The frickin hilarious part is that she decided to come to Clutchfans for peer review. It's not stealing because she had no intent, it was an act of omission not commission. (not a legal defense). It was the store's employee that has the responsibility to ensure the the store's compensation on the transaction, any liability lies with the employee. Most large stores now have receipt checker at the door to assure against this type of error. By not having one (and not employing another American) the store assumes what is recognized as a common risk . It's possible that if the employee were incentivised to receive a commission on their day's receipts they would give a damn about what they rang up. The store would make no consideration to the buyer for their costs in rectifying the transaction (gas,tolls, lost time). So the buyer would actually end up being negatively effected by the store's negligence. It is rational to consider the degree of effect (just like the graduated income tax freepers). The $50 will be an insignificant decimal of the the store's daily receipts, and have no viable effect on their status. For a soulless entity (corporation not a person) it's just the cost of doing business. Incompetent businesses should bear the consequences of their own incompetence. Don't feel bad baby, you didn't do anything wrong.
The frightening thing is that your wife knows about this bbs. My wife has no idea this place even exists and I plan on keeping it that way. She thinks I actually work all day. LOL.
For anyone who has worked retail knows this sort of thing happens all the time. I don't have stats but I get the feeling this sort of thing balances out with mistakes the other way where the customer is overcharged or double charged. The nice thing to do is to let the store know about their mistake and pay for it but I am not sure if that is an ethical obligation as it is the store's mistake and to a certain extent things like that are factored into their operations.
On a tangential note I was at a bar last week that I go to every now and then. I only had one drink and when I was leaving I asked the bar tender for my bill. He said he thought I had paid already and his shift was over so he wasn't going to charge me. I went ahead though and tipped him 50% of the cost of the drink though.
Most of the time if I go out to a bar with friends, I end up being the designated driver since I just don't drink that much and almost never drink when out of the house. Generally the bartender/waitress will give me free Cokes and I just tip them $1 or so for each round. Karma kicks ass!
You're absolutely right. It is the store's obligation to make sure they ring things up correctly. If they fail and lose money for it, it's their own damn fault. No reason why a customer should be obligated to fix a vendor's mistake -- at their own expense, no less -- when it doesn't negatively impact them. She can fix it if she wants, but there's no moral obligation to do so.
I bought a laptop at BestBuy once and chose the Store Pick up option. I went to the store and it turns out they don't have the thing in stock...but online it said they did. Fine, wasted gas, whatever. The next day I chose a different BestBuy store for pick up and got my laptop. When I got home, I noticed it turns out they gave me the wrong one......a more expensive model. Basically, I got a better laptop than what I paid for. I considered for about 10 seconds whether I should return or not, then decided that since they cost me 10 dollars of gas the previous day, I definitely deserved this $200 compensation in return. It all balanced out.
I think it's up to both parties to be sure they at minimum got what they bargained for in the transaction. I won't say whether it is right or wrong as that is up to the individual. My speculation on that is, if you're asking the public, you feel badly enough you should have taken it back... but that is my speculation from my experience, and it's your situation so that makes it different enough only you can say. You can all but guarantee that if the error had been in their favor that you wouldn't be getting a call from them, the onus would be on you to find and retrieve. That said, if they called you for their money, I'm sure you'd send it, as well. Meh, whatever, you're fine. Relatively small amount, I wouldn't stew over it.
