Conscience versus practicality.

[wallenba]

This morning I visited a big box store about 16 miles from home to purchase some shotshell components. I got 50 lbs. of #8 shot, three bags of wad columns, some reloadable Remington STS loads, and 1000 Winchester 209 primers. When I got home I opened the box of primers and three packs of 100 were missing. I should have checked at the store, but I was rushed. That's when I noticed the charge on my receipt. The young man at the counter only charged me $5.99 for 700 primers. Looking closely at the box I noticed two bar codes. One printed on the box, the other applied on another panel with the notation, "@ 10 ea." I think that bar code was the cost of a single 100 pack, the clerk didn't know the difference evidently. I went from feeling ripped off, to feeling guilty. Now the dilemma. If I bring it to their attention, maybe the kid gets chewed out, or they don't believe me that there was only 700 and will want to charge me for 1000. Also, it's a 32 mile round trip for me to cover their error on overpriced merchandise.

Should I just ignore it this one time? Or fix it? :|

[Hickory]

I'd bite the bullet, gas there & back might put you behind in cost.

[tryNto]

Do what you feel is Right..

Myself, I would go back and make it right.
Its only 32 miles.

[Plate plinker]

Just buy some more stuff from them until you feel you paid your due.they made plenty of money off other stuff. i recommend a couple of shirts that will square you up quick enough. The markup on clothing is outrageous. Large box stores make even make money on the clearance clothing.

Or you could give to a good charity to square up.

If you find a manager with any brains you might be able to explain what happened. I guess i would wait until my next trip though your only talking about $20 bucks or so right?

[Nueces]

A low cost alternative would be to call and ask to speak with the manager about the shortage and the pricing misunderstanding.

[SGTM9]

I would have to make it right. That is just me. Karma jumps up and bites me every time I don't. I spent 5 min. Trying to explain to a girl at the gas station she gave me $10 to much change a couple weeks ago.

[wallenba]

A low cost alternative would be to call and ask to speak with the manager about the shortage and the pricing misunderstanding.

I just got off the phone with a customer service manager. Initially he was going to adjust it over the phone via credit card and only charge me for five 100 packs. I still owed for six. After being on hold for some time, he came back a little frustrated and said he was having problems with the register (?). He then just told me to forget it, and thanked me for bringing the snafu to his attention, as it could and would have happened again.

So... honesty does pay, and my guilt has been assuaged. I was on the fence about it, but you guys kept me honest. Thanks

[gwpercle]

How many times has the clerk not put bagged and paid for items in your buggy, then when you got home...no item? More than once, call it square. If that has never happened , and you are still agonizing over it then go back, see if you can straighten out the mess so you can sleep.
Personally, I've gotten home to discover damaged or missing items , or they have refused to honor good coupons, so many times, I would feel good about coming out ahead just this once.
Just do what feels right.
Gary

[jaysouth]

A low cost alternative would be to call and ask to speak with the manager about the shortage and the pricing misunderstanding.


ditto, let him decide

[white eagle]

Me I'd keep em' but I am a bit of a rebel
the way I see it is big box stores stick it to the average Joe whenever they can
how do you think they can have sale's with 35-40% off list price

[slim1836]

You did the right thing, kudos to you.

Slim

[Garyshome]

That worked out well.

[abqcaster]

you did the right thing and it all worked out. glad to hear it.

[shooter93]

You most certainly did the right thing. To think otherwise would be someone I'd never do business with.

[BrianL]

I would have to make it right. That is just me. Karma jumps up and bites me every time I don't. I spent 5 min. Trying to explain to a girl at the gas station she gave me $10 to much change a couple weeks ago.

I have been in that situation and also agree that a phone call might be enough. They should be advised of theft if only to protect other customers.

[BrianL]

Just read that you had resolved the issue, Congrats!

[Artful]

just wait till it goes the other way - I bought a brick of 22LR from Chinamart - got home went to put it on the shelf and found 8 boxes instead of 10 boxes - went back - they wanted to treat me as a criminal? I seldom shop the sporting good dept there now.

[BrianL]

They wanted to treat you like a criminal? Sounds like you may have had the same thoughts about them at the time:bigsmyl2:

[tryNto]

Good job...

[leeggen]

Friend you are now an honorable person. Your heart is in the right place.
CD

[MaryB]

WalMart didn't run one of my prescriptions through insurance, they just charged my card full price and mailed it. When I got that in the mail and it hit the bank the same day the phone calls started. Pharmacy gave me a run around on fixing it and running it under my insurance($2.65 copay versus $670!!!) until I called corporate and raised heck. Pharmacist got fired over it, apparently she had done it to several others and instead of admitting wrong she tried to claim that was the correct price. My maximum copay is $6.70 so I knew better off the bat. So yes it goes both ways!

[Oreo]

I just got off the phone with a customer service manager. Initially he was going to adjust it over the phone via credit card and only charge me for five 100 packs. I still owed for six. After being on hold for some time, he came back a little frustrated and said he was having problems with the register (?). He then just told me to forget it, and thanked me for bringing the snafu to his attention, as it could and would have happened again.

So... honesty does pay, and my guilt has been assuaged. I was on the fence about it, but you guys kept me honest. Thanks

I spent about 10yrs working various retail jobs. I would have told you they'd do that. Its standard (big-box) retail practice that if an item is marked wrong or handled incorrectly by the cashier that the store takes the loss as a matter of customer service. Even if the store manager had green in his eyes and corrected the transaction to charge you more, his boss would have said he was wrong to do so.

It was nice of you to call about it but you aren't even a blip on their radar. Probably happens twenty times a day on all sorts of merchandise and goes completely unnoticed. On a macro scale it contributes to what retailers call "shrink" which is anything that causes actual inventory to be different then recorded inventory. Retailers consider it their own responsibility to keep shrink low, and it is a benchmark the store managers are graded on, but a certain percentage of gross sales is expected to be written off as shrink. Its just a routine cost of doing business, nobody's perfect.

[MtGun44]

PITA, but right is right. I'd save the receipt and take it back the
next time I was there.

[wallenba]

One thing has occurred to me though. My total bill at the register was over $200. I had not done the math in my head prior to checking out, or even after. If I had opened that box of primers and it was full, I may never have known about the error. I have begun to put too much trust in our electronic world. Bar code scanners are supposed to take the human error out of checking out. But I see there are still holes in the system.

[Oreo]

It's the cashier's responsibility to check that. They're usually trained to look for that kind of stuff.

You went to the register, were rung-up and paid in good faith. Your responsibility ended there. It would be different if you noticed prior to or during checking out and didn't say anything.

[Bzcraig]

Though I'm coming in late my response would have been; it's never wrong to do the right thing. You did the right thing, good job!

[MaLar]

A low cost alternative would be to call and ask to speak with the manager about the shortage and the pricing misunderstanding.
I'd call talk to the mgr and tell them you'll be back to purchase some thing else soon.

[A pause for the COZ]

One thing has occurred to me though. My total bill at the register was over $200. I had not done the math in my head prior to checking out, or even after. If I had opened that box of primers and it was full, I may never have known about the error. I have begun to put too much trust in our electronic world. Bar code scanners are supposed to take the human error out of checking out. But I see there are still holes in the system.

Oh man you can never trust the bar codes.
Personally I am not good at it, but my wife is a expert register watcher.
She has the ability to remember numbers in a very weird way. Example: She can hear a phone number told to some one else she is not even listening to. 5 years later she hears that number again and can recall in detail the who, what, why and were.
She keeps a running total as she fills a cart and is never ever off on the total. She catches errors on 9 out of 10 trips to the store at check out time.
Usually on sale priced item scanning at full price.

Her little number ability has burned my butt more than once. " How much did you pay for that gun?" Well ummmm.

**** I know she must have seen an ad some were.

[RogerDat]

Worked out well. Phone call saved you a trip (that would have been my suggestion as a starting point). You got a deal with a clear conscience, and the store now knows that they need to be aware of this to avoid losing a lot of money from repeating this error at the register.

My wife does a running total at grocery store rounding up or down and is never off by more than a buck or two. Now if she ever learns how much powder costs I'm a dead man, already saw her sort of concentrating when she heard me mention the price I pay for WW's and I'm pretty sure that was her mentally going... HEY he said he had over 1000 lbs. @ .35 that is... not exactly what I would call cheap which is the way he described it to me.

[RED333]

I just got off the phone with a customer service manager. Initially he was going to adjust it over the phone via credit card and only charge me for five 100 packs. I still owed for six. After being on hold for some time, he came back a little frustrated and said he was having problems with the register (?). He then just told me to forget it, and thanked me for bringing the snafu to his attention, as it could and would have happened again.

So... honesty does pay, and my guilt has been assuaged. I was on the fence about it, but you guys kept me honest. Thanks

Nope, you were honest before this and will be after.
Making the phone call is what I would have done.

[robg]

well done its you concience you have to live with it.my father always said do right and fear no man ,dont write and fear no woman!

[BrianL]

It is not so much the store that you may have aided but more so the other customers. The stores can accept and afford their 'shrinkage' but consumers do not.

[PULSARNC]

Good for you now the man in the mirror can smile back at you in the morning .Never a bad idea to do the right thing

[montana_charlie]

Should I just ignore it this one time? Or fix it?
My answer to any question of this sort would be, "What did your Dad and Mom teach you?".

CM

[Harter66]

Man that's $60/1000 for 209s. In the case of Uber mart I'd have called it a draw (especially since I can buy the other primers for half that . On a man to man or a locale vender I'd have made it right.

My Miss watches like a hawk every scan and 99% of the time catches an error.

Let me clarify the first statement . Because of the hidden double error ,box shortage 1st and then the tagging error,I would have called it a draw. 1st because the system could have just as easily charged you $59.90 for 1000 as $41.93 for 700 as 100 @ $5.99 . Next up probably those have the anti-pilfer stripes on the 1000 box and may have been also striped as singles ,so if the door inventory had tripped because of a missed/incomplete scan you probably would have been detained and searched for the 3 missing boxes and charged as if you had broken the carton yourself ,slipped a single across the scanner and dropped the carton in the bag as you left the checkout.

[M-Tecs]

Calling the manager was the right thing to do. I keep a running total when shopping. I find errors with the scanners maybe 5% to 10% of the time I complete the checkout. Very rarely are the errors in my favor. Grocery stores are the worse. If I purchase 50 items per trip I will find some type of mistake 1 out of 4 times. I have yet to find a mistake at Costco.

Couple of weeks ago the grocery store scanner claimed $39.99 for a $3.99 item.

[wallenba]

[QUOTE=Harter66;3154601]Man that's $60/1000 for 209s. In the case of Uber mart I'd have called it a draw (especially since I can buy the other primers for half that . On a man to man or a locale vender I'd have made it right.

Yeah it's steep. And they are on sale on some sites. I didn't need more than a thousand right now, and I'd have to order several thousand to bring the hazmat charge down to a reasonable per 1000 rate. Then there would still be shipping, I'd have to be home to sign for them depending on where I got them and how they were shipped. Sometimes merchants have you over the barrel. Midsouth has them for $30, but they are out. Midway has them for about $35, about $18 off, so their normal price is around $53.
The $5.99 was the unit price for a 100 count pack also. The 1000 pack may have had a lower per price. I tried to look on their website, but a search turned up nothing on primers.

The store in question is Gander Mountain.

[Harter66]

Wall that's nuts. Small everything is 27-29 ,large run 34-39 , I guess I should stock some 209s but as high as they have gone out here was 39/1000 .
Of course Reno has 3 mega chains and a dozen local stores that keep everyone honest. Carson City and the Valley have about 10 or 15 stores but no super chains. Both are over 120 miles one way for me and my local guy has had health problems the next place is 70 miles. I tend to make the best of things.

[DLCTEX]

My son went to a Bass Pro a few years ago and bought a lot of hunting gear and a Matthews bow and some arrows . He drove more than 100 miles home and that evening got to thinking about the total cost he had put on his card. Didn't seem right, so he checked his reciept and found the young clerk had not charged him for the bow. He called the store and told the manager about it, offering to give him his card number for the charge. He was told "thanks for your honesty, enjoy the bow".