This has not happened to me…just asking.
Imagine you order a Widget from a merchant. You paid for the Widget. But, for some reason, they shipped you the Widget+++ which is more expensive than the regular Widget.
Do you have a legal obligation to point out the mistake and either send the Widget+++ back or pay the extra cost for the Widget+++?
Ethically, do you need to tell the merchant about the mistake? Or, just keep the better item? Lucky you.
How much difference in price? If it’s a 10% difference, and depending on the total price, I might not bother doing anything. They might just be fulfilling the order in time, or getting something off the shelf that wasn’t selling anyway. It makes a difference if I want a continuing relationship with the seller. There was a time where I informed a seller after something was sent to me that I didn’t order at all. Glad I did because it saved someone’s job who was being accused of stealing the item for himself, the seller apologized to him, and thanked me for my honesty, noting they didn’t think any of their customers would have done the same.
I would tell. Unless there’s a significant difference in price, it’s likely that factoring in the cost of the original delivery, having the item picked and shipped back and shipping the correct item, they’ll just let me keep it. It would also generate some goodwill on making good on the mistake.
I’d contact them. That’s how I roll.
I would try to tell them if it was easy to contact them. I wouldn’t spend a huge amount of effort if they made it difficult, though.
I once got two foam rollers from Amazon when I’d only ordered one. I went online to report it, but that wasn’t one the categories, and i couldn’t see any easy way to tell them. So I waited for them to bill me, at which point i assumed i could complain and let them know. They never did. I eventually gave the second one to a friend.
I probably don’t especially want the more expensive item, i probably ordered the one i wanted. So I’m happy to exchange it for the one i actually wanted (on their dime. I’m not paying shipping to correct their error.)
I go on the principle that I treat others the way I want to be treated. As a private party, I have sold some 60 items over the past year or so, and I always wanted to know if there was any mistake or problem, and that is the way I treat businesses or people from whom I buy anything.
Also, if I had paid for the +++ version and only got the base version, anyone would expect me to complain about that. I don’t see why* it wouldn’t work both ways. I am simply letting them know that I did not get the item that I ordered and paid for.
*Exceptions might include, as mentioned in previous posts, cases where the seller cannot be reached or has no option for correcting the problem, but I would find that very unbusinesslike and I don’t recall having come across that sort of problem before. If they can’t correct it, then I would try to cancel the sale and take my business elsewhere.
That’s my practical and ethical view. I don’t know what the legal factors are, I hope they wouldn’t come into play.
No brainer.
I ordered what I wanted. If the plus still fits my wants (I sometimes want the simpler product) I would make a reasonable good faith effort to notify and return for replacement. Yes emphasis on reasonable. Their mistake does not obligate me to expend huge amount of time or effort. More effort if it didn’t fit my want. I would be asking for a refund.
Similar past experience in similar circumstances that the company requested we just keep it. The return and reissue process is more work for them than it’s worth. But that is their call not mine.
This was actually one of the scenarios dramatized in Dennis Prager’s ethics-instruction video For Goodness Sake (which I was forced to sit through in Hebrew school). Prager’s answer was “tell the merchant.”
I always try to tell the seller.
A couple years ago I ordered six boxes of cooked cereal from a site and received six shrink-wrapped packages of six (36 total boxes). The price I paid was obviously way too low for this to have been an error on my end of the order. When I notified the seller, I received a very generic message about how sorry they were that the order didn’t meet my expectations. My conscience is clear.
It’s quite possible, in situations like this, that the delivery would come with a message from the merchant (either in the box with it, or e-mailed, or whatever) that said something to the effect of “We’re sorry, we’re out of stock of Widget; we hope that you’ll appreciate Widget++ instead”. If that’s the case (and if Widget++ actually meets my needs), then no further action is needed: They made a business decision that suits them, and it suits me too, so we’re all good.
Absent such a note, I’d make a reasonable effort to contact them. Even there, I expect that the likely response is that they’ll still just say “That’s OK, keep it”. EDIT: Or, as @ZonexandScout says, a form letter response that assumes that I’m complaining. That puts me in the clear, too.
If I can’t contact them, that’s on them, the price they pay for making it hard to contact them.
And if, after I contact them, they’re willing to make arrangements to take the item back, then I go with that.
It depends on the merchant and it depends on the monetary difference between what you ordered and what you actually received. An amazing example:
Several years ago, a colleague ordered a new microwave oven that bolts into the bottom of the cabinet directly above her stove. She received TWO. She got upset because she thought they mistakenly charged her for two but, in actuality, they charged her for one. Being honest, she called and explained what happened. They told her TO KEEP IT. LOL
A year or so back, I ordered a 500GB NVMe drive from Best Buy that was on sale. I received a 1TB drive of the same model with a 500GB inventory sticker on it. I said “Huh, neat” and tossed it into the drawer where it sits today (I bought it because it was cheap as a “when I need it” thing)
I suppose if I contacted them, they probably would have said to keep it and the restocking costs would have outweighed the value to them in returning it but honestly my calculation was that I didn’t especially care to hassle with it. If it was a smaller seller or something maybe but I wasn’t about to make an effort of dealing with AI customer service chatbots and email exchanges to deal with it.
This is actually pretty common with computer hardware. With bleeding-edge top-of-the-line technology, the manufacturing process usually isn’t consistent, so they make a bunch and test them, and only the ones that pass all the tests get branded as the top model. The others, though, will quite often perform satisfactorily at some lower performance level, and so those get a different brand put on them and sold at a lower price.
Once the product becomes established, though, the manufacturing process becomes more consistent, and a larger proportion start passing all the tests. But there’s still only a limited market for the higher price point, and a larger market for the lower price point, so they’ll just take some of the high-test ones, and stick the cheaper branding on them. Sometimes they’ll do something trivial and easily-reversed to them to cripple them down to the labeled performance, and sometimes they won’t even bother to do that.
I would try to return it.
Currently, most of what I buy that fits the OP criteria, I buy from Amazon. And sometimes they just don’t care.
And forget about cases where they accidentally send you two instead of one. There’s no category for that. You might end up being refunded, which means you get one (or two!) for free.
Oh well, it balances out when they send me a book that they had not only dropped in a puddle, but their delivery was so fast and efficient, it was still wet when it arrived!
Whack-a-Mole, was this inspired by this thread, I wonder?
Honestly no. Until just now with your link I had not seen that thread.
I asked because I ordered something and, upon reviewing it, there is a chance (remote and I do not know yet) that I might get a better version of the thing I ordered.
In this case, the Samsung branding and box say it’s a 1TB drive, it’s the printed warehouse inventory sticker slapped crooked on the front of the box that says 500GB. I assume it was just slipshod inventory tracking on the part of the warehouse and someone saying “Yup, that’s a 980 Evo” without checking the actual specs.
Which seems to be the consensus. But how much effort does it take to fall out of reasonable?
To me not much. If it is a simple web site report, an email, or a phone call that takes only a few minutes, sure. I’ll even go so far as a drop off with a preprinted label at the local UPS or FedEx. That’s as far as reasonable goes though.
How far will you go?
For contacting them, if there’s an email address or phone number posted on their website, or if I can find it with a quick Google, that’s reasonable. Once I’ve contacted them, if they want me to return it, and pay the postage, then I’m willing to take it to the post office or equivalent to send it back.
If they make me work harder than that to contact them (or, equivalently, it’s easy to contact their computers, but their computers aren’t capable of understanding the issue), or if they want me to pay postage or to go further than the post office, that’s not reasonable.
IMO the same as the emerging consensus.
Many larger merchants don’t want to be bothered with customer service. So I try to report it and if that fails, I conclude that by the design of their website and their business processes they’ve told me they’re satisfied with the current situation with my shipment. If they’re happy, I’m happy ethically and practically.
Like many folks I buy a lot online. Most shipments arrive on time, undamaged, and correct. Some don’t. Sometimes I come out ahead, sometimes behind. I try to be philosophical and accept that the net is close enough. The online sales & delivery process definitely is designed from the ground up for “Cheap first, accurate second, gotta accept a few screwups as one of the things sacrificed in the name of that cheapness.” To which I reply “I’m OK with that deal.”