What Happens To Returned Kitchen Appliances At HomeGoods?

Discount department stores like HomeGoods can be a great place to shop for cheap kitchen appliances, but not every purchase may live up to your best hopes. HomeGoods does have a fairly generous return policy that covers items in original condition, but what happens to items that people do bring back? It's fair to think that kitchen appliances returned in original condition with store packaging would be put back out on the sales floor. But according to former and current employees, they meet the same fate of other store returns: a locked trash can. The can is locked for the same reason returns are sometimes destroyed before going in, to prevent salvage and resale by employees and scavengers.

HomeGoods has its reasons for such a wasteful policy, one being legal liability from a customer becoming sick or injured from any returned item. A low-staffed store like HomeGoods cannot guarantee that an appliance that spent time at a customer's home is still safe to use, even if it almost certainly is. But perhaps the most compelling reason from HomeGoods' perspective is the bottom line: it's less expensive to simply throw away a return than resell or donate it.

HomeGoods' garbage-first approach to returned kitchen appliances is somewhat common among retailers. The trash is what happens to most returned Aldi items as well, and largely for the same reasons. Aldi, like HomeGoods, is focused on keeping operating costs low, and sorting through returns for how resellable they are increases operating costs. It's easier and more affordable to trash it and move on.

Not every retailer agrees, though. Costco's returned kitchen appliances can meet a variety of fates depending on their condition, including being resold by the store that took the return. But Costco may alternatively return the appliance to the manufacturer, donate it, or auction it to licensed third-party resellers. A much larger and well-staffed business than HomeGoods, Costco goes to great lengths to get money out of its returned appliances. There, the trash is a last resort.

From a consumer consumption perspective, HomeGoods trashing its returns doesn't make much of a difference. But for the buyer trying to be mindful of wastefulness, high-end HomeGoods kitchen items like Smeg and Breville appliances are better off being resold or donated before going back to the store. Give them a second chance at usefulness, instead of just becoming more garbage.