Wow...this is the first positive Best Buy story I've read in a while.

Sorry, OP. While it's great that you attempted to return the 360 eventually (and even got to keep it), you really shouldn't have needed the interwebs to tell you that maybe you shouldn't accept things that aren't rightfully yours.

Lots of people are going to think that's uncool, no matter how many doors you hold open for others. This being the Consumerist, those that think it will probably say it. After all, if we get one over on a company, who can say it's a bad thing when a company gets one over on us?

I would request the same thing that Alex left in the message in written form for records. It is too easy to pretend that the phone call never happened if BB changes their mind in the future.

"I would just like to point out how you really shouldn't judge my entire moral fiber based on one action."

Odd, if there were nothing wrong with the action, why would you fear your moral fiber being judged by it?

Good for Ian. It will no doubt come in handy when his system red rings!

And thanks Phil....I thought I could put the Bears drubbing behind me, but you had to go ahead and remind me!

He should make certain to keep all correspondence from BB just in case someone at a later date tries to get the xbox back or charge him for it.

I would just like to point out how you really shouldn't judge my entire moral fiber based on one action. I'm a guy who holds doors open for people and regularly gives to charity.

Holding doors open and giving charity doesn't excuse other actions. Until Best Buy said that you could keep the XBox, it was rightfully theirs and you shouldn't have even thought about keeping it.

I would just like to say how privileged I feel to be able to post in the same forum as such saintly honest people. How nice to be of such high moral character that you can be quick to point out to others their flaws.

(Oops, now I've done the same thing in the other direction!)

Perhaps we should all just lighten up and stop being so snarky.

@Dyscord: I can't believe BB actually did something positive for a change. Did we slip into an alternate dimension or something?

@doctor_cos:

I don't think it's being snarky. His situation was no different between one where the bill is $5, you hand the guy a $10, and he gives you $15 in change. It's his mistake, but if you notice it and don't point it out, it's clearly unethical.

@doctor_cos: Just because we all make mistakes frequently, does not mean we should not strive to stop making mistakes. It doesn't mean we should throw our hands in the air and say "Well, what can you do? That's just how it is." I refuse to embrace such futility, that's all.

@Pink Puppet: What I find especially telling is Best Buy's response of..

I guess at this point, you can just keep that, if you haven't returned it to the store already.

Is there any indication that the OP even tried to return the XBox to the Best Buy store, or tried to talk to anyone at the store? The original story does not mention this.

@pecan 3.14159265: Perhaps I am speculating overmuch, but it does appear he called the corporate line without going to the store.

But I really have no idea if it'd change anything either way. After enough time, my experience in retail indicates it's just easier to let something already written off go.

"Cheers to Best Buy for handling their mistake like professionals and letting Ian off the hook- as the Cardinals refused to do for the Bears Sunday."

I'm trying to forget what happened. WHY WON'T YOU LET ME DO THAT?

@Dyscord: They can't exactly ask for something back that they have no records of, either.

@Bearded Rapper: Because it's fun to goat the masses... duh.

@ThomFabian: People often judge others for doing/being things that aren't universally agreed upon as wrong.

Best Buy didn't have a record that he was sent 2- of course they can't ask for it back. I'm sure if they DID, they would of left a message saying something about an oversight in the system, and that they'd like the extra one returned.

Personally- I don't find this guy corrupt at all. Everyone SCREAMS about how IMMORAL Best Buy is, don't shop there, they are CORRUPT, their prices are horrible, ETC...

Karma works in mysterious ways, and worked for the customer this time.

@ThomFabian:

Bingo. If it feels wrong, that little tickle is what is commonly known as your conscience. Jiminy Cricket calls it "that still, small voice that people won't listen to". You could have quietly made it right, gone to the store and talked to the manager and returned it. Or done some good with it like (again quietly) donating it to a children's hospital. But hey, why not make a big production of showing the world that it's okay instead and then take the endorsement of thread trolls as validation of your "moral compass".
And guess what. Even though someone at Best Buy said it's okay, it's still not okay. All they were really saying was "we have no way to account for it in our computers so it's easier to just let you keep it". The store that gave it away by mistake will take the lumps in the form of shrink. It will show in their system no differently as it having been stolen. The person responsible for handing you the XBox 360 will be tracked down, written up and possibly fired. Merry Christmas anonymous blue shirt. Tough luck if you have a family or kids.

Here's hoping you enjoy your XBox as much as all the attention this saga brought you.

@Verucalise(countingcalories): I don't scream about how horrible Best Buy is. I'm one of the few here who actually like going to my local Best Buy. It's clean, people don't bother me, no one ever asks about a magazine subscription, the lines are short, and they usually have anything I'm looking for in stock.

If he were really morally corrupt he would have brought the extra x-box back to best buy. Then asked for a refund.

I'm still bothered by the fact that after he got his refund that he went and got the refurb from the store when they called him. He could have just said, no, you guys gave me a refund for my 360, and I'm planning on buying a new one when the MW2 bundle hits your shelves. Of course, at that point if they said, well, you have to come take it, we don't have a way to return it into the system... Then, well, he's off the hook. Even if BB said you can keep it, I still don't think you did the right thing.

Wow. When did so many people mount a moral high horse?

OK, I won't judge your moral fiber. I will judge your math skills. There's no number system in common use here 51% is "approximately two-thirds".

Although on second thought, maybe you should give the extra game system to charity.

@justagigilo85: I don't perceive it to be a moral high horse. To many of us who are saying he should have given it back, it's a case of intent. He intentionally took the second XBox, when he knew that he had already been issued a store credit.

@Pink Puppet: last time i checked, it wasn't my responsibility to police corporate business models to ensure efficiency.

that's what this comes down to, imo. obviously, there's a crack in corporate policy somewhere - it appears the OP did more than a customer should be expected to do to ensure the company knew a mistake was made.

whether he went to the store or called corporate is irrelevant. it is the same company, if they cannot communicate effectively internally, it is NOT the customer's fault. kudos to the OP for trying to "make it right", but i wouldn't fault him for doing nothing at all.

@Tedsallis: Who let the drama students on Consumerist?

@pecan 3.14159265:

Exactly. I do not claim to have perfect morals, but in this case, it's pretty hard for anyone to say he did the right thing by knowingly taking something he wasn't rightfully entitled to. I don't care what retailer he did it to, could have been the We Kill and Eat Babies and Puppies store for all I care, still not right.

@mac-phisto: True, but earlier indications seemed to be that he knew when he picked it up it wasn't his - why did it take him coming home and posting online for it to come to him trying to "do the right thing"?

@doctor_cos: It's less pointing out flaws and more pointing out he got a 400 dollar item that he knows he wasn't entitled to and why the hell does he need to ask us to know what the right thing is

@justagigilo85: It's not so much that. He *asked*. He got his answer, and didn't like what some people had to say.

@larrymac - please put me on your do not call list: It would be sort of close to two thirds of the 80 percent who said yes or no. But even that's a stretch.

@CompyPaq: Until a Best Buy representative showed up at his door to take it back, he was under no obligation to go out of his way to return it. You think if Best Buy accidentally had something of mine because of a mistake I made they would be trying to return it to me? Keep dreaming.

Uh, of course they couldn't find a record of him getting two. He *didn't* get two. He got them to (very nicely) give him store credit for the original purchase's value. I wonder if that's why Alex and co. couldn't find a record?

@larrymac - please put me on your do not call list: Sure it is in 3rd grade math when you are instructed to round 51% to the nearest third...51% is closer to 66% than 33% so you would round up to 2/3.

/sarcasm

@coren: Yeah, the fact that he went and got the XBox from the store when he already had received an XBox set off my "not cool" detector right there.

@pecan 3.14159265: Me too, actually. I was just there this past week and the manager actually recognised me and Mr. Aroo and asked how we've been doing and other polite things like that. They seem to really be stepping up the service part of things in there too. It's nice.

@coren: Because it is Best Buy, and and XBox. That makes it ok, doesn't it? Doesn't it?

Um, no. It doesn't.

why not do something nice with it. like donate it to a youth center of some type.

@coren, @NeverLetMeDown: In the end, he tried to return it.
What difference does it make that he asks if this is the right thing to do or not?
Did you know right from wrong all your life?
Would we be happier if he had just kept it and never asked anyone?

Somebody tries to do the right thing (whether or not prodded into it, in the end, doesn't matter) and people here dump on them (look at 2 of the first 4 comments).
What happened to the witty, intelligent discussions?

@Dyscord: I wouldn't call this positive. This indicates a huge problem with BB's logistics network which can just as easily leave someone without something they ordered (as it did the op, originally), and definitely raises prices due to its inefficiencies.

It worked out for this consumer in the end, but not because BB decided to do it.

@wgrune: Chances are better that BB simply has no idea where it came from or why, and has no way to return it, so this is more likely to be a "you-can-keep-it-if-we-never-contact-you-about-it-again-but-I-can't-officially-promise-you-that-we'll-never-contact-you-about-it" type of thing.

@AirIntake: You appear to have missed the whole part of the original story, wherein he went ahead and picked up the second XBox even though he knew that he wasn't entitled to it.

Sure Best Buy made a mistake, but the OP capitalized on it, knowing that the XBox wasn't his to claim. He only asked us what he should do because he was afraid that he'd be caught, and get in more trouble than the 360 was worth.

He's no saint.

@doctor_cos: The issue was that if he was at all interested in doing the right thing, he would never have picked up the 360 to begin with.

You can't really ignore that point, dude. He may have tried to do the right thing in the end, which is debatable, but that doesn't excuse the fact that he wouldn't have had to turn to us for moral guidance in the first place had he not accepted something he knew that he wasn't entitled to.

I don't quite think that he was looking for advice on how to make it right. I think he was looking to see if we thought that there was any chance that he'd get caught, and he was banking on people's distain for Best Buy to smooth over the fact that he took something that he had no right to.

So don't act like this dude is a paragon of virtue,or that we're dumping on him for no good reason. Had he been at all interested in doing the right thing, then he wouldn't have taken the 360 in the first place. If he took any steps to rectify the situation, they were only taken for the purpose of making sure he wouldn't be up a creek without a paddle.

@ganzhimself: Exactly! This seems to be the point so many folks are missing. Had he been on the level from the start, nobody would have given him shit for it if he had come away with a free 360. Yet folks are arguing that this was a mistake that he was free to capitalize on, or that he was right to have taken what he knew that he wasn't entitled to, and that's really confusing to me.

@justagigilo85: Moral high horse? So it's okay to take something that you know you're not entitled to? Since when? And didn't a guy collect on paychecks that he wasn't entitled to for something like four years, and get thrashed for it in the comments? How is this any different?

@godlyfrog: I would not call it a HUGE problem. BB is a huge company and we never hear about this happening. This seems to be a probable one-off mistake, which as all of us perfect citizens know, happen. To others. Not us. =)

@Kimaroo - Fortified with Kittydus Purrularis: I've never really had a problem with Best Buy either, though I wouldn't be so quick to write this off as an act of karma even if I had. The OP fraudulently obtained something that he wasn't entitled to. There's nothing particularly karmic about that.

THE BEARS ARE WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE! WE LET 'EM OFF THE HOOK!