To keep this or am I thief?

[hattyho]

So I ordered a purse online from a well known brand.
I paid £12 so cheap and cheerful.
The parcel arrived today and it was well packaged in a nice box and wrapped etc.
I opened it and it was a different purse (loved it ) and I checked online and it is selling on the site for £100
Moral dilemma ...keep or return ?
Would you tell them ?

I love a good theft thread especially when all the 'lawyers', 'police' etc come out of the woodwork

Wow some saints on here.
All my friends have said keep it too even my granny who is a church goer !

"We're talking about a purse here people, the OP is hardly a hardcore criminal!"

We're talking about a purse that is £88 more than the OP paid, @Flynnshine - I think it is dishonest to keep £88-worth of someone else's goods.

I am 100% sure that the OP - and all the 'just keep it, no-one will know' crowd on this thread - would be up in arms if a retailer gave them goods that were worth £88 LESS than they'd paid, and would be chasing them for the money back. So it is dishonest and theft when a retailer does it - even if it is an accident - but just fiiiine for the rest of you.

@STDGisAnEvilWolefGenius

I would bet my hat that retailers do it more often than the buyers, and don't bat an eyelid!

I'm still amazed that we have some Lawyers on here spouting studies.

It's a PURSE, and probably worth the same overall as the original!

@hattyho I bet you wish you had just kept the purse and your thoughts to yourself now, although to be honest I like the grey one better so I probably would want to send the black one back!

own up and see what the retailer says. Honesty lasts the longest.

To lighten the mood a little - I once ordered a book on Papercutting (the craft where you cut paper into lacy pictures), and was sent The Homeowner's Guide to the Chainsaw instead!!

I told them what had happened, and they sent me the right book, and told me to keep the other one. For some reason, as a 50-something urban housewife, I didn't have a chainsaw of my own, so donated the book to the charity shop!

I ordered a kitchen from MFI years ago, delivery driver turned up with hundreds of boxes of kitchen, said that some items were missing from delivery note & would be delivered at a later date, over next month we received all the missing bits. When joiner started to fit the kitchen he found they had sent us 2 sinks, 2 sets of taps, 2 oven housings, 3 lengths of worktop plus loads of end panels & under cabinet lights too many. I contacted MFI & they said it would cost too much to fetch them back, we could keep them. I sold most of it to my brother in law for his new kitchen, my kitchen hardly cost me anything after selling all the excess items.

Bet it's Asos. They won't give a shit. Keep it.

I once booked a stay in a spa hotel plus a treatment to have while I was there. When I was checking out, I saw they hadn't billed me for the treatment. I thought for a moment, then told them that I needed to pay for the treatment as well. They then wanted to charge me an additional £10 as the price of the treatment had gone up by that amount since I had booked it. I was on a low income at the time, the stay had been a gift, and I really couldn't afford the extra £10. I argued with them that I should only pay the price it was when I booked, but they refused to listen and got the manager involved. It was only because other guests were starting to starting to take an interest that they eventually decided to let me off paying the extra £10, 'because I had been honest'. I did tell them that I had learned my lesson and was a lot less likely to be honest were I to ever stay with them again. They were definitly treating me as if I were a problem troublemaker, when I could have just paid for my stay and walked out having had a free treatment and they would have been none the wiser.

Wow some saints on here

A sadly predictable sneer - except that, in truth, some of us feel we have enough faults as it is without adding dishonesty to the mix

Whether you're "a bad person" is probably more for you to decide than anyone else, but I'm reminded of the saying: The true test of someone's character is what they do when no one is watching

Keep it.

Yeah, I'd def keep that one too.

Tell them. They'll probably say keep it and then you have the item & a clean conscience. (Though given your comment about saints, maybe the conscience wouldn't be an issue )

Keep it - enjoy it and forget about it

I'd keep it and fill it with all my 50s (pence pieces unfortunately. I don't have any £50s) and then proudly show it off every time I paid for anything!

I would keep it. The way I see it, it's not my job to correct the crappy procedures of every large corporation that makes a mistake to my benefit.

I would return it if it was a small business though.

Can I ask any lawyers- what would happen if you received the expensive purse but didn’t realise - maybe just thought it was another colour? That’s the kind of thing I might do but I am very honest and would definitely let them know of their mistake if I was aware of it.

I would let them know they sent the wrong one but also say you are happy to keep it. If they ask for it to be sent back and send you the other one then you are no worse off than you were before. If you are honest you may find you are told to keep it anyway and they may also send you the other one.

I tend to feel that if I do something underhand it will come back somehow and bite me on the bum and I have enough to worry about as it is without inviting anything else.

Meh, I'm dishonest at times, and im a hypocrite as I tell my kids to do one thing and I do another (without their knowledge obvs!). We all are. "That looks fine" (if you're colour blind) "it's not a problem" (yes it fucking is), "don't eat that DS it's been on the floor" (5 second rule applies to me). We all do it.

But I'm generally a good person, i scoop up dying bees and pop them on a flower or give them a bit of sugar water, I run after people who've dropped a fiver out their pocket to give it back (damn those plastic shits), Ive pretended to find £20 on the floor and insisted it was an elderly gents who I saw pinching a shitty £1 sandwich and an apple from Tesco because he was clearly struggling, i once paid £500 for a dog because the alternative was that she'd be bred to death, I've worked 9-5pm and then spent from 5.30pm-6am caring for a relative, I've even picked up dog shit that didn't come out of my own dogs arse.

I'd keep the bloody purse and still be a good person in general. Applying a blanket "it's dishonest you must be a horrible person what else do you do, rob houses on Christmas Eve?" is very simplistic.

And too right I'd moan if they sent me a cheaper purse than I paid for. Hypocrite again. Whatevs.

God I love Mumsnet lawyers

UrbanBeetler - if you didn't realise it wasn't the purse you'd ordered it wouldn't be theft because you wouldn't have the mens rea (i.e. dishonesty element) of the offence. Bit hard to imagine not realising it wasn't the same purse if it's a different colour though!

To a PP - it's not that all the lawyers are up in arms; it's that a PP was saying adamantly that it wasn't theft (basically handing out incorrect legal advice). It's an urge we have to set the record straight! Same thing when Relationship posts say 'oooh, free 20 mins of a divorce lawyer's time!!!'. It's misleading...and not in the spirit of MN.

[posted too soon]

FWIW, I'd have kept the purse with zero guilt...and, yes, I would have kicked off had the company sent me a cheaper purse! But, then again, I never said I was an ethical lawyer...but maybe that makes me a good one! So, no, I couldn't give a rat's ass about the purse, but I do give a rat's ass about pretend lawyers handing out shit advice.

When did i ever say i was a lawyer? also english isn't my first language so mock all you want.

Mumsnet is a weird old place. You are a thief if you keep something a company sent you but its a-ok to steal money out of your childrens bank accounts in their name and its ok to fraudulently claim benefits you are not entitled to. Weird af.

So, no, I couldn't give a rat's ass about the purse, but I do give a rat's ass about pretend lawyers handing out shit advice.

This x 1000

I don't care what the OP does but it pisses me off massively to see people say categorically that something is not illegal because they don't personally consider it immoral - that's not how the law works.

Everyone is entitled to an view as to whether something should or should not be illegal, but the question of whether something actually is illegal is a matter of interpreting the law, not just giving an opinion.