Re your article (What would you do if a supermarket accidentally gave you £300 of groceries you hadn’t paid for?, 28 September), it may be one thing accepting £300 worth of goods from Tesco, but a charity shop? A few weeks ago, I paid £255 to the British Heart Foundation on eBay for a coffee table. I went to collect it, but the shop had mistakenly given it to another customer, who had bought a similar nest of tables. The other customer had paid for two tables, but taken three, and ignored requests to return one. They were happy to steal £255 from a charity.
This shop apparently suffers losses from shoplifting too, but feels that involving the police discourages donors. I disagree. We should be shouting loudly about disgraceful thefts from charities.
Susan Wood
Sheffield
• Honesty may salve your conscience, but it may not work out so well for the person who made the error. I regularly buy coffee beans from a reliable supplier. My order is the same each time: six 1kg bags in one box – enough for six months of domestic use. On one occasion, I received six boxes, each containing six 1kg bags of beans, so 36kg of coffee – enough to last three years. I was tempted.
But I have a Jiminy Cricket-type friend (ie one with greater integrity) who convinced me to send it back. She was right, of course. So I called the supplier and the salesperson was quite bemused at my honesty; she told me that they would never have noticed (they send out coffee in commercial amounts), but now they could find out who made the mistake. I was conflicted. I had done the right thing, but I may well have got some poor worker into trouble.
David Gomm
Witney, Oxfordshire
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