Kid Gets Box of Rocks for Christmas Instead of 3DS

Crack rocks?

The department that handles item returns, should be fired dead on the spot for not checking a returned merchandise.

Of course it could always be the person complaining that did it, like the women who found a finger in her Wendy's chili (later found to be her own)

I bet Santa did it. The kid was naughty so he got rocks. The parents are blaming it on the store instead of their kid.

I'm surprised they didn't check serial numbers of the contents and the box (if the 3DS has one). That's rather common in electronics stores to prevent content swaps with broken out-of-warranty devices.

Did the kid get to keep the rocks?

I love how Tom's 99.9% of the time never links to the original article, and make it seem like it's originally there article!

At least the kid didn't have to see porn on his 3ds

you mean like at the top where it says foxal and links to the article.

http://www.myfoxal.com/story/20437186/talladega-mom-buys-nintendo-gets-a-box-full-of-rocks

Not at walmart at least not the one by me jhean. I know this from exp lol. Though I would never risk simply putting in rocks, but there's a great way to return consoles that are broke lol.

Though how a box of rocks go through is beyond me. Well I guess there are tools/tricks to put the plastic back on, so I guess it's possible.

Do not by it the woman put the rocks in the box to try and get her money back or a free item. It happens I remember people buying new Video cards and then cleaning up there old one putting it in the new box and returning it to Wal-Mart or Best Buy a few years ago before they started checking the serial # on the card with the box. Back then as long as the card and box had the same manufacture name they did not really check any further.

Unless you take the part of the casing off that has the serial number and swap it around. Add a little wear to make it look the same age, and voila.

Back in my day rocks were the only thing we got for Christmas and we were grateful for those rocks. We aren't talking about the little small rocks either, boulders that would crush a kid today as you're all either skinny or fat these days. When school came back all the children would carry these large rocks to school so we could play together. We walked up 6 feet of snow up hill to school both ways with the giant boulders on our backs.

You kids can't appreciate nothing today.

Back in the 1400's in Europe, kids were grateful to have a pulse nor end up being covered with boils...

Or perhaps it was returned in what appeared to be a sealed/never opened condition.

So I'm to assume you've never worked in a retail setting. How often do you think people return merchandise and sometimes things slip through that was either unaccounted for, or the person really knew what they were doing and waiting until it was extremely busy (the people that do this know on how to play the system).

If you are at a retailer (and in this case especially it's for a return) do you really think you'll be OK waiting for the desk person to check all the merchandise that comes back and nobody complains about the wait? Sure there are standards and common sense to include, but at the same time people get pressured to take care of the customers fast.

In closing, really think about it before you throw the ax at someone (you have no idea what was going on at that point). I'm also going to assume you've never managed anyone as well =P.

I've hear Walmart employees brag about stealing merch straight off the dock and replacing it with other items, microwaves with bricks, video games with blank disks...
And they have a shrinkwrap machine in the back, so they just toss someone a $20 to look the other way and returns eat the blame...
Employees that only get $7 an hour and no benefits aren't cream of the crop and a lot of them wouldn't hesitate to snag n grab whatever they see fit.

You may have heard of Walmart employees stealing (just like plenty of other human beings) but just because someone only makes $7 an hour doesn't mean they can't possibly be a good employee and it certainly doesn't mean that most of them steal. In contrast, I've been to chic-fil-a dozens of times, and I have to assume their cashiers and servers are low wage earners, but they have always provided top notch service, every single time. My point is, people steal or perform poorly at work because of their moral standards, work ethic, or incompetence, not necessarily because of their low wages.

Ahh America, number one of course, especially with fine folks like these.

My son (8yr) unwrapped a present, on the outside it was a hello-kitty alarm clock. On the inside, it was a digital camera. Yes, he was upset and in tears.  

People have been doing hardware swaps for years. Of course places like Frys and BestBuy know better and will usually confirm what they are looking at... including breaking plastic wrap for this very reason. But yeah, getting bricks or phonebooks (remember those?) has been the norm.

I remember back around 2002, the awful GeForce 5-series (okay, "FX" - but who gives a crap?). Someone posted online confused by what the computer was saying upon boot up. He had BOUGHT a GF-5200 from Walmart. But the computer was telling him "GeForce 4200".

Many of us busted out laughing at that. We told him to KEEP the card if it worked. For those who don't remember back then. The 5200 was much slower than the 4200... Even the $200 5600 was on par on the older $100 4200 (The 5200 also sold for $100~120). This was nVidia's pushing their new DX9 cards (tops to bottom) then they released the joke 4xxMX series.

Ah... memories.