[quote name='bitzer']It seems to me that "return fraud" is practiced quite a bit (based on my experience, here, on CAG). Anytime someone buys a game and flips it to Gamestop or Amazon, it's "return fraud."
In my Gamestop/Fallout3 example, I'd pre-ordered from Amazon. And I didn't lie to Gamestop about it, I just told them I had an unopened copy for the PS3 and was wondering if I could swap it for the 360 version and pay any difference. There wasn't a difference and they were more than happy to help me out. It didn't cost them anything (it only affected the distribution of their stock) and it bought them goodwill with a customer.
That aside, this has been a bit of a thread-derailment and I'll go ahead and apologize to everyone else.[/QUOTE]
If you're talking about trading in games, that's legal because you never get full retail value back. It's the same for ticket scalpers, legally they can resell them so long as it doesn't exceed face value, but it's near impossible to monitor such things so obviously people abuse it all the time. Even when they get caught, rarely are they prosecuted. Things vary by location just as they would by store for return policies.
As for the Gamestop incident, I'm glad it worked out for you but lying by omission won't fly in every single store and it's the same as the Wal-mart issue since you provided no proof of where you bought it (and thus they wouldn't be able to prosecute you).