Channel 11 consumer: Package returns can mean huge savings for you

With prices sky-high, it pays to shop around and look for deals. There are some deals in our area that seem just too good to be true.

TVs starting at $1. Mattresses for no more than $300. Consumers are saving up to 80% on everything from home goods to electronics to clothes for the family. These discounts are the real deal. But here’s the catch: They are all items up for resale because someone else returned them.

One of the biggest resellers in the Pittsburgh region is M@C Discount. The company offers an online auction platform, selling 25,000 products every day. Those products come from “Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, you name it,’ says M@C Discount co-founder, Kellen Campbell. The company buys returned and overstock items and consumers bid on those products. “Everything we sell starts at a dollar. There is no reserve price. It’s free to bid so almost all of this stuff sells,” says Campbell.

And you can find just about anything on the company’s online auction site: www.mac.bid

In Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, you can find a resale store called Binz. Known for its furniture and mattresses at a deep discount, it’s a popular store in the neighborhood. “When you can save 40 to 60%, it’s a no-brainer,” says co-owner Michael Smith. With “business booming”, he is working on opening another store and warehouse to store all the goods. https://binzpittsburgh.com/

Both Binz and M@C Discount buy returned items from wholesalers who buy them from big box retailers. And with Americans returning 16.5% of retail items purchased in 2022, according to the National Retail Federation, there are plenty of products ending up for resale.

A spokesperson for Amazon tells Channel 11, they try to resell returned items if they meet their high standards. Amazon also states over the past three years, it has donated 100 million returned items to charities worldwide. Otherwise, the products are sold to wholesalers or they end up being sold as used through AmazonWarehouse.com.

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