If a manufactured appliance sits unsold in a warehouse for several years at what point does retailer need to disclose it's not new to potential customers?

Answer 1

The retailer never needs to disclose that in this case because, if it hasn't been sold to a customer or used by the retailer, it's still new. This used to happen quite a lot, but now that retailers have gone from "warehouses" (big buildings for storing merchandise) to "distribution centers" (the same big buildings, but equipped with computerized inventory tracking systems) the odds of something--especially a big-ticket item like an appliance--sitting in the DC for years is very low indeed. If the model has been discontinued they will mark the price down quite a bit, use point-of-sale data to determine which store has the best chance of moving the item (very simple to do--just do a remote SKU lookup and see which store sold the most of them over the life of the item) and ship it to that store. If it sold well in that area once, it would probably do it again.