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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

We had an interesting experience with this recently.

A butcher accidentally added an extra zero and charged us $640 instead of $64 for our purchase. We realized a few days later when I noticed our credit card spend looks strangely high for the month.

We're regulars so the next time we were there we said "Hey it looks like you overcharged us last week. Can you fix it? We got x,y,z and it doesn't sound like that adds up to $640??"

The butcher people were super apologetic, reviewed their numbers, and refunded us. They specifically said "Wow you're so nice about this! Most people would be shouting and screaming and going crazy"

We're fortunate enough that a hiccup like that isn't a big deal. Plenty of credit card balance to buffer the hiccup and if worst comes to worst, we can issue a chargeback. And if even that doesn't work, eh we'll be unhappy but fine.

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If anything it makes me more sympathetic of those who do get angry. If being nice to people is more a product of one's privilege than one's nature, who am I to judge those who flip out when they're counting down the days to their next paycheck.

Well it’s a bit of both right? Stress makes it harder to be nice, especially existential stress. But lack of stress doesn’t automatically make you a good person. You still have to consciously decide to do the right/nice/polite thing.

There’s a lot of not-well-off people who are super nice because it’s faster than being confrontational. And there’s plenty of entitled assholes who think being well-off means they can shit on people.

Exactly.

> "But lack of stress doesn’t automatically make you a good person."

This.

Lack of stress only makes it easier to be nice, and stress makes it harder.

That does not mean that a person without stress is automatically nice, and stressed out people are always rude and unkind.

The fact that this needs to be said out loud is weird.

This doesn’t have much to do with altruism or empathy. In your case: well-to-do people get more in return from managing their reputation as upstanding folks than the they would get from throwing a fit over something that they might only need to get fixed within the month. In the case of poorer people: they might have to pay rent today with that money, so their manners might go out of the window somewhat due to stress (getting mad because of someone else’s mistake doesn’t have to do with lacking empathy or altruistic feeling).

> their manners might go out of the window somewhat due to stress

Isn’t this the whole premise of the article we’re commenting on?

See my parenthetical...

> (getting mad because of someone else’s mistake doesn’t have to do with lacking empathy or altruistic feeling)

I would have just chargebacked immediately when reviewing the card statement

Like an ongoing gameshow of Jeopardy: bzzt wrong price

And then maybe contacted them to do it again

But I definitely wouldn't have been confrontational either, I’m surprised people would bother being aggressive about it, maybe if they used a debit card or were broke/illiquid

You familiar with how shitty card companies make that for vendors when you charge back?

Not everyone would want to do that to their weekly butcher shop.

I don't think the butcher shop would agree to be their weekly butcher shop anymore if they pulled that shit.

I wouldn't. Granted, Steam or Amazon pulling an entire account over one chargeback, as has been reported of both, remains bullshit. But dragging a small shop into that process without even trying to fix the problem with a friendly conversation? That's a customer I'm probably happy to fire.

I’m familiar, so dont fuck up

The American way, god forbid you ever make a mistake.

>I’m familiar, so dont fuck up

Don't.

Quite possibly the only time I've seen on HN where correcting someone's grammar is actually making a salient point in the discussion. Well done.

I assume all software you've ever written has been bug free?

Good luck charging back a card-present transaction after a week.

I have successfully charged back a card-present transaction after multiple months with US Bank.

Was it a chargeback (i.e. a fraudulent transaction) or services not rendered (i.e. faulty product etc.).

Services not rendered and it was based on a bait and switch with a rental company. I had to send in documentation and receipts but I got my money back in the end.

Seems a bit unnecessary. You could easily use the opportunity to build a better relationship through kindness. In an exclusively self-interest-maximizing sense, doing this yields better long-term outcomes for a short term cost of one-week float of some insignificant cash and the discomfort of asking.

You're entitled to it. It just seems irrational from a self-interest-maximizing sense, and definitely irrational to me who just feels pretty good about letting people undo a perfectly undoable error.

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