Morals?

[Girgy85]

Tweaked the question a bit......

You are standing in a casino, somewhere near the cash desk, and a guy, who you have never seen before, has won a nice tidy sum and is being paid in £50 notes, lots of them, really lots of them. You see him heading for the door. You leave minutes later and as you are leaving you see a £50 note on the floor. There is nobody else around. What do you do now?

[relaedgc]

I despair of mankind in general sometimes. Is it so hard for someone to honestly contemplate handing it in?

I don't confess to being a paragon of morality, but I've found wallets and phones on so many occasions and I've always made the effort to see it returned to the owner without ever contemplating theft. I'm just not dishonest enough to do it. I realize it doesn't apply to everyone, but I don't think it makes me a 'mug'.

[mondatoo]

[  ] Seems like a good time for this thread to have gone up

PS Agree with Gatso 

[Jon MW]

Last weekend my mum saw something for the Wii mispriced at HMV - it said something like £15 instead of £55
The shop assistant told her they'd have to sell it to her for that price because they'd labelled it with that price.
His manager agreed with him
My mum knew full well that it wasn't true and they could have just told her it was a mistake.
To my mind it's a pretty similar thing - on the Morality Scale; how wrong was it for her not to tell them?

They'd have to take it off sale for 24hours though (maybe it's longer) and that could cost them more time/money. Probably better to sell one and fix the error.

They literally had two of them - their computer system priced it correct, they had to over ride it to put in the lower price displayed on the actual item. To fix the other one all they did was put a new price label over the old one.


My comparison with the bookies/casino is;

if a bookie/casino pays you more than you should get - you leave with more cash in your pocket than you're entitled to and they're left with less in their till than they should have.

if a shop incorrectly prices up a product and incorrectly believes they have to sell it to you at that price - you leave with more cash in your pocket than you're entitled to and they're left with less in their till than they should have.

Both of them relate to an employee error, both of them could be avoided by the consumer informing the employee they're wrong - so is their a moral difference between the two?

And for everyone who said they'd obviously give back a casino overpayment - would you buy an incorrectly priced item in a shop, when the shop assistant tells you that's how much they'll charge you - would you really insist on paying the full price for the product? How is it different?

[Claw75]

And for everyone who said they'd obviously give back a casino overpayment - would you buy an incorrectly priced item in a shop, when the shop assistant tells you that's how much they'll charge you - would you really insist on paying the full price for the product? How is it different?

I'd say the main difference is that a lot of people wouldn't realise the shop weren't obliged to sell the item to you at the marked price.  Maybe it was a matter of company policy in this case rather than them thinking they had to do it by law?  Tesco have a policy (or used to at least) where if an item was marked up at an incorrect price (i.e. didn't correspond to the price when scanned) you'd get the item for free.

[Cf]

B&Q also do (or at least did when i was there) the selling at marked price thing. Whether it's law or not I'm not sure but it was definitely company policy.

Answer to OP: shout and give him his money.

To general bookie/casino overpayment: it depends who overpaid me. eg, a nice friendly person who I like does it i'll let them know. If it's some miserable **** though then I'm keeping the money.

[TheChipPrince]

CF is it morally wrong to steal your colour crayons, that text colour is tilting beyond belief!

[TightPaulFolds]

And for everyone who said they'd obviously give back a casino overpayment - would you buy an incorrectly priced item in a shop, when the shop assistant tells you that's how much they'll charge you - would you really insist on paying the full price for the product? How is it different?

I'd say the main difference is that a lot of people wouldn't realise the shop weren't obliged to sell the item to you at the marked price.  Maybe it was a matter of company policy in this case rather than them thinking they had to do it by law?  Tesco have a policy (or used to at least) where if an item was marked up at an incorrect price (i.e. didn't correspond to the price when scanned) you'd get the item for free.

I heard about this Tesco thing (DTD, double the difference), in the situation you mention they would give you the item for free, then they would calculate the difference in marked price v scanned price, double it, then give you that. Eg you buy 10 cucumbers, offered at £1 each, scan at £2, you'd get to keep all the cucumbers and demand £20 from them. I don't know if this applies to home deliveries though.

There is a forum on Money Saving Expert, really nice, they discuss lots of bargains going around and ways to save money. In among it all there is a thread dedicated to this Tesco thing eg http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=1656271 . These folk hunt down such mispricings, buy as many as they can, then demand the free items and double the difference also. Legal? Yes. Going by the spirit that Tesco set the thing up with? No. Greasy nits, yukk!

[Cf]

CF is it morally wrong to steal your colour crayons, that text colour is tilting beyond belief!

Yes it is wrong. This colour is awesome!

[Graham C]

CF is it morally wrong to steal your colour crayons, that text colour is tilting beyond belief!

Yes it is wrong. This colour is awesome!

It's a nice colour, just not on the background I have set for the forum

[Cf]

CF is it morally wrong to steal your colour crayons, that text colour is tilting beyond belief!

Yes it is wrong. This colour is awesome!

It's a nice colour, just not on the background I have set for the forum

Choose a better background colour then

[MANTIS01]

Tweaked the question a bit......

You are standing in a casino, somewhere near the cash desk, and a guy, who you have never seen before, has won a nice tidy sum and is being paid in £50 notes, lots of them, really lots of them. You see him heading for the door. You leave minutes later and as you are leaving you see a £50 note on the floor. There is nobody else around. What do you do now?

WTF. I would keep it without a shadow of a doubt. If you hand it in to the casino the person you hand it in to will keep it. If the receptionist did for some reason hand it to the manager, the manager would keep it. Nobody living in the real world is ever going to phone a casino to ask whether a £50 note has been handed in, that's if they even notice it's gone. So the casino has no option but to keep it. So somebody's gonna get a fiddy here. You or the casino. The reality is handing it in isn't a moral dilemma over whether the owner should get his fiddy back. The owner has lost his fiddy period. This is way different to a phone or a wallet where there's means of identification and means of contact. It's just a random fiddy. You could give that money to a starvin africans charity and save a life, but you hand it in instead. In doing that you kill a starvin african but pay for the manager's chinese takeaway that night. Maybe it's best just to walk past the fiddy and leave it blowing around the carpark. Let the next mug who finds it deal with that dilemma right?

[pleno1]

Give to charity?*










*or number 8

[Claw75]

And for everyone who said they'd obviously give back a casino overpayment - would you buy an incorrectly priced item in a shop, when the shop assistant tells you that's how much they'll charge you - would you really insist on paying the full price for the product? How is it different?

I'd say the main difference is that a lot of people wouldn't realise the shop weren't obliged to sell the item to you at the marked price.  Maybe it was a matter of company policy in this case rather than them thinking they had to do it by law?  Tesco have a policy (or used to at least) where if an item was marked up at an incorrect price (i.e. didn't correspond to the price when scanned) you'd get the item for free.

I heard about this Tesco thing (DTD, double the difference), in the situation you mention they would give you the item for free, then they would calculate the difference in marked price v scanned price, double it, then give you that. Eg you buy 10 cucumbers, offered at £1 each, scan at £2, you'd get to keep all the cucumbers and demand £20 from them. I don't know if this applies to home deliveries though.

There is a forum on Money Saving Expert, really nice, they discuss lots of bargains going around and ways to save money. In among it all there is a thread dedicated to this Tesco thing eg http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=1656271 . These folk hunt down such mispricings, buy as many as they can, then demand the free items and double the difference also. Legal? Yes. Going by the spirit that Tesco set the thing up with? No. Greasy nits, yukk!

yeah seen that thread a few years ago - that's how I knew about it.  Remember one time people were picking up free sat navs and £100+.  I suppose if there are loopholes like that someone will always want to exploit them, but that thread don't sit comfortably with me either.

[bobAlike]

If I saw the person drop a 50 I'd tell them.
If I found a 50 on the floor in the casino/bookies/bank I'd keep it.
If I got paid more than I should've by a multi national company I'd keep it.
If I got paid more than I should've by a small corner shop I'd tell them.

I once got stiched up by Barclays for being honest-
It all started when I went to my local Barclays for some change (£60 of silver) for my dad's business. When I got back to the shop I realised they gave me £75 in change.
Good old honest went back to the bank and told the cashier what had happened at which point the her boss did an audit on the cahiers till.
After the audit the boss had found that the till was not £15 down but £25 instead.
Guess who got stiched up when they would only give me £50. Being young and naive it was me who ended up being a tenner down.

Now because of that event 26 years ago I wouldn't ever give a big corporate any overpayment back if it was in cash.

I also once walked out of a shop eating a Mars bar which I never payed for. I went back and payed up.