I know it’s stealing….but…..

[VidalSass]

Im going to be Annihilated here……

i took out a store card to pay for a large tech purchase, interest free, over 36months. This was four months ago

I set up a direct debit straight away for the monthly payment and then cut up the card.

I checked my account and noted direct debit not come out, so I logged on to the store card account and the charge is still ‘pending’ - therefore minimum payment is 0 as the charge has not been processed by the merchant.

would I be unreasonable to just ignore it and therefore avoid the repayments? Surely it would eventually just be cancelled? Although it’s already sat there for four months….

i don’t want to call the merchant as obviously they will then just process the charge…..

im worries that eventually it would just be charged but a part of me is excited at the thought that an error may have occurred resulting in me getting free stuff. I know it’s technically stealing but it’s a huge company (probably not paying corporation tax in the uk) and I’m not exactly rolling in it

AIBU - should call the merchant to process the charge and start paying it back

NBU - technically it’s stealing but fuck the man and ride the freebie wave

I agree with this.

You haven't committed fraud. You have set it up to pay but they haven't processed it from their end.

As long as you are willing to pay if they ever get round to this.

After 36 months - 3 years - they will have long ago written this off as bad debt.

"she spent £71k of it before the bank realised, tried to contact her to no success and then got authorities involved. She served 4 months in prison in total."

£71K for four months in clink doesn't sound like the worst deal in the world to me if I'm being truthful

Depends what she spent it on. Was it cigarettes, whiskey and wild, wild women, or did she squander it?

Unfortunately yes it is according to the law. It doesn't matter how the goods/money got to you or what the circumstances are/who made a mistake, intentionally depriving the company of payment is legally considered theft.

She had a fraud conviction on her record for the remainder of her life though which caused her no end of unexpected consequences. She was never ever accepted for private rentals, her marriage ended as a direct result and she lost her career and many friends. She also missed four months of her toddler's life too which then meant that he remained primarily with his father for good as he was, by then, very settled there.

If the bank accidentally deposited a million dollars into my account and I had the choice to keep it or send it back?

like 99% of people I would keep it.

I completely disagree with this, the percentage wouldn’t be that high. I think you’re judging too many people by your own standards!

You can’t pay a charge that hasn’t been processed. I would wait and see. But have the money ready in case

Tell them or don’t up to you OP. But be prepared to explain yourself when they catch up to you, because they will at some point.

It was 4m ago. It will likely be picked up in the year end reconciliation that the finance company will carry out. Her contract is not with the merchant, but with a 3rd party finance company.

She has also signed a legal document in which she contracted to pay this amount - regardless of an admin error, she is committing fraud if she does nothing. The onus would be on her in court proceedings to prove that she did not know the DD was not being taken but, as it is reasonable to expect that a person would/should regularly review the bank accounts, she would still be liable for non payment and associated interest and costs.

She needs to contact them now and evidence her ‘willingness to pay’.

The advice on this thread encouraging the OP to commit fraud is risible. The PPs here are at no risk of the fall-out of OP being found out.

Are you a lawyer? There is an offence of "theft by finding" which you'd commit if you found money in the street and didn't try to get it back to its rightful owner - would be interesting to know whether this applies to situations like the OP's.

This. Once I’d done the dd I would presume that they would actually do their job and not think about it again.

If I did notice then I would contact them though, but only because I would be concerned that it would get backed up and they would end up wanting a bulk payment which wouldn’t be convenient for me.

I wouldn’t do it through guilt about them not taking a payment I had tried to set up- that’s their failing not mine!

I would call them and sort it out. Not due to the morals or anything like that but to protect your finances.

At some point, the shop will likely reconcile their accounts and notice this “pending” payment. The deal you signed was for 36 months. So they could take via DD all the months that you’ve missed in one go. As you have set up a DD, they can just take it without your agreement. Can you really afford something like 6 or even 12 months worth of payments to come out of your account in one go? The longer this goes on, the worse it could get and I couldn’t have that over my head for 3 years.

Everyone saying that this is the merchants fault so you don’t need to worry are being naive. You took the goods and signed a credit agreement. They are entitled to be paid regardless of whether or not their admin is poor.

This is what I'd do. It's their mistake.

About a decade ago I took early redundancy from my job. I got paid my redundancy money as soon as I left, but there was still a month's salary to come. When that arrived into my account, it came with a duplicate payment of the £20k+ redundancy money. I rang them immediately - they apologised and asked me to send them a cheque, which I did.

When I told my ex-colleague, who had also taken redundancy, she checked her bank account and they had overpaid her too. She didn't say anything but a week or so later they contacted her. She then contacted 3 others who had been made redundant, and the same had happened to them - they hadn't noticed but had been contacted about a week after I had phoned.

To this day they all blame me for them not getting double bubble redundancy - they don't listen when I tell them it would have been fraud. Sigh.

If people don't check what is going out of their account, how do they know what is available to spend?

(Unless they have so much going in that this isn't a concern?)

No defence in law - your bank account, your legal responsibility. If you are negligent and do not check it, the risks are entirely on you.

I'm just reminded of two times within the same year I was overpaid by the two different community care companies I was working for. One paid me a full month's salary after I'd already left the company, and the other overpaid me by about £800 one month. I mentioned to my manager I'd seemed to have been overpaid, his response was that I should give him the money back until the issue had been resolved. I told him I'd be happy to return the money once they'd given me a full breakdown of what hours I'd been paid for and what amount was an overpayment.

I never heard anything else about it.

@diddle just realised I misread your post 🤦🏽‍♀️ you weren’t saying what I thought you were - sorry, can’t delete my reply!

I'm not surprised they were making redundancies when they were so shit with money that they were frequently accidentally paying people twice over!

So if your employer didn't pay you due to a glitch, it would be Ok for them to hold onto your salary and pretend they are unaware ? Am sure you would be really happy with that. 🙄

Own the fact you know that It would be wrong to not pay.and don't suggest there is any grey area here at all.

in reality the company have years to claim the money as you will have signed a loan contract , irrespective of whether direct debit is successfully being taken. So you can do nothing and risk surcharges or sort it out.

Morally It's a real slippery slope to
suggest that it's ok to steal from people or organisations who in your opinion can afford the loss. And you know that really.

Keep the money to one side and see if anything gets said. If not you’ve got a nice little rainy day fund. They can’t add extra charges for non payment and honestly they probably don’t have the resources to do all that stuff anyway.

It’s not fraud and it’s not stealing.. it’s an administration error on their part.. happy days for you!!

Ignore some of these posters on here saying otherwise

Regardless of your morality - this is likely to be picked up by their auditors at some point and they will then reclaim the money. They will also be able to claim interest based on when they should have received the payments. If you tell them now you have a reasonable case for not having noticed sooner and therefore not being liable for the interest, leave it much longer and I'd expect them to want the interest, with the threat of court action.

You should also check the terms and conditions carefully to see if you are liable to pay the whole lot immediately they pick it up if no payments have been made.

People are always talking about morals on these types of threads😂

I wouldn’t say anything but these sort of things really stress me out. I’d be wondering if they’d ever realise and send me a huge bill once they’ve realised their cock up. I’m the type of person that thinks a representative of the company would turn up at my door and demand the full amount in cash😂😂 I’m a paranoid fucker!

I still wouldn’t say anything though. I’d just be stressed internally

How is setting up a direct debit intentionally depriving them of payment? I can see the argument that she should have noticed payments weren't being taken, but plenty of people don't check their accounts that diligently, so it could go unnoticed.

It would be an unreasonable organisation if, on noticing the lack of payments, went straight to legal recourse, rather than checking what's happened and saying to the customer, "oops, we noticed we haven't been taking your payments, so we're going to start doing that now, and please can you send us X amount to cover the last Y months, else we will have to charge late payment fees."

That doesn't mean companies are never unreasonable in their actions, but you usually get a better response by starting out politely.