Think video game consoles, firearms, TVs, etc. No one wants to get burglarized but take the time to do this now and in the off chance it happens, it will be much easier to locate your stolen items when they are pawned/located otherwise and then the thieves can be prosecuted.
Over the Black Friday weekend my wife and I each purchased a Ring alarm system from Costco without knowing that the other had done the same. I got mine from our local Costco warehouse and she got hers from Costco.com, each of us using different Costco memberships (we have two separate memberships). We will of course be returning one and keeping the other, but we aren't sure anymore which one came from Costco.com and which one came from the warehouse. We're worried that if I accidentally use my membership to return the one she purchased, that might cause the one I purchased (which we'll still have) to no longer work because its serial number is tied to my membership and it will be considered returned.
Will this create a potential problem for us? For those of you who work at the checkstand, do you connect the serial number of an electronic product with our membership when we purchase it? Or is each product essentially identical for return/tracking purposes and we can just return either one under either membership? Thank you!
*date of purchase
I’ve seen people talk about returns for things like Apple products, maybe even some TVs, and stuff like that. These devices almost always require some kind of account to be associated with them to actually use them practically (like iCloud/iTunes account in the Apple world). So what do you guys do - always use a VPN and use a fake account with these items? Or is it somehow eventually safe to use? Wouldn’t Apple (or whatever brand/company) keep a database of lost or stolen items’ serial numbers and flag the registration?
Source: Used to work in an electronic resale store. If someone had an item that had been stolen and they were checking with us to see if it had sold, we’d encourage them to reach out to the police, and provide a serial number if they had it. You can kind of try to identify a stolen product based on physical features (it’s got a dent on the left side, stickers on the casing, etc.) but you create a much stronger case for yourself if you know the serial number of the item you’re claiming you own. This also means that the item is, to a degree, possible to track, since a lot of formal resale locations and pawn shops keep serial numbers on file for their inventory. Also good to have the model numbers for more common electronics, like TVs and DVD/Blu-ray players. Something like a PS4 has named versions to identify, but if you’re looking for a TV, it’ll help a lot to know it’s specifically a model SG123456 than just that it’s a 50” 4k with a black frame, as a whole lot of TVs can be.
I have recently begun to purchase used game consoles from eBay, refurbish them, and flip them once I am able to fix / test them. I recently purchased a lot of 5 broken Xbox Ones as/is for parts from eBay. I am unable to power any of them on due to bad motherboards, however, I am still able to potentially use other parts so it's not a complete loss.
My concern and question is four of these five have had the serial numbers on the bottom of the console deliberately cut from the sticker that usually contains this information. The only other place to retrieve a serial number is from the settings menu of the console when it is working. Since the motherboards are damaged and I don't have the tools or expertise required to fix them, I can't access a serial number to check if they are lost/stolen.
I am very confused as to why these would be missing. I sent a message to the seller but have yet to hear back from them. Has anyone ever had a similar situation happen on eBay? Since the purchase was for parts / as/is, is there anything that eBay will do in this situation? I don't know how to proceed but find it highly suspect that the serial numbers have been removed on four of the five consoles.
Thank you!
Hi everyone,
basically my house was robbed and I lost many of my items. I decided the following day to go and checkout shops on the high street that sold second hand goods.
I ended up locating some of my items in a popular electronics exchange shop. I informed them it was stolen providing a crime number, and a serial code. I returned only a couple hours later after going to the police station and was informed that it was in fact sold only an hour after I had left their shop. The police eventually came to seize my other item.
edit: I am in England Do I have any right to compensation? Would making a claim via small claims court be appropriate??
Thanks!
This should really only take you a few minutes, and could save you a lot of headache down the road. It gives the police something to look for, plus you can call pawn shops and other places where it might have turned up. Saw someone on the Pebble subreddit today saying he'd lost his watch somewhere, and was hoping that maybe someone would dig up his email address from it. Be prepared!
Don't want to straight up steal, or don't have the right opportunity? You can be swimming in brand new electronics with this one simple trick. You'll need the ability to acquire non-working items for next to nothing (I suggest eBay or a local salvage store, the kind that buys pallets of amazon returns and sells the contents cheap) and to buy the replacements from Amazon *or* eBay.
Those fancy gaming routers that look like upside down spiders. Expensive mice. Speaker systems. Thermal receipt printers. It's all there for the taking, if you can find a bad one that looks like it's in good shape on the outside.
Obviously not eBay if you've just bought the other item through eBay. Lots of big stores on there, good buyer protection, you'll be fine.
Now the tricky part. I'm a perfectionist and don't believe in leaving anything to chance, taking pride in perfectly recreating how things are supposed to look. I'm the reason Cruzer started changing the looks of all their flash drives and printing more stuff on them, because I was buying so many of the 32/64gb drives, swapping in an identical looking 16gb, and perfectly resealing the packaging to the point where no one could tell it had ever been opened, and I apply the same attention to detail here. Just because you're getting something for almost nothing doesn't mean you can't take pride in your work.
(Circled the southwest for a while doing this, eventually I was selling the repackaged Cruzers + receipt to locals for 80% of what they'd get back at the counter, and using a vinyl cutter that I got via barcoding (don't do barcoding in Wal-Mart, they are extremely wise to it, it was overplayed on Totse over a decade ago so by now it's just an easy way to get caught up in their Casino level facial recognition systems- more on that in another post) to put 5 cents of vinyl business names on, then selling them to those businesses for 200% retail. Ah, cocaine.)
Clean the old one. Use a spray bottle for detailing car interior plastic. Meguires is good stuff, follow the directions. You'll be amazed at how good you can make things look with a little cleaning. Use a Magic Eraser to remove bad scuffs, but be very very careful with it on glossy surfaces. It is possible to re-buff plastic into a shine.
You will need to exercise deft razorwork as the serial sticker is going to be resting in a small depression. The size and depth that you have to work with to get to the sticker will determine the difficulty you face. Use a do
... keep reading on reddit ➡I bought some headphones and had some issues with them, so I brought it back to the store for help. It turns out that the serial numbers didn't match (on the device and box it came in), and the guy very politely told me I'm screwed. They hadn't heard of anything like this happening "legit", and said some people try to return broken products and this is their way of stopping it. They have no way of knowing that anyone is telling the truth obviously.
They were only $80 headphones, but I saw some for upwards of $300, and I'm sure even that is fairly low-end... just wanted to let everyone know this occurred, and to always open the box in the store in front of someone and compare the S/N. I now own a broken pair of headphones (actually, it's only the mic so not a catastrophe).
This occurred at London Drugs btw. I believe what happened is someone just found a clear circular sticker and resealed the box then returned it, and the store never bothered to open the box and check. Any thoughts? Is it worth my time to fight this?
having the number and barcode available is helpful when ordering parts and accessories, looking up sizes for replacements, and downloading handbooks.
Many serial numbers are difficult to access once appliances are installed.
I wanna make money off it and sell the electronics but I want to know if they flag the consoles as stolen and GameStop or another retailer you sell the console will see that.
Helpful information for police reports and Insurance purposes
If you've ever been the victim of a Break & Enter, simply having the serial numbers of your stolen property will greatly aid and assist in any investigation.
Use your phone to take quick snaps of your serial numbers and e-mail them to yourselves to have on file.
I've created a dummy e-mail account (ie. serialnumbers@gmail.com) that has all the serial numbers of anything valuable in my house.
Literally just saved me about $400. About a month or two ago I got my lawnmower stolen out of my garage that my parents bought me for Christmas. My girlfriend and I literally just put it together and used it once or twice before it went missing. Luckily we still had the box it came in sitting in the garage as well and gave the police the serial number printed on the box. I honestly thought it was going to be a waste of time and we would never see it again.
Well yesterday the police actually called us because a group of well known burglars tired to sell it off at a pawn shop yesterday. I guess pawn shops actually run the serial number of things they get, because they ran the serial number of our lawn mower and came up stolen. The police are coming to drop off our lawnmower this morning. Not sure what happened to the guys who tired to pawn it, I'll find that out later.
So a lesson has been learned. Anything deemed valuable (game consoles, lawn care equipment, TV's, washer/dryer) we are going to write down the serial number of and keep in a google doc. I suggest everyone does the same to help them if they ever find themselves in a situation like us.
The police will ask you for the serial numbers when you report the items stolen.
