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A French teenager has been jailed after buying a PlayStation 4 for under £8 by weighing it as if the games console was a huge bag of fruit.
The 19-year-old man, named in the French media as Adel, picked the device off the shelf and took it to the fruit section and weighed it.
He then put a sticker with the heavily reduced price tag on the expensive console and went to the checkout.
Adel paid £7.86 (€9) for the 6lb bag of 'fruit' at a self-checkout at a supermarket in Montbeliard, eastern France, last September.
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Teenager Jailed After Buying PS4 for £8 by Weighing it and Paying for it as Food
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @10:11PM (3 children)
Self checkout strikes me as something that involves more than your simple financial transaction. With gasoline pay-at-the-pump, you do everything yourself, but you are pre-paying and there is no latitude given to the person at the pump. You select the fuel, you pump the fuel at the stated price, and you pay for it. With grocery or other self checkout, a lot of it you scan barcodes where there are fixed prices for the barcodes, but what about things like produce or lumber by the foot? Where does competency come into it? We're not being trained to work these checkouts, and the vendors are yielding some control to the consumer. If I ring up avocadoes as apples, is that illegal? What if I did it wrong? What if I decide they are apples? What about if I go to the big box store and pick up a 2-meter length of baseboard, but when I get to the checkout I see the ends are marred up and not in good condition: can I enter in the length of the wood that is in good condition? If I do, is that illegal? Do I have any discretion? They've put a lot of the process literally into my hands, so how much leeway, legally, do I get on making decisions? What about mistakes? What about incompetence?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @08:36AM (2 children)
The lines are clear but most people don't know them. You are criminally liable for anything you do with gross negligence, full stop. You are civilly liable for anything you do with negligence. You don't get out of your standard of care just because no one is watching.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @12:29PM (1 child)
The lines are not clear, in my opinion, for self checkout. I'm the teller, the checkout person now. What are my rules and responsibilities? Where is my training? There are a lot of assumptions, but the statements above about deciding what's worth paying for and what isn't can't be discounted. "Eh, the bananas this week are already ripening and cutting their shelf life in half, I think they're only worth 60% full value." All prices are negotiable, and in this case they put the customer in the position that the person they would reach out to first to negotiate with is themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @09:53PM
You rules are the same for every other situation. You cannot make the store agree to anything they haven't offered you. They didn't offer you avocados at the apple price nor did they give you the authority to negotiate on their behalf, not even their cashiers have that power. And allowing you to check out your own items pursuant to the same duty of care you have when dealing with anyone else. Just because no one is watching doesn't change that. The items have marked prices, if you don't like it don't get them. You have a duty of care and good faith when doing self-checkout, if you can't handle it, not only should you not do it but you are legally liable for your mistakes when you do.