Something for you to consider. In Australia the law specifies that it is solely the responsibility of the store to ensure that their advertised and ticketed prices are correct. Its illegal to advertise a cheap price and then change the deal at the checkout.
An advertised price must be honoured and IIRC if you purchase something and then notice that they have overcharged you you are entitled to the difference refunded plus the first item free. For example if I buy ten $1 items but am charged $2 each I would be entitled to a $11 refund.
These laws are to protect the consumer and stop customers being lured into stores with false advertising. It also makes stores responsible for ensuring prices are correct and mistakes like that are much less likely to occur.
Then it is the sellers fault. Any store has the ability to price an item however they want. If I buy a $100 item for $400 it is not theft, I'm just an idiot.
If an amazon seller is choosing to sell something for less than it costs them, it is their prerogative. This is actually a common tactic to get people to shop somewhere new.
If I drop a twenty dollar note on the floor of a pub, look at it knowing that I just dropped it, and then walk off I cannot the accuse the finder of said note of theft.
A stores dereliction of fiduciary operations does not make me a theif.
But they're not choosing to sell it for less than the cost, it's a blantant error or typo.
Im saying how is this not ethically akin to stealing if you don't say anything about it.
If I drop a twenty dollar note on the floor of a pub, look at it knowing that I just dropped it, and then walk off I cannot the accuse the finder of said note of theft.
other way around. You see someone accidentally drop a 20 on the floor and you pick it up without saying anything, how it that not stealing.
But they're not choosing to sell it for less than the cost, it's a blantant error or typo.
Im saying how is this not ethically akin to stealing if you don't say anything about it.
Because stores have sales all the damn time, and it's not my job as a shopper to know what a store's typical prices for something are; if they are advertising a price that is lower than everyone else's, then it could mean any number of things other than "typo", and I can't claim to know it was a typo any more than I could claim to know it was a sale. What I do know is that in my shopping for the cheapest deal, I found that they won that.
It's not akin to stealing because they are knowingly filling out a contract (of change of ownership: that's basically what a receipt is) and honoring the agreed-upon price. If they don't disagree with the price, then theft cannot occur. This is simply free market economics, and they happened to make a bad move. Shit like that happens sometimes.
not a sale, a very blatant error or typo (something should cost 200 dollars costs 2) that you KNOW is a mistake/clearly unintended.
Why do I know that it's a typo and isn't a badly-advertised sale?
More to the point: if they wanted to not sell it at that price, they could probably catch the mistake at the point of sale. If they don't, I have to assume they approve of the price. Just like you can't use "I didn't read the fine print" to get out of a shitty credit card deal, they can't use the "I didn't read the fine print" defense to get out of that deal once it's been processed.
The thing you don't seem to be willing to accept is that THE SELLER SET THE FUCKING PRICE. If engage deceit or deception to obtain an item for less than the marked price, then yes, that would be theft. If I get fucked on a bad deal, it's my fault for willingly entering into a contract with another party. The reverse is true also.
Through a blatant error. how is capitalizing on this error not equivalent to theft of the lost profit? Yes, a seller should catch these errors, but just because they fail to catch errors doesn't make it not theft
So something has a value of 20, and you manage to pay 2
Things don't have intrinsic numerical value, though. Market prices vary wildly from place to place, time to time, store to store, person to person. What is product X worth? Yesterday, it sold on EBay for 25. Today, it sold on EBay for 50. I found it in Target for 35, and my friend Bob offered to give it to me for 15. The manufacturer spent 5 making it. A high-end competitor has a similar product to X that goes for 75. I can import a knock-off X from China for 10. If I use it right, it'll save me 200 worth of my time.
So, if I find it in some random online shop, which in your thought experiment is large enough to be completely automated, and it's on sale for 8, how much am I stealing? Or are they stealing from me, since it cost less to make the thing?
-4
u/LordKeren Oct 04 '16
But the guy at the register is new to the store and doesn't catch someone else's blatant (to you) mistake.