Well, I sent off my first "guinea pig" test items to the Amazon trade-in program. However I was wondering, what exactly are they doing with these items? It seems obvious they they find a bulk buyer who them tries to re-sell them, but possibly NOT! I'm pretty sure its a third party that recieves, reviews and credits the items on the bahalf of amazon. But I still wonder, are they actually able to re-sell most of this stuff somewhere? I get a sort of bad feeling that its a secret way to physicaly destroy items that would normally end up on the used market. Imagine many big multi-national comapnies coming together to create a front corporation that buys used items from all sources and them just crushes them, while getting checks from the manufactuers for doing so. Not nesassarily true, but not an unrealistic speculation.
Amazon has their own used shit store front which you can usually find in the used section of games/music/books
The stuff is probably sold to 3rd world or developing countries. Pretty much the same thing happens with cars. Thousands of used cars leave Japan for China, Russia and other places in Asia. Yakumo
Here's your answer http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?ie=UTF8&marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER&me=A2L77EE7U53NWQ
How do the used groceries work? Are you just buying a box of cookies that someone's already eaten from?
I know about amazon warehouse's existance. Not all the items are ending up there. I also feel most of amazon warehouse's inventory consists of returns. I also know of what Yakumo mentioned, but not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, I still think destruction is possible outcome. Goodwill and Salvation army destroy hundreds-thousands of piles of stuff every year. Some of it is collectables and some resellable, but they don't have the space, witheral etc to sort it for re-sale.
It's not used groceries. =P It's actually stuff that is close to its expiration date. So if you use it quickly or don't care about those dates then you can save a bit of money.
Yup I would bet on that, a few years back our second hand market was flooded by playstation 1 consoles, all from Europe where some company was doing a trade in offer on them. PS We dont get many cars from overseas, but we do have a big market for Japanese engines...
Tons of Dreamcast units were shipped for resale to mainland China in the early 2000's - as the console was on its last legs elsewhere. If it has monetary value I'm sure someone will find a way to sell it - so I'm not sure about this conspiracy theory of yours... People rarely throw money away.
I'd expect it works the same way as MusicMagpie here in the UK, by which anything which is worth value is resold, otherwise it is stripped down to it's component parts and recycled (booklets made into recycled paper, plastic melted down and reused, etc.)
