[HN Gopher] Seven Days at the Bin Store
___________________________________________________________________
Seven Days at the Bin Store
Author : zdw
Score : 114 points
Date : 2025-06-05 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (defector.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (defector.com)
| louwrentius wrote:
| These Bin Stores show to me that the pricing of products doesn't
| really reflect their true cost to the environment, society and
| the world at large.
|
| Our resources are finite and we tend to be so incredibly callous
| about this, I feel completely disconnected from it.
|
| Most of these products should not exist in the first place.
|
| The article also seem to imply that many of these Bin stores are
| also precarious businesses that aren't stable. Only the larger
| one(s) survive... (as usual).
|
| But this place (HN) is probably the worst place to voice this out
| loud. The aspirational class of future the tech billionaires are
| already dreaming about their profoundly wastefull super yachts
| they're going to commission.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| >(HN) is probably the worst place to voice this out loud
|
| Yeah. I got some hate on HN for saying some store that
| basically sold what I call "store to landfill" junk was. Well
| exactly that and it probably is not worth being upset that it
| was going out of business. As you said it was all about the HN
| feelings while ignoring the massive wasteful reality for a
| brief spike of endorphin.
|
| 10 Chinese children lived lives of abject poverty in a factory
| so you can have a $5 rubber monkey mask for a 30 second work
| gag at the scrum standup. But hey you don't have to see them so
| who cares.
| Gracana wrote:
| This comment, or a different one?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44123347
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Yeah.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| A 30 second gag is a nearly still a useful outcome, even if
| it's stupid. Ever since I read this article I have been using
| 'garfield telephone' as the bottom of the scale:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47732553
|
| I have been to the bin store and I want to appreciate them as
| basically being the retail equivalent of a catalytic
| converter, but the phrase 'garfield telephone' just bounces
| around in my head the whole time I'm there.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Ultimately, almost everything is store-to-landfill. All that
| varies is the amount of time in between. That's why the first
| "R" is "reduce" rather than reuse or recycle.
| sokoloff wrote:
| You skipping buying that mask doesn't improve those kids'
| lives, though.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| > "The goal for all the reverse logistics stuff," says Roberson,
| "is to keep things out of the landfill."
|
| Or rather, to make sure these things are bought and thrown out by
| consumers instead. Getting rid of unused products costs money
| unless you have a loophole that allows offloading it onto some
| poorer country (cf. Atacama desert clothing dump).
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Well, ideally bought - and used for awhile - before being
| thrown directly into the garbage.
|
| Almost everything we buy is going to end up in the trash,
| sooner or later.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| >I don't want it, but what am I supposed to do? It will end up in
| the garbage one way or another. I stuff it in my bag.
|
| This seems to be the common thread here - judging by the
| pictures, the stuff in these bins seems to be 95% junk. It's
| trash brand new in the package. Hard to believe anyone would pay
| any amount for it. Almost seems like you're losing money by not
| dumping it directly into the ocean.
|
| Apparently, I'm wrong enough that there's hundreds of these
| stores in business.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| >Apparently, I'm wrong enough that there's hundreds of these
| stores in business.
|
| The stuff in the bins is from amazon returns. Its not a
| business of its own supply choices. The people that run the
| stores go to amazon pallet auctions where they buy the stuff
| unseen and hope to turn a profit on the arbitrage of what they
| pay vs the worth of the pallet.
| alistairSH wrote:
| What's really amazing is that enough people buy absolute crap
| from Amazon, then return it, that this business model exists
| at all. It's downright dystopian.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| well on the flip side god bless capitalism for finding a
| way to give this junk a second chance at avoiding going
| straight to the landfill.
|
| ... i perceive the proliferation of so much junk more of a
| result of zirp, low interest rates/inflation/central
| banking devaluing the past over future "growth" and china
| and the west playing the goodhart game with GDP and juicing
| production/consumption, than something necessarily a part
| of "capitalism" for one definition of capitalism.
| mrweasel wrote:
| It's still mostly junk. The issue is do you really want to
| spend time returning a $5 junk purchase? For most people the
| answer is no. This is just the stuff that was returned or
| didn't sell, imagine how much of the stuff is thrown away by
| the buyers.
|
| Some things are just made to cheaply, to hit a price point
| people will pay. When people then buy the item and realise
| that it's garbage, it gets tossed. Just maybe you can't make
| a good air-fryer for $50, but people will see it and think
| "For $50 I can give it a go". They then conclude that it's
| rubbish and take it to the junk yard.
|
| No, most of this stuff should never have been made in the
| first place. We need to stop making products that has to hit
| a price point, regardless of quality. We need to stop making
| one-time-use novelty items.
|
| Then you have the secondary effect: Some clever business
| people sees this trend and starts ordering junk in bulk on
| Wish, AliExpress or Temu, dumps it in big boxes with a few
| good items (maybe) and starts their own "fake" Bin Store.
| sct202 wrote:
| It's basically scavenging. My parents are sort of hoarder-ish
| and love to go buy random things that show promise on $0.25
| day. I don't stop them because at least it was already going to
| be trash and keeps them from buying more expensive trash at the
| regular store.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If you don't want it, don't buy it. The problem is that things
| are too cheap, so people don't hesitate to ask themselves if
| they _really_ want it. It 's just too cheap to not try it. It's
| also one of those things where the picture doesn't match the
| actual item similar to fast food advertising. If the shopper
| was looking at the item in person, most things would not be
| purchased.
|
| Dumping it directly in the ocean is just skipping a few steps
| as much of it does end up there. It would be better to just
| dump it into a landfill instead of the ocean though
| fortran77 wrote:
| You're not wrong. This store is not good.
| tra3 wrote:
| Am I the only one that feels uncomfortable returning stuff? Took
| me years to get to get over, and yet I'd still prefer to forego
| buying something rather than returning it..
| alistairSH wrote:
| Nope, I hate returning things.
|
| But, brick & mortar stores rarely have clothes that fit me* AND
| I somehow end up between sizes, so I tend to order two of
| everything (in S and M, or whatever) and return the one that
| fits worst.
|
| From an environmental standpoint, I have no idea if this is
| better or worse than having fully-stocked brick & mortar shops.
| But, fact is, those don't exist any more, so this is what I do.
|
| * At 5'7", I'm slightly on the short side for an American male,
| and at 150lbs, I'm smaller build than most as well. IME,
| clothes are either cut for skinny teenagers or for dads with
| 38" waists. And I'm neither, leaving to try on and return many
| items.
|
| Edit - since maketheman's post got killed... I've yet to find a
| clothing brand that lists thigh or arm diameter, which tend to
| be the problem. The "slim-fit" stuff you mention usually fits
| my waist or torso, but will not go over my bicep or quad. And
| the normal cut from the same brand fits like a trash bag. I'm
| fine getting tailored clothes for suits and suchlike, but I'm
| talking about jeans and casual shirts here. Anyway, it's a
| totally first-world problem to have, I can deal with it.
| maketheman wrote:
| 1) Find a few brands with more options than just "S/M/L". You
| want fit variants, like Brooks Brothers'
| "Milano/Regent/Madison" (and some others) or Jcrew's
| "slim/extra slim". If button-ups, consider going with neck &
| arm sizing plus the above cut-variants, instead of "S/M/L"
| sizing at all. Also, look into Japanese brands (Kamakura?),
| they might fit you better even if they only have one or two
| variants of cut. These brands will tend to have pretty
| consistent sizing.
|
| 2) You're gonna want measurements of your own actual chest,
| neck, and natural waist. Easy to DIY close enough for this,
| no need for help.
|
| 3) Also, measurements of some clothes that fit you well.
| Shoulder, seam-to-seam; arm length; pit-to-pit width.
|
| 4) The brands from #1 will have charts that provide
| measurements for their clothes, or else suggested body
| measurements at a given size. Use the info from 2 & 3 to get
| good guesses at which sizes and fit variants will work.
|
| 5) Thrift or ebay some options. You can resell the ones that
| don't work out for close to what you bought them for, if it's
| worth it to you, or just dump them at goodwill. You're paying
| a few tens or a little over a hundred dollars in failures to
| find your sizing in a few brands. This is basically the only
| totally-lost cost to this process (and again, you can
| actually recover most of this if it's worth it to you)
|
| 6) Now you know your size in a few good consistent-sized
| brands. Ebay with your exact size in each brand (use saved
| searches, like "(jcrew,j.crew,j crew) 'extra slim' medium
| shirt") or sale-shop directly from the brands' sites. No, or
| very few, returns needed. You can also thrift-shop much more
| efficiently, at least at places that size-sort. You're just
| skimming for brand tags you recognize, and totally ignoring
| everything else.
|
| [EDIT] _And actually_ with the measurements from #3 you can
| ebay lots of shirts from brands you 've never tried, with
| reasonable success rates--any listing worth bothering with
| will provide pit-to-pit and (when relevant) sleeve
| measurements, at least.
| kubectl_h wrote:
| I almost never returned stuff I bought with full research until
| prices started to increase significantly from 2020 to now. At
| some point the inflation of product prices flipped a switch for
| me. I won't return products I've used meaningfully but if I am
| not happy with the quality of the product or the initial
| experience I have no qualms, especially if purchased from
| larger retailers. Mostly what I'm talking about are
| outdoors/recreation products or purchases from Home Depot or
| Best Buy.
|
| Still some kind of sense of personal responsibility for the
| decisions I made changed for me in the last five years. I still
| don't buy 5 pairs of shoes and return 4 or anything like that,
| but maybe that's more out of laziness.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, over the years, my bashfulness about returning things
| has been proportional to the quality of the products that I
| end up with. Lately, it seems like half of what I buy is
| absolutely horrible quality, already broken, mislabeled, or
| missing pieces, to the point where I no longer will even
| hesitate to return things.
| giarc wrote:
| I've always wondered if customer service reps have a "customer
| score" on their screen when evaluating whether to accept a
| return or not. I hardly ever return things, and on the rare
| occasion that I do, if I need to chat with an Amazon rep they
| are always very willing to bend some rules. I'm not sure if
| that's the case for everyone, or if they can see I hardly
| return things (and buy a lot) and therefore have the green
| light to let some things slide.
| op00to wrote:
| I would totally assume that a company like Amazon has a very
| clear picture of the profitability of individual customers.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| One of the main draws of Amazon for me is that I can buy a
| piece of hardware, try to install it on my
| house/bike/project/whatever, and if it's physically
| incompatible in some unpredictable way I can return it. This
| enables certain things that are just not possible with the
| selection available in local stores. I realize this probably
| does not account for a large portion of Amazon returns though.
| neilv wrote:
| I feel bad about returning things, and only buy with the
| assumption that I'll be keeping the item.
|
| (For example, in my cart is a few different ~$100 sandals of
| one brand. I've hesitated to purchase one, since I don't know
| whether I can risk a 9 non-wide in my preferred style&color. I
| won't be able to tell whether it fits me well enough until I
| wear it outside awhile, at which point it's obviously been used
| on someone's foot, so I'm not going to return it.)
|
| (I also contort my Amazon and Walmart orders, to try to keep
| them from shipping together items that I know are likely to get
| damaged that way.)
|
| Yet, the rate of defective and damaged items that arrive from
| online purchases is high enough, that I've gotten past much of
| the discomfort for those returns.
|
| (For example, this week, I returned some supposedly brand-name
| diningware, which the brand's customer service themselves
| suggested was counterfeit because they simply don't sell it in
| that branded retail packaging. I'd contacted the brand because
| the product didn't look quite like the previous one I bought of
| that brand, in a toxically-tainted-materials kind of way.
| Guilt-free, annoyed return.)
|
| So I figured I have a normal level of return, as a result of
| returning obviously defective/damaged items... until I saw this
| article claim the online return rate is "almost 30 percent".
|
| If I had a retail business with someone doing 30% returns
| (outside some program for trying on clothing at home for
| sizing), I would want to fire that customer.
|
| (And for the official clothing try-on-for-sizing program, I't
| try to throw innovations at that, to get the returns down.)
| Groxx wrote:
| I'll toss in a counter-anecdote in that I am an _enthusiastic_
| returner.
|
| Was it misrepresented? Return it - penalize misleading
| practices.
|
| Was it junk? Return it - penalize hiding that something is
| junk. (is it _priced_ like junk and not shy about it? great!
| you know what you 're getting! junk can be useful!)
|
| Was it just a bad fit for you and nothing is wrong with it and
| it might work for someone else[1]? Return it - encourage more
| thorough descriptions. E.g. "one size fits all" is an
| _extremely_ lazy lie that just cost you money, _measure it_ and
| tell me the measurements - they are perfectly capable of that
| and almost certainly did it multiple times already while
| creating the thing. (though for some I do feel bad about the
| cost it imposes, and don 't always return here. depends on the
| details.)
|
| It's not a 100% "I just don't want it" thing, there's plenty of
| regret-purchases that I just hang onto and give to someone else
| or sell at a rummage sale. But I definitely don't feel bad
| about using returns as a "stop being hostile towards your
| customers" tool.
|
| ---
|
| [1]: Headphones are a pretty good example here. They like to
| claim sky-high perfection and durability and features, and then
| ship buggy crap with no support or wildly misrepresent sound
| quality (e.g. frequency response is quantitatively measurable
| _so measure it_ , leaving it up to niche reviewers is worse for
| everyone). Lots of luxury-adjacent products do stuff like this,
| and I do not feel the least bit bad about calling them out on
| it - this stuff gets measured during development, used to
| select materials and tune the final product, and then _hidden
| from you_ to sell it. And then they change it after the initial
| launch, and _do not tell anyone_. It 's blatant hostility, and
| it deserves to be treated as such.
| tantalor wrote:
| > products that never made it to a consumer because the season
| ended, or a box was a little dented, or the purchaser never
| picked up their order, or a retailer was just running out of room
| in their warehouse
|
| I wonder how tariffs will impact this. I imagine a lot of
| importers will balk at the sudden fee, and decline to pick up
| their stuff at the port.
|
| Article mentions this much further down:
|
| > But economic shocks are good for the secondhand economy.
| Roberson thinks tariffs could, eventually, lead to another bin-
| store bump.
| Theodores wrote:
| Empty gifts of capitalism!
|
| This store is my idea of hell.
|
| I am in the process of tidying up my dad's estate, and, despite
| the mountains of stuff he bought, there is not one single thing
| that I want for myself. I am done with stuff, particularly if it
| has bits missing!
|
| I am sure that, if I went to any hoarders home, it would be
| exactly the same. There would not be a single item that I would
| want to walk away with.
|
| Younger me might have thought this store to be great, but I am
| done.
|
| It requires a special mindset to want stuff, to trade stuff on
| eBay, to collect stuff and to see it as valuable. Stuff is at the
| low end of what interests me, life is about people and ideas, not
| stuff.
|
| You also have to believe in money if you are into stuff. But my
| status has nothing to do with money or how much stuff I have. I
| wish I could flip the switch and make it so that I wanted to
| hoard money and own stuff. But, once you have gone outside your
| basic needs, stuff starts to own you, rather than you owning
| stuff.
|
| The thing is that, with the mountains of stuff that I have had to
| dispose of, all of it required real humans to put in the effort
| to design products, get them made, get them packaged and to get
| them sold. They did it with pride, yet, here I am, detesting the
| stuff.
|
| The tech products that were hot five years ago but useless today
| are what amaze me the most. Take your humble TV. I can remember a
| time before flat screens, then there was the time when you had
| dead pixels. Right now I have a huge TV to dispose of. To all
| intents and purposes, it is perfect. Twenty five years ago, it
| would have been beyond anyone's dreams, jaws would have dropped.
| Yet now it is worth $150, if I could find a buyer.
|
| Hence, max respect to those such as the owner of the Bin Store
| that can face up to the 'empty gifts of capitalism' and make a
| business of making sense of the stuff that mere mortals like me
| want to run away from.
| enmyj wrote:
| not relevant to the story, but love seeing a defector link here!
| jccalhoun wrote:
| There was one of these in my town. I went two different times and
| There were tons of cheap clothes (mostly women and children
| sizes), replacement parts for random appliances, as seen on tv
| crap. It is no wonder it went out of business: They get so much
| crap that no one wants that they can't even sell it for a dollar
| so they have to figure out what to do with it.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| It costs money to landfill it. You can watch the same
| progression on shows like Storage Wars where the early episodes
| have nice stuff in the units and people making good money on
| DVDs and furniture and then in later seasons they're getting
| 10% of what they used to get because the market is flooded with
| brand new junk and nobody wants the quality used stuff anymore.
| neilv wrote:
| > _"You can buy stuff from here and then you can resell it,"
| Ahmed tells me. "Through eBay or Amazon. You can sell on Facebook
| market. You will get your money back in less than one day if you
| wanna resell it. Which is a good thing for everybody right now,
| for the public. A lot of people need to work."_
|
| I'd guess that probably the store itself is picking out some of
| the more valuable items from pallets they source, to divert to
| eBay or Amazon.
|
| This is one of the things that ruined a certain charity thrift
| store chain for me, which I'd visit often as a destination of
| daily walks. Although I knew how to spot some valuables (sterling
| silver, some electronics, some games), they'd never appear. It
| turns out that the chain does two things that work against
| brick&mortar hunters: (1) has staff trained to spot valuable
| items, and divert them to the chain's own eBay store; (2) the
| chain's distribution/sorting center lets in professional flippers
| there, to pick out, say, the valuable designer clothing. So the
| brick&mortar stores only ever get picked-over stuff that wasn't
| worth either professional group selling elsewhere.
|
| If bin stores are also doing something similar, I'd guess that
| the smart ones are consciously sprinkling a token number of more-
| valuable items in the bins (even if they could make more
| diverted), to keep the lines of hundreds of people forming every
| week.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| The article doesn't hint at that though. The store's owners
| seem to have their hands full at just running the store.
| Besides, they seem to want those bargain hunters in there. Not
| just for the guaranteed $10 sales, but also to keep up the hype
| that gems are to be found there.
| kubectl_h wrote:
| There is a surplus and salvage chain in Maine called Mardens.
| It's been in business for 60 years and basically purchases
| pallets or shipping containers full of products that were
| written off by retailers for some reason or another and re-
| sells. They take the highest price they can find online and
| discount the product 20-40%. Sometimes you'll go in and run
| across really high end products that could easily be sold at
| full price but they don't really seem to care. Think a
| Moccamaster coffee maker or Arcteryx jackets. Most of the time
| it's junk. In any case it seems like they buy at some
| percentage on the dollar (20, 30?) and resell at 60%,
| regardless of how expensive it is. Seems like it makes more
| sense to make a consistent profit in volume rather than
| optimize profit on individual items.
|
| Fun store to stop by and check in on in every few weeks.
| neilv wrote:
| I like that model. If they have the shopper traffic to move
| stock, I'd guess the 20%-40% discount off highest online
| price is better than they could net by selectively diverting
| that item to online.
| joezydeco wrote:
| I'm guessing you don't read /r/goodwill.
| dawnerd wrote:
| There's certainly bin stores that sort through for the best
| stuff and either offload to friends that'll pay up or price it
| higher in "vip" section like the article says. The bigger issue
| is the bin stores that sell mystery boxes which is just the
| trash that doesn't sell at dollar day.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Unless it is something really really good I don't think they
| do. The one that was in my town a couple years ago would post
| pictures on facebook of all the best things they had in order
| to entice people to come in.
| jp57 wrote:
| I'll bet if he changed the pricing from $10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1 to
| $16, 8, 4, 2, 1, he'd make as much or more money and give himself
| a day off on Wednesdays to boot.
| joezydeco wrote:
| $16 is a huge leap from $10. The demand curve has probably
| chosen that price. Plus you get two things from a $20 out of
| the ATM.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Most things will have a 6% sales tax, so you'll need another
| $1.20 to get those 2 $10 items.
| chime wrote:
| Slightly related - Climate Town made a long video on the pallet-
| sized returns practice:
| https://youtu.be/WG8idKaX9KI?si=0ejDGzqT9w1zvCXN
| mdip wrote:
| So these are popping up everywhere, then?
|
| I have two within five miles of my house. They've both been there
| over a year, probably a bit longer. I'm in a mid-western US
| suburb, mostly blue-colllar/manufacturing employers around here.
| And there's a "Red Tag" store (similar) which is very obviously
| trying to pass off that they sell Target returns/over-stock. It's
| across the street from -- surprise -- a Target!
|
| Of the two "bin" stores, nearby, one is much larger/newer. The
| bigger one starts off at $7 on Saturday at noon, dropping to a
| buck by the following Friday. There is a loooooong line. I think
| they started selling memberships or something along those lines
| to let you have the first spots in said line (or maybe get in a
| little early). They sell other, higher-dollar items, but I've
| walked out of there on a Saturday with a portable pump for $7
| that was selling for $60 on Amazon (it was worth about $20 IMHO).
| There's a reason people line up.
|
| They also sell $35 random (sealed) boxes (and I think you can buy
| 4 for $100 or some kind of arrangement like that). I've never
| seen the contents of these boxes. It looks like most of these
| businesses stock returns from, mostly, Amazon but also others
| which they buy in lots. I'm not sure the mechanics of it but I'm
| sure another comment has an explanation by now.
|
| Searching "Surplus" on Google Maps surfaced the two I found (with
| identical models) as well as one an hour away that didn't do the
| "bin" arrangement, but dealt in larger items. I purchased an
| ultra-wide monitor for $400, there (about $350 off the best price
| when I bought it).
|
| Personally, I love these spots. There is such a massive stock of
| returns that you can almost rely on showing up at one of these
| places and having a pretty good chance of finding what you need,
| it just takes a little more effort.
| twic wrote:
| So it's like the Middle of Lidl without the Lidl?
| ryukoposting wrote:
| My local surplus shop started a GoFundMe recently.
|
| This is a great idea for places that can't support a proper
| surplus shop. but I'd be really, _really_ sad if mine went away
| and this was what replaced it.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Right before Largest mall got demo'd we had one of these but they
| were all Amazon/Target mystery boxes with different sizes and
| prices. There was even an article in the local paper celebrating
| the opening. I imagine it was absolute trash like the stuff in
| this article and the only "mystery" being the missing
| electronics.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| Does anyone save at a bin store? It would take a lot of patience
| and discipline. You would need to come with a list of things
| you'd definitely buy anyway, only buy those things and be
| prepared to go every week often coming home empty handed.
|
| If you just go with $100 and no plan youll end up buying junk.
|
| Probably a good place to get Christmas toys for kids maybe where
| you just need "a toy".
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-06-05 23:00 UTC)