The media coverage of this story has been quite disappointing. The official line is that a lady bought an Xbox at Wal-Mart, only to get home and discover the box was full of dirty socks and a stack of magazines. The mean old retailer won’t let her return it.

This is all stated as fact:

“Marissa Gonzales says the box the XBOX came in did not look tampered with when she picked it up from the Wal-Mart layaway department. She wrapped the present and placed it under her Christmas tree. But what she didn’t know is that it was full of dirty socks and a stack of magazines.

“Since Christmas day, Marissa has spent a lot of time on the phone. She says she has talked to five Wal-Mart store managers ranging from department, district and general managers. A store who ‘Always promises low prices, Always’ has $460 of Marissa’s hard earned money and all she has in return is useless dirty socks and magazines, not the XBOX 360 she thought she purchased.”

Then of course there’s the human interest component:

“‘When Playstation first came out, I told them I’ll get you one of those. Well, I never did because I couldn’t afford it. Now, the XBOX 360 came out, I wanted to get them one of those. Then this happened. It hurts me,’ she said.”

Wal-Mart says it hasn’t had any problems with the store’s layaway department — the woman says employees told her otherwise — and that the company is investigating.

Now, it’s very possible that some employee was just being stupid. (I think it’s less likely the console was stolen; a thief would have destroyed the box with the tons of cardboard stores go through, rather than stuffing it full of socks and pretty much guaranteeing management and police would see it.) Simply by virtue of this possibility, not to mention the media attention the story is getting, it would probably be smart for Wal-Mart to just give the money back.

But here’s what the media fails to even consider: It’s also very possible that the woman tried to return an empty box, got caught and now is making waves rather than forgetting about it. I worked at a Kmart off and on in high school and college, and we had problems with this very thing — I remember a woman got a refund for a vacuum cleaner box weighed down with something or other, and the manager lectured the service desk staff about checking inside all boxes before processing refunds.

Bearing this in mind, the company’s behavior is understandable. The last thing it would want to do is give criminals ideas by immediately capitulating.

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://www.therationale.com.