To ask how honest you all are ?

[fourfingerkitkat]

I'm no saint... I have, on occasion, told the odd wee porkie pie but my experiences at work recently have left me wondering if everybody nowadays is quite happy to be dishonest and lie to get what they want...

I work for a large high street store and there have been lots of offers on in the run up to Xmas, 3 for 2's, half price offers etc. A few weeks ago a particular 3 for 2 offer was flying off the shelves as the customer was saving approximately £40. In the past week I've loads of people bringing this particular item back claiming it was bought as a gift and they don't have a receipt so they're offered an exchange for the full value. After speaking to my colleagues they say the exact same thing happens every year, people buy loads of the 3 for 2's then bring back the "free third" item and get goods in the shop effectively for nothing.

Is this wrong or just a sign of the times ? Don't think I would ever have the bottle to do it myself. Whilst the money lost isn't coming out of my pocket directly, I'm more pi**ed off by the time it takes to serve all of them when the shop is already mobbed with Xmas shoppers !

They only reason I know about my friends is because they have boasted about it - its seen as getting back their money from companies that rack it in or over charge. It seems an increasingly common view.

I?m seen as daft for pointing out I?ve been undercharged - a view expressed once by the till operator who?d made the mistake which made me feel just great .

The gall of some people is amazing. I just wouldn't even think about doing that.

I'm not beyond the odd little white lie to save someone else's feelings or very very occasionally little one like 'the traffic was awful', when in fact I've left 5 minutes later than I should have - but that's rare as I'm normally the one who is there before anyone else.

On the other hand, if I have given the person on the till all the facts and they still charge me less/refund me more, I generally don't say anything because I can't be bothered with stupid people. However, if it was a situation where I thought they would get into trouble for it I would.

I was walking in an allley (in daylight) when a teenager wearing a hoodie ran in front of me and stopped me to give me £20 that I had left in the cashpoint. It was like a reverse mugging.

I don't lie (apart from Father Christmas, "no I didn't buy anything in the museum shop ds" while hiding stocking fillers at the bottom of my bag sort of lies). I am always honest in shops. I just don't see why you shouldn't be. People trying it on drives me mad.

My dad still goes on about a "victory" of his which I still refuse to talk about because I think he is very wrong. He knows I think he is very wrong but he thinks it is prefectly ok. Bascially he stole a tent. A big, several hundred pounds tent. He bought it at an outdoors show so the card transaction was done on one of the paper machines which take an imprint of your card and some poor sod has to put them all through a computer later. Except the money was never taken so obviously his was lost somewhere. I would have called them after a few days (where they would probably have said they would chase it up but still not taken the money but I would be in the clear morally having told told them about it and I would be happy with that. I would be equally happy to pay them over the phone there and then). Dad never called them, never told anyone, just congratulated himself on having got a free tent.

Dh once tried to take back a pair of slippers he got me that were too small. It was after Christmas, he had the receipt but not a carrier bag. The woman didn't want to refund because "how do I know you've not picked these up just now and are trying to get money for something you've not even bought. you should have kept the bag" Dh was .

I go back if I've been undercharged/not charged for something. I think it's the proper thing to do.

I think often people are brought up witht his thing about 'getting away with what you can' and it genuinely doesn't occur to them that it isn't right.

There have been times when I've insisted they are wrong and I owe them more and the shop has said, no, we're right and got quite stroppy with me, at which point I do tend to give up.

On Saturday I was in Tesco at about 7.45pm and they were marking everything down, I stood and watched a woman peel off the reduced labels on pain au chocolate and bread rolls and then stick them onto in-date, fresh pain au chocolate and bread rolls. She saw that I had seen her, smiled and walked off.
Some people just have no decency imo.

I found a tenner once sticking out of a cash machine, no one around and could have done with it tbh, but I took it into the branch who said they could trace it back to the account. So that was cool. I think you feel much better if you do the right thing than if you don't.

What really gets on my nerves is people telling you 'you should have pretended it was worth more' or 'you should have lied to the shop'...for me that is instant death to a relationship or friendship. No thanks.

And when people post about website mistakes that mean you get something for free, etc etc - and then get all legal beagle about it when the shop won't honour the transaction...there was a massive thread once about threatening to go to court over a bed that was a few quid, it was some years ago.

People were saying 'it's their fault I now have no bed to sleep on' and things like that

Really bloody odd.

I'm honest, because Im too scared I'll get caught!

I once bought a pram and footmuff from boots online, when it arrived it was too small for my DS.

It was a SUPER online offer and I got it for £150.

I printed out my emailed invoice and returned it.

The invoice didn't have a price on it for some reason and the manager was going to refund the whole price of £350 onto my card!!

But I told him I only paid £150

Not because I didn't want boots to loose out but because I was sure it was an undercover sting and the bovvys would be waiting outside with handcuffs

I am probably less scrupulously honest than I like to think I am, but some of the exempts on this thread have left me aghast. There is no way I could so deliberately deceitful as to cold-bloodedly rip off another person or organisation.

Remember...that's so sad. There was a family in Tesco the other week, kids gleefully helping themselves to pick and mix and eating it - parents doing the same.

I just stood there with my mouth wide open. It was appalling.

I was in Tesco recently too and used the self serve... i paid for my stuff and got £50 cash back...

I was waiting for my mum and as I walked off I saw a load of money sricking out one of the self serve machines

In about 3 seconds the folling ran through my mind ...

'omg, look at ALL that money, should I take it?? hand it in?? i should hand it in but no one would know if I took it, but then thats SOOOO wring, right I'm going to hand it in'

I walk over and take it, start walking towards customer service and realise

ITS MY BLOODY £50 CASH BACK THAT I DIDN'T TAKE

If you don't take the cashpoint money the machine sucks it back (according to my brother) in so my hoodie must have been quite quick to grab my £20.

I've heard that too - I assume the person who left their tenner got straight into a car and drove off just before I arrived. It was just sitting there. It was a long time ago though, maybe they didn't do the sucking back in thing in those days.

Mainly honest - I've stood behind someone at a cash machine and ran after them to hand them the £10 they left in it, ditto £5 change left in a Tesco self serve. I also handed in a crumpled £20 note I found in the school playground to the office.

The example in the OP is just theft and the retailers should change their exchange policies for this type of purchase.

However, about 20 years ago, I had double glazing installed. I paid a £200 deposit by cheque, then the £900 balance over the phone by credit card. They posted me a paper copy of the receipt, but the money was never taken from my account. I didn't phone them to report it . So I can't really hold myself up as a paragon of virtue.

I was in the bank last month getting £40 in pound coins and fivers - got a receipt for £40 and he gave me 40x£1 coins and 8 x £5 - so double - told him and he was so effusive in his praise for my honesty that I walked out on a cloud - even though it had never crossed my mind to take the money.

I am pleased my honesty is rubbing off on the kids too - they saw a man drop a ten pound note from his wallet on to the floor when paying for something quickly in our Spar shop - and ran after him to give it back - without even thinking about it.

I'm normally really honest with bill mistakes and things like that and there's one place in particular that we go to a lot and every single time they miss things off our bil, or add things on that shouldn't be There. I always point it out whoevers benefit it is to.

Last week we went for tea and managed to get 3 drinks each in 3 hours of being there due to incredibly slow service, they brought my food 20mins before his and then his was the wrong meal (chicken instead of steak), from ordering a drink to rceiving it was 45 mins at one point with 2 reminders, just everything was wrong. When the bill came there was 1 beer, 3 diet cokes, 5 cups of tea, one main course and a slice of cake. We'd had 3 beers, 3 glasses of wine, a main course each and a bottle of water. I didn't feel in the slightest bit guilty about paying what they charged us for and leaving.

I was gobsmacked to hear of a scam this week involving pick and mix whilst in a large dept store that sells pick and mix. They have actually got the pick and mix section camered up now it became so bad.

What they were doing was getting small but expensive items such as eye shadows, lipsticks,mascaras or memory sticks, memory cards and so forth and sealing them up in the pick and mix bag with a few sweets and then weighing the bag and paying therefore getting maybe £50 worth of stuff for around £2 or £3.

You have to admire their sheer deviousness begrudgingly though, as they do cost us honest folk dearly. l would never have thought of that one in a million years.

I'm not a paragon either. I sort of lied when claiming on insurance a few years ago, but it was complicated.

Basically I'd taken out product insurance on something, and then cancelled it within a few days as I didn't want to insure it after all. (cost nearly as much as the item).
They didn't cancel it - they kept sending letters about it. I kept ringing up, it was a catalogue, they were useless and kept saying, that's all done for you now, it's been cancelled - and I didn't hear any more, and assumed it was, finally, cancelled (took several weeks of calls).

Anyway I rang them a couple of years later to check as it had been bothering me...sure enough the insurance was still in place and I'd not been refunded.

At this point I got rather cross, and decided that as the item had been in the wars rather, I was going to jolly well claim for it, because they had taken my insurance money and never given it back. So I did, and I told them it was for spillage, rather than the actual reason (moths) because I didn't think they would cover moth damage. and even though it had had things spilled on it, I still felt bad when I gave that as the reason.
I got a phone call giving me the third degree about the spill...it wasn't much fun. I did get a new item in the end which lasted another few years.

I justified it, but I didn't like doing it. I just wanted the insurance money back but didn't know how to get it.

I never shop with those awful catalogues any more.

you're all so honest!

A certain high St bank made a cock-up with the standing order for my £800 rent. I had changed the details so it was to come out of a different acount. Anyway it went to my landlord twice, ie from both accounts, but was only taken from one. My landlord told me I'd paid twice and refunded me £800. Me and DH went to the Costa Brava all inclusive for a weekend with it

I was out one night and found a purse in the toilets, it had about 200.00 in it and all the cards, I looked through the cards and found something with the owners photo, went into the bar and searched for her, found her, explained what I'd done and promptly was asked WHY I had opened her purse and gone through it and then was accused of nicking a tenner idiot woman, should have left it where I found it.

Yes Msvestibule l think it's a case of who the 'victim' is really. l wouldnt dream of pro-actively shoplifting but would probably not bother if l noticed my local Tesco had missed a jar of coffee off my receipt or something as l spend a fortune in there and they are basically highway robbers without the mask imo.
But if say they had packed a jar of coffee from the customer in front into mine l would always take it back as l would think that person might be broke and not be able to replace.

And yes l do know there is no such thing as a victimless crime and all that so really no matter how big an organisation is etc we should all be just as honest as if dealing with a little old lady dropping her purse in front of us. But meanwhile back in the real world......

I think I'm quite honest - I have told staff in shops and restaurants if they have undercharged me, have taken cashpoint money into the bank, have taken bank notes found in the street to the police station etc.

However, I increasingly feel as if I am in the minority.

My DM works in a shop that has lots of BOGOF and 2-for-3 offers at this time of year, and she tells similar stories to the OP. She also says that they regularly get people returning empty perfume bottles and make up packaging, saying that the perfume bottle was faulty (it leaked in their drawer, the store are lucky they're not suing for compensation apparently) or that they had a reaction to the make-up. My DM is incensed but store policy is to suck it up.

I'd say i'm middlingly honest. I would NEVER scam a shop in the way the OP describes, but if i got home from a shop to find i'd not paid for an item in a food shop for eg. I would not drive all the way back to put it right.

I found £250 in an envelope on the pavement once. It was pension day and I was outside a post office so I assumed it was pension money so I handed it back in at the desk. The cashier recognised the envelope as someone she had just served and said she would keep it back for her. I hope she did.

DS grabbed a 15p Freddo from the stand by the till in Tesco, I didn't notice til we were outside, then I went in and paid for it.

BUT, I once found a tenner by my bus stop when I was at school, I was in need of bus fare having spent all mine on sweets so I kept it.