Re: How to Get a Store to Drop Petty Theft Shoplifting Charges
Quote:
Quoting
qwaspolk69
You are the last person who should give out advice. She just said her lawyer could get her diversion - and that is what she needs to take. If she can do diversion once she completes anything that part of that diversion, it will not be on her record. I did diversion when I got a ticket once. It cost me $200 for diversion plus like $130 ticket. (I was going 57 in a 40 but I thought the speed limit was 55 - I missed the sign it was dark out and I was distracted). But I did not go fight it. I did diversion and it never went back to my home state and I never got points off my license. The stipulations were I could not get a traffic citation for six months and if I did it would get reported and show up on my record.
Civil lawsuit for what? The only idiot on this thread is you.
$200 for diversion
$130 for the ticket
just because you made an honest mistake
Do you not see that some local government agency stole money from you?
The OP made an honest mistake. She could have paid $1.47. Any reasonable store would have accepted that money from her. But the local government and the store want more money from her. This is extortion. And when people do not fight extortion, the extortion increases.
Re: How to Get a Store to Drop Petty Theft Shoplifting Charges
Quote:
Quoting
TechWorker
The OP made an honest mistake. She could have paid $1.47. Any reasonable store would have accepted that money from her. But the local government and the store want more money from her. This is extortion. And when people do not fight extortion, the extortion increases.
The OP might have truly made a mistake and didn’t intend to steal. But that mistake looked like theft. Lots of real thieves claim they made a mistake, too. Cops, prosecutors, and juries know this and don’t believe the “I just made a mistake” story. Stores need to prosecute shoplifters or they simply encourage more shoplifting. Shoplifting costs the stores money, and indirectly costs everyone more money through higher prices to cover the loss. This is not extortion. It’s crime reduction. When you are in a store, you need to pay attention to what you do because if what you do looks like theft that’s exactly how it will be treated, and you have no one to blame but yourself for your inattention.
Re: How to Get a Store to Drop Petty Theft Shoplifting Charges
The "inattention" wasn't the whole problem. The problem was, this person picked up a container of cheese sticks, opened it before purchasing it, took a bite out of one (would your mother have let you do this in a grocery store?) and then "spilled" it, oops, real mess, thus ruining the contents completely. And then sat it down on the RedBull display, and walked away from it. This is very common behavior by shoppers, and it's right up there with going down an aisle and opening a jar of pickles, getting out and eating one pickle and then putting the jar back on the shelf, which people do frequently, on video. It's just nasty and it's dishonest, at least in the appearance because it would be very very hard to demonstrate that you intended to pay for those cheese sticks after you first opened them, slobbered on them, then spilled them, picked them up off the floor and out of the cart (five second rule, anyone?) then set them down and walked away from them.
And that you blew the whole situation off, when they've probably seen it done by dozens of people who claim they've just made an "honest mistake, no big deal, I'll pay for it!" when they steal or attempt to steal something of small value, didn't endear you to them one little bit. You wouldn't even do them the courtesy of getting off your cell phone while they were trying to talk to you about the incident.
Add that to your very rude attitude on this board, which gives us some idea how you may have tried to deal with the situation and frankly, they could throw the book at you if you don't get an attorney, take this quite seriously, and let the attorney do all the talking for you in court. This may result in your getting a diversion, which it about as good as you can hope for.
As someone quite familiar with Wal-mart's workings and corporate/local store policies, I'm really fascinated by the conversation you had with "corporate" Did you by any chance record it? I really hope you got the name and title of the person you spoke with.