Moral dilemma

Frippy

Frippy

Frippy

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31 Jan 2006
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296
Yesterday I venture into a computer market to pick up 4 hard drives, I wanted 3x80 gig drives and 1x160 gig. Vendor on the stall busy trying to serve 5 people at once, me included. He slaps down two hard drives on the counter and shouts to a colleague in a language I'll never understand to come over a finish serving me. His colleague gives me an 80 gig drive and a 160 gig drive. Puts all 4 drives in a bag along with my receipt, I pay and leave the stall. I arrive home and look at what I bought.

Here is the problem. Vendors ACTUALLY gave me.

1 x 80 gig, 1x160 gig, 1x500 gig, 1x500 gig. Is it theft if I keep the drives? I paid £95 in total.

I do have a question, the 2 spurious drives are a Western Digital WD5000AAKB and Seagate ST3500630AS. Could I run them in a RAID0 array, I have SATA and IDE raid?
 
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I'll just keep them all.

Bought a 40Gb Seagate 2.5" HDD but actually got a 80Gb version.

And yes you can run both in the same array I think.
 
Personally with 500GB drives I would run them in RAID 1 - imagine if you lost 1TB of data with a RAID 0 array lol! Also RAID 1 isn't that picky when it comes to using different HDD's, RAID 0 is more picky and as the drives probably run at different speeds its not recommended.

- And I would keep them all ;D
 
I'm not sure from your post (and I can't be bothered to check the model numbers) but if the hard drives are different e.g. IDE and SATA then you cannot span them on a hardware-level Raid as far as I am aware although you can with software I believe albeit there is no point.

If you do decide to keep them and really want a Raid array then I would pick Raid1 since they are bigger than you actually needed anyway, the potential difference in drive speeds is more likely to upset a Raid0 array as fobose says.

For whatever it is worth I'd let them know, possibly over the phone if necessary and offer to pay for them, if the response is anything less than grateful I'd be tempted to walk away but it might not be pay off to do so. I'm saying this from experience, I had a motherboard (~£120 at the time) not charged to me from a retail store and I went back to let them know, they were not as happy about my pointing out this and offering to pay as they should have been but I paid up anyway - long story short(er) - the fan on the motherboard died after a few months* and I got it replaced by the shop which probably wouldn't have happened if I hadn't let them know.

* the replacement motherboards fan also died but I didn't bother changing it again and to the best of my knowledge it is still running to this day so who knows if it was worth the hassle. :)
 
Do you need the reciept of an item when RMAing the hdd to the actual manufacturer - I thought perhaps just the serial number for warranty purposes etc? So if they did break he wouldn't have to take them back to where he got them from anyway?
 
fobose said:
Do you need the reciept of an item when RMAing the hdd to the actual manufacturer - I thought perhaps just the serial number for warranty purposes etc? So if they did break he wouldn't have to take them back to where he got them from anyway?
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Don't know for certain I'm afraid, I think as long as the serial numbers are valid (and who fakes hard drives?) then you should be able to RMA direct to the manufacturer. However my story is from about 7 or 8 years ago when I was still pretty new to the PC building game so I didn't know you could RMA direct, even still I probably would have informed them of their mistake because I'm a fool like that. ;)
 
Generally, no receipt is required for the hard drive RMA's. The serial is what they go by.

On the moral and legal point, well, strictly speaking it is theft (as it satisfies the legal test). Morally, well, that is subjective :).
 
Thanks for your replies. The number on the receipt fails to ring, I just get one long tone? so next time I am at a show, I'll mention it. Karma and all that.
 
I dont think its theft, if they give it to you and its their mistake its classed as a gift and its the retailers responsibilty to ask for it back within 14 days otherwise its officially yours! iirc.

and as they have no proof of you getting it most propably.

if they even made a recipt out, it wont be for the 500gb i shouldnt imagine as they wouldnt have charged you that price knowingly for 2 500gb drives!:P

so they have absolutely no idea you have them! :D :cool:

I have worked on comuter fairs, and you sell soooo much to so many people, mistakes are made and they probably get them for about £30 or less each anyway

and i have got doubled up orders from other shops too... erhem

As for raid, i wouldnt raid them i would sell the seagate and buy a WDD if you want for raid1

oh and final point, warrenty is perfectly fine, it is between the drive and the manufacturer, where it come from doesnt matter.

enjoy mate... lucky **%&^$
 
Memphis Raines said:
I dont think its theft, if they give it to you and its their mistake its classed as a gift and its the retailers responsibilty to ask for it back within 14 days otherwise its officially yours! iirc.
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Incorrect, I believe. Now, my criminal law is a little sketchy as I did it 2 years ago (and it wasn't actually my best subject), but I distinctly remember case authority on something very similar to this. It all comes down to your knowledge of the incident and whether you acted dishonestly. It would be theft because you are interfering with the property rights of another, with the intention to permanently deprive, however the case swings on dishonesty - in this instant, it would seem that you have knowledge, but then again, at the point of sale, you didn't, so maybe it isn't. The fact that you noticed as soon as you got home however seems reasonable for you to have notified the seller.
 
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