An accidental-shoplifting conundrum

Last updated on: April 23, 2016 at 8:20 am by Jane the Actuary

An accidental-shoplifting conundrum 2016-04-23T08:20:41-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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On Fridays, my middle son has a karate class just after dinner, and it’s just a short drive from the supermarket, so it’s convenient to stop there and get some grocery-shopping done during the class. Most of the time I can finish and be back more-or-less on time; last night it took a bit longer, in part because a buy-one, get-one-free sale wasn’t ringing up that way (clearance items were supposed to have been excluded, but it didn’t say so in the ad or on the shelf; finally the manager came over and confirmed that and they gave me the sale price). By the time I unloaded the groceries in the car it was already a bit late, and then I saw that the fuss over the sale item meant that I forgot to remind the cashier about the pop on the bottom of the car, and she forgot to ask. But if I went back inside, I’d be even more late to pick up my son — and, granted, it was a slow night so the line might be short, but at the customer service desk you can never tell. So I put the pop in the car and headed out.

Note that the pop was on sale for 5.99 each, two 24-packs. But that sale price was a part of a “buy 6, save $3” deal where not having the pop rung up cost me $2 in sales on other items so I actually underpaid by only $10.

I could, after all, stop by the customer service desk the next time I’m there and say, “long story short, I owe the company $10.” I could toss a $10 at the next charitable collection I ordinarily wouldn’t give to. I could just say, “eh, it’s wasn’t intentional, everybody does this every now and again, and they factor it in their prices, so it’s fine and it’d be weird to try do do anything.”

So what would you do?

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMeijerSouthgateInterior.jpg; Dethistoricaler at English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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