Consider This from NPR - The Fate Of That Unwanted Air Fryer After You Return It

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

The pandemic has led to a huge rise in online shopping. And record spending from last year means record returns. But what happens to the items we send back is often a mystery. NPR correspondent Alina Selyukh reports on the like hood of an unwanted holiday gift making it into another customers hands. And Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi of NPR's Planet Money podcast visits a bargain bin store in North Carolina where dogged resellers rifle through mounds of unwanted items to find something they can turn for a profit. Listen to the full Planet Money episode here. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail]. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Alexi Horowitz-Gazi has a thing for a certain kind of camping equipment. You know, like solar-powered string lights for your campsite, just to add that little magical ambiance. You could say it's glamorous camping equipment. A camping wine glass or carafe or like a camping cutting board. I'm on the edge of glamping with all of these things. I'm not comfortable enough to just like say I'm a glamper, but I've been chipping away at the edges. All right. So when he's not borderline glamping, Alexi is a host of NPR's Planet Money, a podcast about the economy. And even though he doesn't like to admit it, a big reason why Alexi is willing to spend money on these less-than-practical items is because if

he doesn't need them, he can just send them back. I always want the, like, option to return those things. Since Alexei is a repeat returner, he wanted to look into what happens to these things after he gets his money back. And I started diving into the kind of world on YouTube of all of these entrepreneurs, all these resellers who kind of buy pallets or boxes of bulk returns to places like Amazon or Walmart. Got a full body mirror. That's a desk. This is like a, it's like the pieces to a desk. This is a bookcase. Okay. Bookcase. All right. You got some rugs under here. And it was through looking at, through some of those videos that I discovered that there are these retail stores, these bargain bin stores where, you know, enterprising business folk have taken these empty retail stores and decided to fill them up basically directly with huge pallets full of returned goods.

Which is how he recently found himself up before dawn in Raleigh, North Carolina, waiting for a pair of doors to open. Does everybody rush in at the same time? Yeah, they all run. And they push, they shove, they throw stuff. It's a battlefield in there, literally. Consider this. Tis the season for returning all those holiday gifts that weren't quite a right match. So we're going to follow what happens after you get your refund and send that unwanted item back. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Friday, January 21st. This message comes from WISE,

the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. We have all collectively done a lot of online shopping during the pandemic. Electronics, clothes, furniture. And when those

things are purchased online, we are two to five times more likely to return them, which means record spending from last year has led to record returns. As a matter of fact, we will be crossing half a trillion dollars worth of products. Haitendra Chetravadi is a supply chain management professor of practice at Arizona State University. And that number, half a trillion dollars worth of returned product, that is more than the entire economy of Israel or Austria. Chetravadi spoke with NPR correspondent Alina Selyuk, and she asked him what the likely fate of a blanket she returned might be. Your blanket has a very high probability of being in a landfill. That item is going to go to a warehouse where if the blanket is lucky, somebody is going to inspect it to see if there is any damage to it. Those lucky items may be sent on to an outlet store or donated to a charity, but a lot of them get sent overseas in bulk.

And this blanket, along with other blankets and apparel, will be rolled up into a bale, just like you do a bale of cake. And Chaturvedi says if no one makes use of the blanket, it'll likely be trashed or burned. The resale company Optoro estimates U.S. returns create almost six billion pounds of landfill waste every year. That is what consumers don't realize. The life of a return is a very, very sad path. So that's one grim reality. But Planet Money's Alexei Horowitz-Ghazi discovered another outcome.

He followed some of those luckier items, which can end up at bargain bin stores, where dogged resellers comb through piles of returns in search of something to flip for a profit. Make sure your headphones are on good, though, because they will whack it right off of you. They will steal it off of you, too. He teamed up with some resellers who were camped out in the cold outside one of those stores long before the sun was up. Because in this world, the early bird really does catch the first worm. When I first meet Aslyn Spencer and Michaela Ridgway outside the Treasure Hunt Bin Megastore in Raleigh, North Carolina, they tell me the first lesson of the return

reselling business. Everyone else is competition. Does everybody like rush in at the same time? They all run. And they push, they shove, they throw stuff. It's a battlefield in there, literally. Today, a couple competitors have beat them to the front of the line, so they're going to have to be strategic. Aslan and Michaela use binoculars to spot treasures amidst the piles of returned goods inside. They then draw up a map and plan out little plays,

like a football coach. Okay, possibly one of us is going to go after the blender, and the other will go after the new wave air fryer over here, or the smokeless grill back there. Depending on where they go in front of us. Lesson number two, they tell me, is to zero in on the trendiest consumer items of the moment, things they can buy for the store's flat rate of $10

and sell for much more online. They got into this a couple years ago, Michaela explains, when weeded blankets were all the rage. Then it was air fryers, then massage guns. And then the next week, it'll feel like everyone has one. And so then we have to move on to a new item and get that. And then it just repeats. As the last minutes tick down before the doors open, it starts to feel like one of those World War I movies, when all the grim-faced soldiers are lined up in the trenches, waiting to run into no-man's land.

Until, finally, it's time. We're inside. This looks like an air fryer. Oh yeah, we've got a big air fryer. It's in a bin. Inside the store, it's a sensory overload. There are bright fluorescent lights, pounding pop music. It's like a little retail zombie apocalypse to the tune of Shape of Your Body. It's like Supermarket Sweep meets Mad Max. Oh, I almost got run over.

Did you get knocked out? Robo-vacuums? Oh, nice. Robo-vacuum. You're not going to get that pet drinking fountain? I'm not sure. Lesson number three, stay on task. Aslan and Michaela only grab things they can sell for $30 or more. They even check prices online right before they check out.

If the price it can sell for is too low, they won't buy it. I think we might put the weighted blanket back because they're kind of hard to sell right now. You're turning your back on your bread and butter? I know. I know. They spend about $160 each week and on average earn about $800, enough for them to pay their tuition at nursing school. I ask Aslyn and Michaela if they ever get tired living in this constant flow of returned gadgets and price fluctuations. And Aslyn tells me she dreams about not coming back almost every week.

But then we're like, what if they put out, you know, something really good and we miss it? You feel like you're going to miss something if you don't go. So it's like the Powerball, you know? You play nonstop and then that one time you don't play. Does it feel like an addiction, kind of? It is. Definitely addiction. Looking around as we check out at the piles of returned goods that might never find a second life, it's hard not to wonder about this system we've created. That is Planet Money host and reporter Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi.

You can hear a longer version of his foray into bargain shopping at the link in our show notes. It is Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.