qu for michigan ppl

I see on the back of mixed drink bottles that there is a 10 cent cash refund for then.does the refund also work for people from out of state who could be passing thru and turn some in.and where would a person take them

Anybody can cash them in as long as it has a MI refund printed on the label. Any grocery or party store will take them.

in NY, its grocery stores

Check for the MI 10c deposit on the label. Stores don't have to accept brands that they don't sell for return. Common brands, Coke, Pepsi, etc., no problem. But other brands may not be accepted. This is more of a problem with craft brewed or imported beers that are not widely distributed. Don't try to return out of state bottles or cans, there's a healthy fine for that.

A store will take a deposit bottle as long as they sell that particular kind. Meijer sells some of their own kind of soda pop and Krogers or Kmart would not redeem the deposit on a Meijer brand.

This is in fact a significant problem for the state: people bringing in returnables from out of state and getting undeserved refunds. The state keeps the difference between the deposits and refunds; enough people were bringing in out-of-state containers that it was cutting into revenues. They recently upped the penalties; if you get caught bringing in over 10,000 returnables it's a felony.
Penalties for bringing out of state returnables into Michigan

For years the Michigan deposit has been both a cash grab for some who violate the law that live in Northern Indiana, and a bit of a PITA for honest people.

In all of the top tier of counties in Indiana many of the soda (I haven't really paid attention to beer) cans/bottles sold have MI (and other) deposit marks on them. There are some people south of the border that abuse this and take the empties back into MI and cash in after not paying the MI deposit. This is illegal.

There are some south of the border that will buy groceries/stop at a package store, etc., in MI, and pay the deposit on the cans/bottles and not bother/remember to return them. This is a-ok.

I'm pretty sure in MI that any store that sells you a product that requires a deposit must accept the return of the containers for the return of the deposit. I remember years ago that some stores required a receipt proving you bought the product there.

Michigan created this monster. Dropping the deposit would cure it. I'm not shedding any tears because they're getting a self-inflicted screwjob that costs them even more money for enforcement. One of MI's arguments has been that everybody should have a deposit, and nobody would be able to abuse the system. So far IN has resisited the deposit system.

AG

Most all the larger stores in the state that take returns have machines that crush the cans and bottles. As you feed in the returns it rolls the cans and picks up the bar code on them and if there was not a Michigan deposit paid on that can or bottle it will reject it. If you plan on bringing in a lot of returns that have not had the deposit paid plan on taking them home with you.

knew a fellow in western Colorado who paid for all material for new house by taking trailer loads (2 AXEL) of cans to cal. this was in 1997. Always wondered how he got away with it. must have paid some kick back.

Uh, Tom, I don't think those machines are smart enough to know if a particular can or bottle was sold out of state. Most of them do read the bar code to determine if the product is one carried by that particular store and if the package is labeled with a Michigan deposit. So if you have an out of state container labeled with a Michigan refund, the machine will usually take it.

A few years ago I was chatting with a guy testing a new bottle return machine. When the machine spit out my bottle, he removed the label which was hanging half off. The machine then accepted the bottle. He explained that that particular machine didn't read the barcode, but rather checked the shape of the bottle to determine if it was returnable.