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Archives
Looking back |
I'll bet you labor under the assumption that you'd have to go to a used record store, or at least a store that advertises used merchandise, to buy used CDs. I'd also imagine that you'd expect to save a few bucks buying used merchandise. I'll even wager that you've never doubted your understanding of the terms "used" and "new." Well, if you've held these truths to be self-evident, you have been misled. Don't feel bad, I've been suckered too. Here is my testimony. A few weeks ago I'd stopped in at a local Barnes & Noble store to pick up a book I'd been waiting for. Some months earlier, the disk from my copy of Los Lobos' Colossal Head had turned up missing. I don't normally buy CDs from big, out of town chains. I prefer to order my music from my friends at the only remaining independent record store in town. On this day however, I was up for an impulse buy and went back to the music department to see if I could find this disc. I found what I was after and paid for my purchases. As soon as I was seated in my car, I broke the shrink-wrap. I wanted to hear it again right away. Colossal Head isn't packed in a jewel box. It comes in a cardboard slipcase. I probed the recesses for the disk. As I extricated it, the miracle of static electricity caused a small slip of paper to cling to the disk as I pulled it from its protective case. I turned the slip over and recognized it as a register receipt. As I read it, I was amazed by what it revealed. The CD I held in my hands had been taken out of store inventory for in-store play by a Sam Goody store half a continent away. 19 months earlier in Arlington, Virginia, this disc had been taken off the rack. I also learned that this CD was worth $2.00 less as a new CD than it was worth now, used. My immediate reaction was curiosity and amusement. I wasn't really shocked by this revelation. I'd long known that one big store, Blockbuster Music, was well known for a policy of allowing customers to preview any CD in the store, including expensive imports. These titles, once opened and passed over by a customer, are re-wrapped and put back out for sale. Even so, I was curious to learn how a CD could go from inventory at a store belonging to one chain to the sales floor at a store belonging to an entirely different company. My detective work began with a call to the Sam Goody's in Virginia. I'd planned a cagey, low-key interrogation, but the manager, a charming woman named Naz wasn't interested in hiding anything. She was candid when she told me that while she wasn't in that store's employ back in March of 1996, she understood that back then the company's policy was to send old, in-store play CDs back to the Musicland/Sam Goody distribution center with the defective returns. She also innocently offered that current company policy for old, in-store play CDs is to put new shrink-wrap on them and put them back out in the racks for sale as new merchandise. She seemed to see nothing unusual about this practice. Re-wrapping CDs is not unusual. When merchandise gets shopworn and the wrapping torn, many stores will remove the damaged, factory cellophane and replace it with fresh shrink-wrap. No harm, no foul. Those CDs still have their security strips across the top of the jewel box. You know they're still factory new. If consumers can be trained to accept CDs without a factory seal as being new, then any CD that can be passed off as looking new can be sold as new. My second phone call put me in touch with Tom Rafferty. Mr. Rafferty is in charge of returns at Musicland's Franklin, Indiana distribution center. He also was quite forthcoming and seemed genuinely embarrassed by this lapse in his department's procedures. He speculated that the CD almost surely was re-wrapped by the store in Virginia and then returned for credit. He told me it was likely that the CD was then sent back to the record company, Warner Brothers, with the distribution center's returns. The label handles thousands of returns. They might normally be expected to recognize returns that aren't factory new and refrain from redistributing them. It's understandable that a mistake could be made with an item that's not packaged in a jewel box with a security strip. It's impossible to know exactly how this CD got from a Sam Goody's in Virginia to a Barnes & Noble in Kansas. Asking questions did reveal some odd practices by some retailers. To some retailers, a CD is still new if the store opens it and plays it, even for months, and only becomes used when you or I buy it. Consumers should be careful to look for authentic factory seals. If automobiles lacked odometers like CDs lacked seals, car dealers could sell demos as brand new as long as a good washing brought back the shine. Michael Newman writes music reviews for the Topeka Capital-Journal.
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