Is it theft if a customer purchases an item he knows is incorrectly priced?

Why the hell would they need to do that? When I worked in a gas station (and probably with pretty much every other station), we didn’t order gas until we needed it. We knew exactly how much our tanks held and how low they were and how much the tanker held and how it’s tanks were divided. We could order up to three different grades if we wanted.

If anyone did anything wrong, I’d suspect the clerk, not the customers. The customers might have thought that it was a legitimate promotion (heck, businesses really do do crazy things like that sometimes), but the clerk knew it wasn’t, and he’d have to be massively incompetent to not notice that he was giving away $19.80 in change from a $20 bill. Heck, he might have even caused the mistaken price for his friends to take advantage of.

I’ve seen legitimate prices that were lower than that. Back in the 90s, Southwest had flights from Cleveland to Baltimore for $19. Of course, those were heavily publicized by the company, but in this day and age, one might imagine a company hoping they’ll get better exposure by letting it go viral.

I bought a pair of shoes at Wal-Mart that were listed at $9.88. When I got to the cashier, they rang up as $5. I told the cashier of the discrepancy, and she just shrugged and said that if it rang up as $5 that was the price. I felt like I had done my “due diligence” in warning the cashier - if the store’s agent doesn’t care to pursue it, so much the better.

I’d have been pissed if they implied I had done anything illegal or unethical like switching tags, but not if they had charged me $9.88 instead.

AFAICT it is like the story of the customer who takes his purchases thru the check out line, bags them up, and then on the way out of the store notices that he has been given the wrong change. So he goes back to the store manager and says, “Your cashier gave me the wrong change.”

The manager draws himself up to his full height and points haughtily to a sign saying “Customers must notify cashier if they have received the wrong change before they leave the line!”

“OK”, says the customer. “I just thought you might want to know that the cashier gave me three dollars too much.”

Regards,
Shodan

The same would be true here in Indiana.

My story: I called a local electronics store which was selling police scanners. The owner quoted me a price which I thought was somewhat low. I told him that I would be by in the morning to purchase it. When I got there, the owner seemed to be uncertain about the price and I said “thanks anyway” and was going to leave. He changed his mind and sold the item for the price he quoted.

There was an upgraded model which came out two months later ( I was really into amateur radio at the time) and I called the story to see if he had. He apparently didn’t recognize my voice, but he DID recognize my face when I went into to purchase the other scanner and he wasn’t happy to see me.

He stated that I had “stolen” the original scanner and that I had “defrauded” him the last time. I have a low tolerance for being accused of criminal activity, so I told him that if he really thought that I had committed a crime that he needed to file charges and I would then sue him into bankruptcy. He demurred and after a few more choice words,I left and bought the scanner elsewhere.

I discussed the matter with a friend who is an attorney and she assured me that it was his hard times for quoting a lower price than he should have. She also stated that if I had actively deceived the store owner in some manner then I could have possible been charged with theft by deception; however, she also stated that here in Indiana such matters, if there are any questions are usually handled as civil and not criminal offenses.

Theft by Deception - there was no indication that there was a promotion. No one has seen any such promotion anywhere near that location. There was absolutely no reason to think it was a promotion.
“Knew or should have known”? All day.

You thieves-waiting-for-an-opportunity have to hope I’m not on your jury

When I worked at Target, there were levels upon levels of clearance prices, the final one being 90% off. Rarely did items actually last long enough on the shelf to achieve that price, but sometimes something would have been lost on a shelf, or found in a back room, or returned via the service desk very late. In those cases, when it turned up, they’d ring up at a dime on the dollar. I bought a $120 DVD player for $12 in just such a circumstance.

Oh, the $100 bottle of perfume in the toe of the sneaker?

Some kid must have been playing with it.

When I was taught to be a cashier, we always looked into any openable box for things concealed therein. When found, we were to simply remove the “extra” item and explain it to the “customer” as something some child had put together, and ring up the box.
Made it difficult for them to then say “well, if I can’t have the jewelry, I don’t want the shoes”.

That actually happened to me. I paid for the goods with a one pound note (this was in the olden days) and was given four pound notes in the change. I was juggling bags and change and got to the door before I realised - the money was still in my hand. I went back and said, “excuse me but you gave me the wrong change,” The woman said nothing - just looked at me scornfully and pointed at the sign. I left, but felt strangely guilty.

Just before Christmas I was looking for a cover for a tablet that converted to a stand. I found a really nice one in Amazon and was amazed to see that it was priced at one penny. I ordered it, fully expecting it to be out of stock or an email saying ‘wrong price - sorry’ but no - It arrived in a couple of days and one penny was all I paid. Cheapest Christmas present I ever bought. It is really nice too.

Cool story. Too bad it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of the thread.

Cool comment. Too bad it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of the thread.

Anyway, in AUS generally, shops are expected to honour the labeled or advertised prices of items. If they detect an advertising error, they are expected to advertise and signpost the correction. If they detect a shelf labeling error, they are expected to correct the shelf labeling.

If you change the price labeling to cheat/steal, that’s a crime. You don’t get any rights that way.

Most places that have scanned prices will honour the scanned prices, if the item description is correct. They will take items off the shelf until the scan can be corrected.

This is what they are supposed to do. Some managers just won’t do it, because they just don’t think it’s right to undercharge, and they don’t see anything wrong with false labeling/ false advertising.

There’s always a whole bunch of stuff selling for 1 penny on Amazon, books especially. I don’t know how it works, but I often take advantage of it. Perhaps the seller takes some part of the postage fee, I can’t figure it otherwise.

Not a response to the OP, but I thought I’d provide a nice counterpoint to the discussion about cashiers. I went to the grocery store a few months ago with my kids, and I had my son’s car seat (he was about 3 months old) in the cart. I had set a bag of donuts on the right side of the top shelf of the cart next to the car seat.

After paying for all my groceries, I got to the car, unloaded, and found the donuts sitting there. I thought maybe I had forgotten to put them on the belt, but my son was getting antsy so I drove home. After checking my receipt at home and verifying that indeed, I had inadvertently stolen then bag of donuts, I called the store and spoke to a manger and explained the situation and asked if I could pay for them over the phone, or should I bring them back to pay for them.

She simply said, “wow…thanks for your honesty. Just go ahead and keep them.” Was a nice interaction.

Flying from anywhere to Erie, PA at any price is a good sign of craziness.

Taking advantage of yes. Stealing no.

In the situation no, it would not legally be theft. The burden is on a vendor to accurately price their products. If the system (and whatever technologies) the use goofs up and prices a product inaccurately, it’s their responsibility to notice and correct that.

If, on the other hand, you attempt to fool their system (with fake barcodes, switching price tags on garments, etc.) that could be considered theft in some jurisdictions.

Still, if you took advantage of a person like that, I hope you’d be pretty ashamed whenever you met him/her away from work.

I have this exact situation going on right now. A local gas station sells a tobacco product that I like. This particular product comes in about six different flavors and the retail price is $5.69 per tin. However, one flavor rings up at $2.25 for some reason. At first I asked the clerk, “why is this one do much cheaper than the others?”. The clerk shrugged, took my money and that was that. I’ve been back many times since and have asked the same question several times with the same response.

I just went there this evening and purchased all they had in stock for the “discounted” price. Do I feel bad? I did, but when I pointed out the price problem, no one seemed concerned. The price of the product is clearly marked on a sign right in front of it. This has been going on for about two months now and judging by how fast this item sells, I’m not the only one noticing. I can’t help it if the item is mis-marked, the error had been brought up several times to employees and they don’t seem to care and the person who does the ordering hadn’t noticed that one flavor of an item seems to sell ten times as much as the others.

What can I say, I’ve done everything except leave the additional funds on the counter and walk our of the store. If the store is run so badly they can’t figure this out, then I figure it must be intentional.

one of my funniest memories as a uni student in oz was when a beer truck had a fender bender and most of the load went on the highway.

now cars were literally pulling over to load up. was it theft? sure but the police tracked down plates and made people pay up. i was not involved. not sure if anyone ended up in court over it. had experiences on the flip side where a supermarket would click an item twice and after checking i went back and asked what’s up.

nm

very nm.

I think that extremely reduced prices are an indication that there is a promotion.