You order a cake for your daughter’s birthday party. You pick up the cake on the afternoon of the big day and hide it until the party, then bring it out to the table once the festivities have begun. Only then do you discover that your daughter’s name, Harper, has been miswritten in icing as Harpie.
As upsetting as this may be, you need the cake for the party, so you go ahead and serve it. The next day you return to the cake store to complain.
Are you entitled to your money back?
Grapple with the Gray
List two or three reasons why you deserve your money back.
List two or three reasons why you don’t deserve your money back.
Is there another alternative?
Having weighed the options, what would you do if you were the shopkeeper?
Gray Matters
If you would have noticed the error in time to return to the store, there is no question that the storekeeper would be obligated to fix the error, provide a new cake, or refund your money.
However, you had the party and ate the cake, so you did benefit from the flour, water, sugar, and artistry that went into the cake’s production. It was an honest mistake, and the actual damage to you and your daughter was minimal. (If she and her friends were old enough to know what a harpy is, perhaps a bit more.)
You also share some degree of negligence yourself for not examining the cake before you left the shop. You may have a legal claim against the shopkeeper to refund the cost of the custom lettering, but ethically you should not expect a full refund.
That being said, customer service and customer relations are part of good business. It is therefore both ethical and a best practice to offer the customer some accommodation, most likely a partial refund or store credit for some future purchase.
In cases such as these (some of which we will soon examine), there is an inclination to exaggerate the damage and, even worse, presume the worst possible intent, often with the objective of filing legal actions that often end in disproportionately large decisions or settlements. In such scenarios, the law is used as a weapon to extort money from well-intentioned people. The result is more lawsuits, less goodwill, and less civility.
The ability and willingness to evaluate partial guilt and proportionate damage is critical to arriving at an ethical compromise.