Money Moral Dilemma: Should I return a lost £65 jumper and keep the cash?

SuperPikachu

Morally I say absolutely not, it is not yours. You must do anything you can to find the owner/contact the shop and give them the receipt details etc. I assume as its a pub you will have just waited to see if somebody came in asking about it? (if this isn't a pretend scenario)

Realistically you could post to FB and see if that helps.

lincroft1710

Why does MSE persist with these ridiculous "Moral Dilemmas", when it is downright obvious what is the right thing to do.

onomatopoeia99

krlyr wrote: »

Because it's a Money Moral Dilemma which probably isn't true, or you probably will never know the answer to

The last one had a swathe of "oh it's obviously made up, they all are" posts until the person that asked it created a forum account to post replies to some of the answers. :rotfl:

I didn't spot any of the naysayers coming back to hold their hads up for jumping to baseless, incorrect conculsions though.

Spendless

Brecon_Beacons wrote: »

I think OP said that it was a cash purchase, from the receipt - so they are thinking that there is no credit card transaction to link it to. However, there will be CCTV in the store which will show who bought it (if someone has already reported the loss to the store) - and lots of John Lewis customers also present their loyalty cards, which are scanned and identify the purchaser.

My question to OP would be: why didn't you phone John Lewis as soon as you found it?

Ahh yes, I posted before popping out and have just re-read, but to throw something else in there to the people saying they'll be cctv, it might have been reported etc, then there are more than one John Lewis store and in the past I've been able to return goods to any branch of a dept store.

Spendless

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

The last one had a swathe of "oh it's obviously made up, they all are" posts until the person that asked it created a forum account to post replies to some of the answers. :rotfl:

I didn't spot any of the naysayers coming back to hold their hads up for jumping to baseless, incorrect conculsions though.

I spotted people telling that person that MSE had done them an injustice by describing the dilemma in the way they did and missing out info that was relevant to the discussion.

wurley

Take it to the police stn. If after 12 weeks it is unclaimed, it will then be yours - Make sure you leave contact details. Its unlikely you will be able to return it to the shop but once you get it back you could then resell it (BNWT) Conscience clear. :A

Of course you could be dodgy and return it... Beware though it may have been paid for by credit card...so store credit only.

Red-Squirrel_2

wurley wrote: »

Take it to the police stn. If after 12 weeks it is unclaimed, it will then be yours - Make sure you leave contact details.

There we go, all sorted. No dilemma at all!

NeilCr

wurley wrote: »

Take it to the police stn. If after 12 weeks it is unclaimed, it will then be yours - Make sure you leave contact details. Its unlikely you will be able to return it to the shop but once you get it back you could then resell it (BNWT) Conscience clear. :A

Of course you could be dodgy and return it... Beware though it may have been paid for by credit card...so store credit only.

What our local police say

https://www.kent.police.uk/services/lost-and-found-property/

Interesting information.

They don’t take in this sort of found item.

Pubs should have their own lost and found procedure. I assume our moral
dilemma person has followed this

Brecon_Beacons

Because phoning the shop the item came from isn't an obvious starting point.

Why not? It seems perfectly, the obvious starting point, to me!

If I found a similar item in a pub, it wouldn't occur to me to take it back to the store unless there were any identifying details that might help trace the owner

But there IS identifying information - plenty of it - all over the RECEIPT that we are told was in the bag, with the jumper!

Does nobody examine the receipts they get from stores? They are choc-a-bloc full of information: the store LOCATION (to the OP who said there might be many branches within reach: you could still identify which one it was sold from!), the TIME of the purchase, the DATE, the TILL NUMBER, the NAME of the person who served you. There's also usually coded information along the bottom of the receipt, recording all sorts of fun things, like whether you requested a gift receipt, stock details about the item, and probably plenty of other things I don't know about.

The amount of data that is collected about us when we buy things - whether or not we are aware of it - is absolutely phenomenal. And that's before you get to the really obvious things, like whether a loyalty card was used, or whether the sales assistant remembers a conversation, or knew the person who bought it.

If the person who found this had phoned the store - there and then - when they found it, there are extremely good odds that this purchase could have been reunited with its owner. I didn't say 'physically take it back to the store' - a phone call would have done it. You could even Whatsapp a picture of the receipt.

So I still say to the finder: what was the purpose of holding on to this item for 3 weeks, without doing anything other than saying defensively, 'well nobody's made any enquiries'?... you get the feeling that the person is just hoping that, if they do nothing to reunite purchase with owner, they will be able to claim it!

gold4silver

NeilCr wrote: »

What our local police say

https://www.kent.police.uk/services/lost-and-found-property/

Interesting information.

They don’t take in this sort of found item.

Pubs should have their own lost and found procedure. I assume our moral
dilemma person has followed this

There is the answer to the dilemma, straight from the police, if you have made reasonable steps to trace the owner then you are free to sell it.