To be fair Caliban and Andy, the fish I rehomed were given to me, not bought. I took them so they wouldn't be euthanized until I could find appropriate homes for them.
You may have misunderstood my point? I am not condeming anyone for rehoming a fish. Heck, things happen that can't be avoided. There IS more to the story tho...
What I was talking about was the what the store's might do with the fish you want to trade in. I have witnessed and been at stores where the policy was to take the fish back but destroy it instead of putting it into the store's system. That might upset some people but that's reality and that does happen. If you ( the general you not the specific you
) are one of these people, I just suggest you be extra careful to what you bring home to your tanks. If you don't believe that happens, I'm telling you, as an insider, that it does. If you want to be blind to that, it's your call.
As for the stores themselves, the example I made for not supporting ones that just put your fish directly into their centralized system is that if they do that for your fish, they most likely do that for anyone's fish ( whether you choose to believe it or not) and who knows what those other fish have been exposed to and now the rest of the fish have been exposed to? Once again, you may take the best of care for your fish but that doesn't mean other people do the same. That's all I'm saying.
As for Caliban's comment, I am currently involved with some threads where the intent of some people is to buy more fish to grow out for pairing then return the rest. So people do buy fish with the intention of returning them. I personally, am neither for or against this. That's how some want to keep their pets and it's not my place to say yes or no. Again, me personally, I always keep my "extras" in another tank so if I lose one from a pair, I have extras.
In most cases, if having an extra tank is a big issue, breeding the fish might not be the best thing to do as most do require additional tanks. That's all I was bringing out.