How about “taking stuff that doesn’t belong to you without the owner’s agreement”.
I don’t see what the problem with that is unless you are challenging the more fundamental question of whether anyone has the moral right to ownership of anything.
Except the OWNER (or rather, the owner’s agent) AGREED.
They were obliged to conform to the legal loophole that the customer exploited and refund 90% of the intended sale price. That is not “agreement”, it is obviously coercion.
- Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the manager could have availed himself of an exception to the law for obvious mistakes, particularly where the buyer was aware it was likely a mistake.
- Again, the coercive power and the relationship of megacorporations to the law is relevant. Forgive me for envisioning a moral framework in which neither of the following are especially problematic:
(a) A megacoproation’s decision not to avail itself of the law–if the law was on its side–for fear of bad publicity, and to instead relent to a relatively powerless consumer and AGREE to a transfer of ownership, or
(b) If the people’s representatives in the legislature actually for once passed legislation favorable to individuals over corporations, and the law was not on the corporation’s side at all, and so the corporation’s agent could do nothing but consent when faced with the coercive power of the state. Welcome to society (is what I would say to said corporation).
Either way, I’m not seeing where there’s theft–morally or legally–provided one’s moral framework has no qualms about holding megacorporations strictly liable to their own terms where it may be beneficial to oneself to do so.
I won’t say I’m surprised, but I am more than a little disappointed that so many people feel compelled to jump to the defense of a massive corporation, as if it can’t carry its own water.
I don’t have a problem with someone (myself included) taking reasonable advantage of a mega corporation’s error when supported by law. In this situation, I may have taken one steak at the mis-discounted price and would not feel ashamed to tell that to the manager (and I would talk to the manager so that he can correct the error). However, I would refuse the $5 additional bonus. I don’t deserve that.
I may say something in good humor like, “I’m just trying to keep you guys on your toes.” In this case, I get a small bonus by taking advantage of a loophole. The store suffers minimal monetary loss but gets alerted to a mistake in pricing that could potentially lose them much more money had they not become aware of it. If I checked out before the guy who bought $500 worth of steaks and also took $5/item, the store would have corrected the error before he ripped them off for a lot of money.
I can justify my action (in my mind) by realizing the store paid a small fee for my mis-labeled product alert service.
This customer crossed the line into immorality by taking an unreasonable number of items that he knew were mis-priced and also by taking the $5/item additional bonus.
So, in the case referenced by the OP, the customer, having paid the full price at the till, would not have a leg to stand on.
There have been numerous cases where some item, a TV for example, has a sticker price of £1.50 when it should be £150. The store has no obligation to sell it at the sticker price, although, if they kept doing it, Trading Standards might want to have a word.
Let’s be clear here: holding megacorporations strictly liable for their own manifest errors.
If all companies were to increase prices 3% across the board to account for situations where a small number of customers exploit legal loopholes to take advantage of pricing errors, how would you feel about paying that 3%? Would that feel significantly different from paying a 3% across-the-board increase to cover losses from shoplifting?
Confession time.
At a local, large-chain grocery, the bulk coffee beans were priced at something like $7.99/2 Pounds. You filled a bag with however much you wanted from the hopper (with the option of using the store mill to grind it) and the store would weight it and determine the price at checkout (the bags had the UPC printed on them). Now, I can do math in my head, so I figured that was about $4/Lb. A pretty good deal, better than the pre-packaged beans.
The first time I bought it, they charged me $8/lb. I only discovered once I was home and reviewed the receipt. The next time, I paid attention at check-out and said the price was wrong. They charged me the shelf price ($7.99/2 Lbs) without checking.
The next time, the clerk wanted to check, came back and told me the shelf said $7.99/Lb., and I pointed out to her that that was $7.99/2 Lb, as indicated by the per ounce price ($0.25/Oz), also on the shelf tag. Since the math is pretty easy, I told her that it would have to be $0.50/Oz to be $8/Lb, so the $4/Lb had to be correct. She honored the price.
The next time I was in the store, the manager and some subordinates were standing in front of the coffee display. I shopped and returned once they had left. There was a big sign saying coffee at $7.99/Lb and the smaller shelf tags were gone. I no longer buy their bulk beans.
Now, it appears it was a mistake made by whoever printed the shelf tags but not made (or corrected) by the person entering the price into the database. I doubt they lost much money at the $4/Lb price, but how much money they make isn’t the point, it’s that I was taking advantage of a mistake (although I really didn’t realize it was a mistake at the time).
Anecdote 2:
Another large-chain grocery sells beer. In particular, they sell a particularly-bitter IPA for $7.43 a six-pack. Other six-packs from the same brewery (a Pecan Ale) sells for $11.47 as a comparison. Other IPA offerings from other breweries sell in the $10-$12 range. I happen to enjoy the particularly-bitter beer, so it is what I buy, but confused about its price. Looking at the per ounce price, it shows $0.15/Oz. Working things out in my head, it is obvious, based on the per ounce price, the price listed for a six-pack is based on a four-pack.
Now, I really do like this beer. And, the price is the only reason I even go to that store (It is farther away and in the other direction from all other stores). This situation has lasted for a couple of months, including one re-structuring of the beer aisle. If they were to raise the price to match other retailers in the area, I wouldn’t shop there.
My question is, Am I being unethical in either situation? Am I being an asshole for expecting the store to honor its shelf price? How am I to know that the pricing is not what is intended by store management?
I’d feel like I must reject your hypothetical as being extraordinarily unlikely to arise as a step increase in prices at any given moment, and so not representative of real-world conditions and poorly constructed for evaluating a real world situation.
Morality does not exist in the hypothetical. It exists unreality, among living, breathing people (and I might admit some other animals at least). Which isn’t to say I reject all hypotheticals, only that I reject hypotheticals that seem not to bare sufficient relation to reality.
Okay, do you think it’s ethical to dishonestly report material facts to insurance companies when you can get away it without plausible fear of criminal prosecution? How do you feel about the fact that a minority of dishonest people doing this increases everyone’s insurance premiums? Do you think the world would be a better place if we “level the playing field” here by just having a social contract that says everyone should lie to whatever extent they can get away with it?
So all those folks comfortable sticking it to the mega corporations are misguided.
A store that suffers from frequent and targeted losses will reflect its unprofitability by raising prices and reducing payroll hours.
That hurts the frontline employees and customers.
I agree. Take it a step up.
If a car dealership misplaces the decimal point on a $100,000 car do they have to sell it for $10,000 listed on the sticker?
I am betting no and no amount of ranting and raving that you get the sticker price will help you.
But, if they advertised the car for $10,000 then that is something different (bait and switch).
In Ontario, the law is if scanning price is wrong, you get one item free (probably with a value up to $10 or so). How a discount applies to every mistake is beyond me. Mistakes happen. Stores need profit to stay in business. I always report a mistake in pricing one time - “are you sure this isn’t a mistake?” or say what I think the price is. But I would accept one cheapish free item, or take a lower price once I have said I think it’s wrong or what I think it is, if they insist.
Didn’t read the source - but the law might be wrong in addition to the man being a posteriori.
I think the guy is an asshole. If he’d taken one or two, and insisted at the register that he get the posted price, I’d consider his actions totally benign. If he actually intended to feed all those veterans, and bought as many as he expected them to eat, and insisted on the listed price, I’d still consider his actions benign. Stores have an obligation to list prices accurately, and the law gives him the right to the listed price.
But he didn’t do either of those things. He knew the price was wrong. He bought every piece they had, and there’s no way that’s exactly what the veterans would have wanted. He paid the listed price and then insisted on the adjustment, including the penalty. Those are the actions of an asshole.
I’m done with the “whatabouts.” I’ve staked out my position on consumer relations with mega corporations as it relates to the topic at hand. I am not going to be compelled to lay out a dissertation, post by post, on my moral framework just because you can’t seem to grasp the idea that I consider megacorportations to be at best transparent within that framework (and at worst, they are agents of immorality and so harm to them can actually be most moral).
If a megacorporation can’t manage to run itself efficiently, then by its own terms, it shouldn’t be in business anymore. If a megacorporation raises prices because it has to account for its own errors, that’s a moral (or immoral) decision on the part of the people who make up the megacorporation, not the customers holding them to account. Same with if the megacorporation fires an employee over a pricing error exploited by a customer: that’s not the customer’s decision to fire the employee, it’s the corporations.
Nobody is compelling you to do anything. But a cynical person might read that as you simply conceding that you find it difficult to defend the implications of your moral position.
I have defended my position at length. I, however, am still not sure how you keep coming back to the question of agreement to transfer property as if it’s in contest.
That was, IIRC, your sole basis for saying this amounted to a kind of moral theft. So where’s your defense of that? The customer asked for a discount and got it (even after an intermediate step where the customer offered to give up the deal after all, but the manager–for whatever reason–declined). That seems like agreement to me.
My problem with this is mistakes happen.
For example, Walmart has over 53,000 employees. Even with 99.99% perfection about five people will make a mistake.
I have no love for megacorporations or Walmart but there needs to be some reason to this.
It’s quite clear there was no agreement. There was coercion via law. The price paid at the till and as far as all the employees were concerned was $17.99 per pound. The company at no point wanted to sell it for $17.99, (or rather $12.99) per unit but were forced to by law. Whether you believe the coercion to be acceptable does not change the fact there was no agreement.
In fact for the questions of what behaviors I do as a matter of ethics, neither is to be preferred one over the other. Whether or not someone I interact with is a wearing a MAGA hat and an NRA T-shirt, or is wearing a Pro-Choice button and a shirt that says “I believe in Science” does not weigh into what I should do when I see they were leaving their wallet on the table at the coffee shop. My judgement of their moral value is immaterial to whether or not my behavior is ethically right or wrong.
The impact being diluted across a company of shareholders vs concentrated to a small store with faces to the owners does not change that my taking advantage of an honest mistake is unethical as well.
I wouldn’t want our laws to reflect what anyone considers the moral value of the players, either.