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EB Demands Payment From Victim of Theft
blincoln writes "ABC Action News is reporting that a Florida Electronics Boutique bought stolen games and gaming hardware, and made a profit on selling them back to their rightful owner, refusing to return the merchandise unless she paid them. From the article: 'EB Games still insists it will not refund Michelle's money. If she wants her money back, the company said, she can go through the legal system and get restitution from the thief.' In addition, EB appears to be violating the law by re-selling used merchandise without holding it for the required number of days. I was under the impression that purchasers of stolen merchandise could expect it to be seized by the police (who would return it to the owner) and not recover any of the money they spent buying it unless they took action against the thief. Is that not the case in Florida?"
how is this even an issue? the law clearly states that they must hold the goods for a certain amount of time (10 days
if I'm not mistaken before they're given away. The article says she went to the store after two days and they had already
sold her playstation. They clearly violated law and should be reported to the authorities, not the manager as she did.
So they buy stolen goods without checking. They dont hold it forthe required 15 days. They then refuse to reimburse the person for the goods they illegally sold. They refuse to return the goods (without pay) that they unknowingly receaved through illegal channels. I was under the impression that in a case like this, EB should be returning the goods and seeking restitution from the thief, while the person who's property was stolen gets their goods back from EB. Of course, I'm no lawyer, but that's only common sense.
as stated in the article, they didn't hold them for 15 days, specifically designed for preventing this sort of thing.
But isn't there a law on the books about buying stolen goods? I always thought that that was a crime as well.
EB is obviously not looking at the big picture here. They want to recoup the cost of the stuff that they bought. However, a good response here (like giving her her stuff and sucking the loss), is going to win a good customer (this store did the right thing, that's why I purchase from them).
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Regardless of whether or not EB knew the goods were stolen when they purchased them from the thief, they did not not take reasonable precautions to ensure that they weren't stolen, such as follow the 15 day law.
EB's actions were simply reprehensible, and I, for one, will no longer deal with them.
Some friends of mine recently had a whole shelf of DVD's stolen from their apartment (some of which were expensive imports from Japan). They contacted the police, filed the report, and were told that they should first call around to all the local used disc stores, starting with whichever ones were physically closest to their apartment. If the used disc store is on the up-and-up and wants to avoid legal troubles, they should be able to give them the goods back for free, and then it's *their* job to push things through the legal system to try to get reimbursed by the thief. Thus the legal hassles are offloaded from the original victim of theft to the store that bought the stolen goods, and the original victim walks away from the whole affair and doesn't need to be involved (except perhaps to give testimony as a witness in the event).
The preferred method was to have the victim of the theft do all the 'legwork' and only involve the police if there is some difficulty in getting cooperation.
Well, it worked. They found someone had just sold an alottment of DVD's that exactly matched the list of stolen goods (minus one that the thief apparently kept or lost). The store was cooperative and returned the goods. They had the name of the thief on record (and he'd stupidly used his real ID and real name when selling the goods), and were going to deal with the court case themselves.
That was the last we'd heard of the incident.
It would be a happy ending if it wasn't for the fact that the thief (remember he used his real name) turned out to be a friend we all knew. He knew about the DVD's because he'd been invited over on occasion to watch them. Obviously, this incident was the end of friendly relations with the guy. When my friend called him on the phone, he claimed "Oh, yeah, those DVD's, uhm yeah, some homeless black guy said he just found them and he gave a bunch of them to me. I didn't realize they were yours or I would have given them to you, dude." (Yeah, right - some of those DVD's were really obscure rare items, so there's no way he could fail to notice that that exact combination of DVD's was the same as the ones at his friend's house.)
Some people can be real scum.
But anyway, the point of the story is that this incident is an example of how pawn shops are supposed to work when everything is being done legally and with good intentions, unlike what EB games did.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Of course RFID tags are manufactured by Satan himself and there is no legitimate use for them, or at least so say the /. editors.
Lasers Controlled Games!