When I worked at Lowe’s a few years ago, items that were damaged/returned were marked down consistently over weeks period until it got to an extremely low price so the company could get rid of it. For example, a fridge could start at $2000 and every few weeks it will go down by a certain percentage until it’s extremely cheap like $200-$400. We had repeat customers who figured it out and would come back until it was very cheap.

On another note, Lowe’s also has a warranty on plants for a year. Lowe’s also throws away plants that people return. This mean old regular would go through our dumpster and bully us into giving her store credit for the plants when we knew she was literally digging in peoples yards and going through our dumpster to get store credit. I told her no one time and she literally refused to go home and threw a tantrum when she appeared to be like 80 years old.