Here’s “shameless”. I know of a lady who ordered kitchen cabinets and had them installed by Home Depot. After the install, she decided she “didn’t really like the grain of the cherry cabinets”. Home Depot took them out and refunded her money. Then, they had the cabinets out on the floor at a serious discount because, of course, they had screw holes in them from having been installed.
The same lady bought them. And had planned to do exactly that from the beginning. I was told she saved enough that way on her kitchen remodel to take a trip to Europe. I hate Home Depot, but that’s just plain wrong.
People who do it to “stick it to the man” are crude. Funny thing is that, same way we can lease cars and other big ticket items, I’m surprised there isn’t a burgeoning market for rental of these kinds of things.
In my case above, the cost to rent a TV for the 3 days was almost as much as the TV’s retail price. I was going to just bring my 36 inch TV (weighs 120 lbs at least) but instead “tried before I bought” because the store’s policies encouraged that I do that. And if the TV truly did have good contrast for the venue (a conventional center) I would have kept it and used it again and again. But it didn’t, so I didn’t. LCD TV didn’t work, next time I’ll try Plasma - so long as it has the same return policy. No other way to find out unless I actually tried it in the place I intend to use it.
But if there was a reasonable market to rent or lease TV’s, projectors, laptops, portable DVD players etc I bet it would curtail this problem. I bet a lot of people would happily rent them for reasonable prices.