Same here (sort of). I found a nice rack of baby backs in Kroger a few weeks ago at less than half price. Upon reaching the self-checkout, I noticed another label beneath the one I’d first seen. I summoned a manager and showed him, asking what he wanted me to do. He smiled and said to go ahead and scan at the lower price – I’d lucked out! I got a great deal without being a jerk, but he scurried back to the meat aisle to be sure prices were correct.
The law seems to intend for this to be the legal remedy and consequence for this type of error, and while the guy could have acted differently it appeared he had no such obligation. Many of these laws seem to stem from the tendency for pricing errors to be the favor of the stores more often than the other way around. The store learned a big expensive lesson and pricing accuracy should be something that they need to prioritize. But if the law was written in a different way they may have been fined by the state for price inaccuracies and that may have cost about the same and that could have been for overcharging for a single can of cat food. So on the store’s part it’s a wash and basically the cost (and consequence) of doing business in the state of MI.
As for if the guy as a AH, I’d say it’s more that guy has big balls, willing to put up hundreds to prove the store was in error.
Three thoughts:
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The legal term of art for this general kind of situation is generally not “theft”, but “unjust enrichment”. Which means about what you think it does and applies to all sorts of windfall or “finders keepers” situations. Although in this particular case, the specific code law of Michigan’s honest pricing law may overrule the general “unjust enrichment” concept. Ony an MI lawyer could opine with any specificity.
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Agree w @ASL_v2.0 a couple posts ago that in terms of general contract law, the store is the offeror at whatever posted/tagged price, and the consumer is the acceptor. Not vice versa.
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Back in the days before UPC scanners it was not uncommon to find the same goods on the shelf with different price tags. Last week beans were $0.19/can and this week they’re $0.24/can. The stockers were supposed to remove or cover the older stickers with the new ones but didn’t always. Picking out the cheaper cans was typical everyday behavior and nobody thought of it as theft or as unjust enrichment. Some beans are offered at $0.19 and some are offered at $0.24. Take your pick.*
When UPCs and scanners were invented the stores’ original nirvana goal was to also eliminate shelf price tags and all the labor they represented. Their plan was that you’d find out what your items cost when you checked out and not before. There was a predictable hue and cry from consumer advocates that the computers would all be programmed to cheat the customers.
So laws were passed in many (most? all?) US jurisdictions mandating shelf tags include prices and that anything which scanned at a different price than the tag had to be sold for either the tagged price or the lower price, depending on jurisdiction. And here we are 50 years later.
* A similar consumer move is when buying perishables like dairy to reach into the back of the case and pick the ones with the future-most expiration dates rather than simply taking the one at the front with a (probably) sooner expiration date. We've had surprisingly nasty argument threads on whether that move is just smart consumerism, a bit sketchy but OK barely, or totally *outre* quasi-thievery. Evidently our individual thresholds for selfishness vary considerably.
How much different is that from buying green bananas?
I am not a lawyer, but I have read up on contract law. There are legal precedents that say it doesn’t work that way. I don’t know why a price label isn’t an offer, but it just isn’t.
My take (in an area well outside of my wheelhouse):
Under contract common law, th store committed a scrivener’s error - generally not binding. Further, the customer knew it was an error.
Under the UCC, I would argue that the customer was not acting in good faith.
But, The MI statute (which I have not read) appears to impose a form of strict liability upon the vendor. I would be interested in what the legislative history say as to the intent of the statute. I would be very surprised if the intent were to allow customers to benefit from obvious scrivener’s errors.
But, this is a good example of 2 things we see often. First, legislation is in inherently moral. And second, people/entities often twist law to apply it in manners it was not intended.
IMO, there is no question that the buyer knew he was taking advantage of a mistake. I’m not sure why anyone would think doing so was “moral.” Simply because one party was wealthier than the other? Because you feel “finders keepers” an appropriate basis for social interaction? Because he claims it was intended for Veterans?
@Broomstick can probably provide a more front line view, but from a corporate policy point of view, we don’t have an issue with this as long as you don’t leave a whole stack of yogurts on the bottom of the cooler or worse quarts of milk on the floor outside the cooler.
Bananas in a bunch generally all mature at once. I buy mine yellow because I want to eat them now, not keep them a week then eat them. I also only buy a couple at a time, because 6 ripening over the same day or two is more than I can eat in that time. YMMV.
I can see it’s (almost) indifferent from the stores’ POV. Only when it gets to the point that nobody is taking the front ones and they go expired and become unsaleable does it cost the store a penny. Otherwise taking the freshest ones is simply changing which customer bought which carton of milk.
The argument made by the “it’s outre” crowd amounts to the same logic as cutting in a line. Everyone is treated more fairly if things are done first-come first-served. Any individual’s advantage by taking a far-dated carton comes directly at the harm to whoever comes later and is forced to take the shorter-dated item. If everyone goes first-come first-served, and all the milk goes out of the store in FIFO order to each customer, then everyone shares equally over time in getting short- or long-dated milk.
I don’t have much of an opinion either way on expiration dates. I just shared the anecdote for everyone’s entertainment.
The consumer was the asshole, he noticed a huge error but declined to share his observations with the meat clerk. Then he had the audacity to ask for the extra $5 a piece for his scamming efforts.
Then to act horrified at the news someone was going to pay for it with their job. What did he think would happen. Sounds like he wanted a friendly slap in the back, a wink wink and boy you did good in groceries today. What a tool. He wasn’t there to even buy for the VFW group but shucks imma gonna get me some beefs fer cheap watch this and hold my beer. Asshole.
Yep. He’s the AH. Because I’m one too, and it takes one to know one.
But I’m not a TOTAL asshole.
I’d have bought one (maybe two) at the mistaken price, THEN notified the Manager (in an off-hand, breezy, “You might wanna check the pricing on that Prime Rib” on my way out the door.
I think you’re confused on those legal precedents. Your own Wikipedia link even says so. There is a difference between saying or showing “We sell X here” either through a window display or an ad–which leaves open the question of price, perhaps subject to negotiation–and saying “We sell X for $5.00 each here” or “here is X, labeled for a price of $5.00, which you can simply pick up and walk to the register with…” The latter gets more towards a unilateral contract. The difference between “Will you mow my lawn for $100?” followed by “Yes, I will mow your lawn for $100!” and posting a sign that says “$100 to be paid on performance to the first person to mow my lawn.”
And, again, Michigan has a Consumer Protection Act.
Now, whether the MCPA would side with the purchaser in this case, where there is a mistake and the purchaser was aware there was a mistake as they were making it really is moot because the manager–either as a judgment call or perhaps IAW store policy to avoid a scene–allowed the discount.
Those of us who don’t believe a corporation under our current economic system can be considered a moral agent or is worthy of being dealt with as such would have no qualms at all about holding the store strictly liable for its mistakes. I’m kindly amazed anyone would have such qualms. The store will do just fine. If this kind of thing happens so often that it’s seriously affecting the store’s bottom line, then… if anything it sounds like doing the store a favor as it probably shouldn’t be in business anymore.
I think it is interesting that most of us judge the circumstance based so much on how big the store is and how much he took.
Intellectually the ethics should be the same if it was one package vs 100, if it was Megacorp or a small mom and pop, shouldn’t it? Amount of benefit or harm doesn’t really change if it is ethical, does it? But most of us would very much judge this differently if it was a single package from Megacorp than if it was a large amount of the inventory of a small mom and pop. The fact that it large on both sides here offsets each. Probably to same as a small package from a mom and pop.
The consumer is in my mind ethically challenged to my sense of ethics, big store or small, one package or the whole case, but that is not what makes him an asshole. His apparently being proud of it and bragging about what he got away with is what is being an asshole.
Only if your world view is one where Megacorps are neither less nor more moral than mom and pop stores, and neither is to be preferred over the other.
ETA: Oh, and a whole lot of other packaged assumptions about food distribution and wealth inequality.
Whatever the story is on good intentions, I’d draw the line on buying out the entire stock of prime rib at the artificially low price.
It deprives others of the chance to buy one prime rib package and cook it up for the homeless. 
I generally tend to acknowledge situational ethics, and I am far from an apologist for large corporations, so I’m just trying to suss out the parameters of your ethics.
Does it matter whether the store is a HUGE corporation, or a small independent regional chain? Is the corporate structure determinative for you? Would it be different if it were incorporated as a partnership, or a sole proprietorship? Or if 2 individuals were interacting - is the less wealthy party justified in taking advantage of an unintentional mistake by the wealthier? How big of a discrepancy makes such action “moral.”
Gee, my neighbor isn’t even aware of that plant they are neglecting. Heck, it might even die. So I’ll just dig it up and they won’t even notice. It will look so nice in my garden instead.
Sure, a silly example, but the idea that you should be able justify taking advantage of someone based on your personal assessment of how much they would be harmed, strikes me as problematic.
Yup, it’s one thing if you see something that looks like a good deal within the normal range of pricing of a special offer - $10.99 per pound when it’s normally $17.99 per pound, say. And consumer legislation in some states is designed to punish the vendor in situations where a special offer like this is not reflected correctly when the item is rung up at the till, because in a lot of situations the customer just may not notice. Often stores will have voluntary policies to honor displayed pricing for similar reasons.
But if you see a price tag that’s 10% of the normal price, that’s obviously just an error, and if you knowingly and deliberately seek to exploit that by grabbing the entire stock of $600 worth of meat for $60, then you are a thief exploiting a loophole in the law. Ethically, it’s no different from shoplifting.
If you want to defend stealing from big corporations, that’s fine. But don’t pretend that’s not what it is.
Exactly.
In my moral framework, what the customer did was not something I would ever do. It’s an obvious error, not the store trying to pull a bait-and-switch, which is what I would think these laws are in place for. I’m not going to judge the customer for what they (legally) did, and just say it’s not something I would or could do myself.
The store agreed to the sale. How is the customer a thief again?
ETA:
You’re really all over the place here. Because as a legal construct, this cannot possibly be theft. As a moral construct, however, whether there was theft depends very much on how one views big corporations.
The store didn’t “agree to the sale”. The sale rang up at the correct price $17.99 per pound. The store was then legally obliged to refund 90% of that because of the error in the marked price.
He is not technically a thief in the eyes of the law, because he exploited a legal loophole. That doesn’t mean he’s not a thief.
Again, if you want to defend stealing from large corporations because you think they are evil, go for it. I just don’t think you should conflate the ethical issues here and pretend that this is not really theft.
Right. Agreed to the sale.
Do you not see the contradiction? If, taking for the sake of argument, it were moral or ethical to hold mega corporations–as sophisticated economic actors with extraordinary coercive power–strictly liable to their own pronouncements, then how is doing so for one’s own gain theft?
Because I know how to get to a legal definition of theft independent of moral framework, but I cannot for the life of me fathom how to arrive at a moral definition of theft without considering the moral framework. How one views mega corporations relative to oneself and others within a moral framework is central to the issue.