will ship items from store branch to store branch, so it's not like you're breaking into untapped markets either. You're taking advantage of stock shortages after helping to create them, so you're depriving the store of a sale (if you return the item), or you're depriving the buyer of the ability to purchase the item at a store (if you make your sale). Either way you're having a net negative impact on the world. Just seems like a kinda dickish way to make a couple bucks.
There's also no guarantee that it wouldn't have been returned for some valid reason.
I like that fact that you admit that the return in question is not a valid return. I agree that any purchase carries with it some risk of return. I like to think of this as an honour system . . . kinda like the take a penny, leave a penny jar. Sure, you could walk up and empty the jar every time you go by . . . but that's not really morally defensible action. It's abuse . . . just like buying a TV for the superbowl and then returning it, or buying a video game system with the intention of reselling it and then returning it.
I liken this to the "pirates" of videos/games. People claim that the manufactures/producers are losing money - that makes a couple of false pretenses - the main one being the user would have bought the game to begin with.
It's quite possible that every person who downloads software illegally would otherwise find different ways to entertain themselves, and the software companies would never make any money from them to begin with. I don't believe that it's unreasonable to assume that many people who want to play video games illegally download them and play them rather than buy them from the store though. The fact of the matter is - we don't know what would happen if these people were to behave ethically because they're not doing so.
Huh? They made the sale.. to you.
And if you return it, they will sell it to someone else. Unless it's an item that will literally sit there and never sell, but that
As you know, timing is important with regards to this kind of thing (otherwise nobody would buy the higher than store price item). Keeping stock on shelves costs money. Processing a return costs money. Re-ordering sold out stock costs money. Especially with electronics, prices change quickly. A TV being sold just before Christmas is worth more to a store than a TV being sold in February because it can be sold for more. An item returned after Christmas will sit on the shelves for longer, and sell more slowly. That all costs the store in overhead.
I can maybe justify some kind of acceptability for scalping people for playstations (as those people could always wait a while, nobody has a gun to the head), but returning an unsuccessful scalping run smacks of dickishness any way you look at it.