There have been many posts about what should be done to the thief in this
sad tale of woe. However, I would submit that this customer didn't steal
anything...Home Depot *GAVE AWAY* that merchandise.

The customer may or may not have been purposely trying to confuse the
cashier. He may or may not have noticed he was undercharged. What he *did*
do is place *all* items he was purchasing on the checkout counter for the
cashier to ring up.

The other thing that is for sure is that the cashier either wasn't trained
well enough to spot an honest or dishonest mistake by the customer and/or
didn't care enough to ask a question to the customer or one of the other
employees if she wasn't positive on what the merchandise should have looked
like or how it should have been sold.

I believe the best course of action would have been to inform the store
manager of what happened and recommend that the cashiers get a bit more
training.

As for the other suggestions about adding an additional charge to the
customer's credit card - can't do it. Not only is it illegal but the
customer could easily dispute the charge since his signature wouldn't be on
the second charge slip.

Robert


"Don Foreman" wrote in message
se.com...
I think it's less of a moral dilemma than a question of what response (and
by whom) is appropriate.

My approach would have been to quietly tell the cashier what had
happened. How she and the store respond to that re the offender is then
their call -- not mine.





"Harold and Susan Vordos" wrote in message
...
Today I was in Home Depot, standing in line to pay for a couple rolls of
hardware cloth. In front of me was a gentleman, and I use that term
loosely, that had placed on the counter six one inch electrical PVC ells,
along with six couplings, each of which was attached to the ells. The
ells had their UPC stamped on them, but the connectors had a stick-on
label.
To a woman clerk, that may or may not be wise to how such things look and
are used, it was very easy for the items to be scanned by the label only,
considering the UPC on the ells blended well with the other data printed
thereon.

That's what happened. The buyer paid with a credit card, the total
coming
to under $3. It was obvious to me that he had placed the connectors on
the
ells intentionally, likely thinking they would get scanned just as they
did.
I did more than nothing, but I'm interested in hearing what others might
think would have been a good course of action to take. When I've heard
various opinions, I'll describe what I did, and why I did it.

Comments?

Harold