Sorry if you feel that way, Nick, but it really does happen all the time. In the retail business, items that are as new or takeoffs and are not in some way special to a particular bike are commonly tossed on the shelf with new stock. (Some manufacturers have parts specially made with unique features or branding, and this would not apply, as they are not equivalent parts.) If selling the item over the counter, the customer gets handed a packaged version. If it's something installed in the shop, and there is a "new" one on the shelf without packaging, that's the one that gets installed. This is not considered at all dishonest, as long as both parts are the same part number and the installed part is in unused, undamaged condition. It's just good inventory control. If the customer picked out a specific part, or brought one in and it was substituted, that would be a different story. And that also means no tool marks. It's not considered any different from having bulk-packaged parts available for installations and boxed versions for over-the-counter sales.
The part that comes to mind where substitution happened most often, when I was in the trade, was freewheels. If a customer wanted a freewheel swapped out for a different ratio on a new bike, the one that came from the manufacturer went into stock, priced as new. There was typically no charge to the customer for the change, if no upgrade was involved, and we were not about to lose money by disparaging our own product as something less than new, when it had never been ridden. If you buy an NOS freewheel on eBay and it comes in a box with the size crossed out and a new one written in, that's probably what happened.
--Steve Barner, Bolton, Vermont
> Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 18:55:14 -0500
> From: "nick zatezalo" <nickzz@mindspring.com>
> To: "Stephen Barner" <steve@sburl.com>,
> classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> Subject: RE: [CR]eBay...and another thing!
>
> I have to disagree with your interpretation of new. I do not
> think that an item that has been installed in any way, shape, or form
> should be represented as new. To me new is something that may
> have been out of the package for inspection and then replaced.
> Maybe a better description is take-off. [As in installed and removed ]
>
---Snip---
>
> Nick Zatezalo
> Atlanta,Ga