You always see these stories with people going to garage sales and finding something that’s worth a ton of money for only a few dollars. It gets on the news. Why doesn’t the original seller go back to them and say “YOU TRICKED ME! I GET YOUR MONEY!” ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
For me, right up to the point where you’re pretty sure you’re just getting a good deal and it’s not a mistake. Let’s go for at least 1 standard deviation for this one. So the bottle was priced at $40, a great deal on this bottle would be $500, I’ll bet the SD is around $150 max, so anything under $350 could be a mistake and anything under $200 has a big prob of being a mistake. Decide for yourselves if 1sd or 2sd’s is your threshold, but this is more than 3sd’s…
It’s certainly the right thing to do, no? When my grandfather died, my grandmother took a silver centerpiece that he had bought her many years ago and sold it at her garage sale prior to moving into a small apartment. He had never told her - and she didn’t know - that it was bought at Tiffany. She priced it at, IIRC, about $100 - it was worth a few thousand dollars because it was a signed piece.
A “customer” saw the mark and told her. I guess he could’ve taken advantage of her, but why would you?
As for when the obligation starts - is it when the item is underpriced by 50%? 30% - that may be an interesting debate but thankfully not relevant here, since the error is so obvious. Personally, I ask whenever I suspect an error (as opposed to intentionally competitive pricing. I recall some bottles in Flatiron Wines in NY earlier this year where they had a Charmes or Mazis (I forget which) of a producer priced higher than the Beze, and I made sure to ask the salesman (it turns out it’s this producers idiosyncratic pricing, and I bought the Beze). Or at Garnet, they had listed a Forey Gaudichots for half of WS-low, turned out that’s the real price from Rosenthal and everyone else was gouging for the Gaudichots (of course, they’d been bought out literally the morning of that day, and there were none left. Alas.). Or, hell, at Table and Vine in Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago, I asked a manager to confirm a price on a Jadot GC-CSJ which was just $30 lower than I saw the wine for elsewhere - manager confirmed, and the price (minus the sale discount from that day, which makes it a bit less attractive) is still available today.
Why not ask?
This is clearly in a moral gray area (and should give the store a chance to rectify it) but Mark isn’t stealing, doing something illegal or being dishonest.
I would say that it is 100% certain that ANY sort of shop would KNOW if they got in a $5,000+ wholesale case of Grand Cru White Burg by ordering it. If they ordered something else, got this and HAD noticed that it had been shipped but priced wrong, they would have taken advantage of that. 100%.
Hence, I am certain that the mistake is on Southern and, since they don’t care about wine, this doesn’t bother me at all. The fiscal effect on them is so small (they make their money on booze and industrial wine) that it won’t bother them either, trust me…
There are about 300 cases of this wine for the entire world, and probably much of it stays in Europe, so it is easy for the distributor to track the store who got it (in error), and then probably it is easy for the store (who may have make a price tag error) to track the customer who bought it because it was paid by cc.
Hmmm I agree it’s a grey area, and personally I would have asked them to double check. I would say chances would be overwhelming that the manager declares yup, that’s the right price (and then your karma remains strong) - given the circumstantials mentioned (not usually a high-end shop, in the system…). But what if the manager turns around and realises that it is THEIR good fortune (having sufficient modicum of wine knowledge to read “grand cru” and/or remember what they ordered), refuses to sell and now pockets the winnings? Would we really expect most store managers to alert the supplier rather than take the bottles to their private collection and flog them off on winebid? And against that scenario, I prefer the OP having them. Anyways, I thought you guys in the states all hated the three-tier system, which this mistake seems to be a direct consequence of 
Orlando, even if someone DID track this down (which I am 98% sure they won’t, see accounts of rampant incompetency above), the OP legally bought an item off the shelf at the price asked. It is his and no one can take it away from him.
If anyone needs to “pay” for this error it is some data entry clerk or warehouse guy in either Henriot’s or Southern’s system.
Agree with this[/quote]
Suppose the price was off by a factor of 5, or 50% of what would be considered market price (whatever that is). Is it still the potential buyer’s responsibility
to talk the store up?[/quote]
50% off market price is a factor of 2, not 5. A factor of 5 would be 80% off market price.[/quote]
I’m still trying to understand why he thought 10 bottles was 1 shy of a full case!
Nothing much to add, but I will say things like this define a person’s character in my eyes. If someone brought that bottle to my house for dinner and told me this story of how he got it… Bottle would not get opened and that person would not be allowed in my house again.
I honestly wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I did this to a store/distributor/whoever…
Different strokes I guess…
And all the other analogies of yard sale finds…etc,etc. Be honest and live by the golden rule. Your life will be better for it…
The receipt is off by a dollar, the sales price and tax should total 403 and change.
That’s odd.
What can I say, I’m a CPA, these things jump out at me…
So, are you saying that he was overcharged?
Or are you saying the it’s a fake to get people all riled up?
Philosophical question: What if this was at a PA state store or in Canada’s monopoly? Would it change any of your thinking?
Humph…the change doesn’t even add up correctly. Something fishy?
I think he should go back and get the dollar and change owed to him! Seriously though I agree, something seems a little fishy.
i’ve seen stories back on the ebob days (when costco actually carried good stuff) of people walking out with a bunch of mislabeled stuff. At least in this particular case, it was labeled accurately.
Charlie, my question is if it was a GOVERNMENT store and the mistake was made by a bureaucrat…
Think of it as an early tax refund
Total price is off by a penny.
Demand a refund!!
George