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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

Well, you can still go back and buy 2 two packs at four pack prices and then you wouldn't be a shop lifter anymore.

This post almost reads like "well home depot's UX wasn't very good one day and I was in a hurry so that entitled me to steal guilt free"

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Would you consider it not stealing if it had been the cashier who rang him up?

What if he didn't notice it at all? Is he still "guilty" for the theft, such that it would be fair for police to show up at his doorstep and arrest him if the store detected it and correlated it to this credit card? Is it fair for him to be put in county jail for six months, which is a possible consequence for petty theft?

The stealing part (or rather "dishonesty part") happens when you realize a mistake has been made and intentionally choose not to correct it. If a cashier gives me a $10 bill for change instead of a $1 and I realize the mistake out in the parking lot and choose not to correct it, yes, I am guilty of being dishonest and yes, I am stealing from home depot even though it was 100% the cashier's fault.

I don't see why this is a moral dilemma. If the opposite happened and you got short changed and home depot refused to correct it wouldn't you think home depot stole from you?

Exactly. It does get you funny looks though, when you go back into the store to try to correct an error like that. I've even had employees tell me to get lost because it is too much trouble to fix the error.

> If the opposite happened and you got short changed and home depot refused to correct it wouldn't you think home depot stole from you?

If I got short changed at Home Depot, noticed it after I'd left the store, then returned and asked them to swap $1 for $10 I'd expect to be laughed out of the store.

Why? I would expect them to count the money in the register, find it is off by $9 compared to what their computer says should be in the register, and then believe your story.

This is a contrived example though. Say you buy something on homedepot.com and they never ship it to you and keep your money? Would you still expect to be laughed at if you call up their customer service and explain?

What about back at home? Are you morally incumbent to drive back to resolve it? There was no intention for dishonesty on your part; the expectation of you to inconvenience yourself for something you did not intend, for such a small imbalance, strikes me as an unreasonable one. If you noticed it there in the store that they gave you incorrect change and said nothing, yes, I'd agree it was dishonest to say nothing. But when you notice after the fact, the decision to do nothing says more about the level of effort involved rather than morality.

It's also why I don't expect Home Depot to find and pay me should they shortchange me; the level of effort is too large. Is Home Depot morally guilty of theft because the clerk shortchanged me? How would that even work, that the -company- is morally guilty?

> What about back at home? Are you morally incumbent to drive back to resolve it?

I mean... Abraham "Honest Abe" Lincoln ostensibly did just that, so I guess it just depends on the value you place on your own integrity.

As for me... if I discovered they had given me a few extra cents in change I probably wouldn't drive back (I probably wouldn't even discover it because I hardly ever count change). But if I realized I hadn't paid for something or that I got more than I paid for (i.e. bought a can of spray paint online and they shipped me 3) I probably would at least contact their customer service and ask if they wanted me to send the two additional cans back.

> It's also why I don't expect Home Depot to find and pay me should they shortchange me; the level of effort is too large.

Ok, what if it happened not because of a negligent clerk but a negligent programmer? You buy a non-existant product on homedepot.com that was there because of a bug and your money just goes into a home depot's pocket and the product is never shipped to you (because it doesn't exist). If home depot discovers this you would expect them to track down and refund anyone who bought the non-existent product, am I wrong? And if they discover the bug and decide to do nothing (because it's too much effort to refund everyone) and just keep the money, wouldn't that be stealing?

You actually make my point; you're describing something much easier to track, a website purchase. The effort is much lower, you can literally just refund the money, which is a normal part of business operations, so yes, of course i would expect them to.

Would I expect them to find someone who was erroneously charged too much in person, who paid in cash? No, because the effort would be so large.

In terms of contacting customer service, sure. If there's a nice easy way to do so via the internet. If it's, for instance, a phone tree, that after 5 minutes I still haven't gotten a human? Nope. Or if they ask me to do literally anything beyond hand it over to a courier (for, again, the "they shipped me too much"? Nope.

$9 means exponentially more to me than it does to a national chain.

During the transaction, yes... it is morally incumbent on both parties to ensure they aren't cheating the other. After the transaction though, the moral calculus shifts, and I'm going to take into account the time/convenience cost to myself (among other factors) when I decide whether or not to rectify it. (I've found out the hard way that companies can make this surprisingly difficult or time-consuming.)

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