In the middle of last month, a maintenance power outage caused the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) system to go down in 17 states. One side effect of this was the disappearance of spending limits on the cards at checkout.
Xerox, the company in charge of those servers and for providing EBT services to state governments, had a phone-in service in place that merchants could use, which would indicate whether individual transactions were approved or not. Many merchants just refused the cards during the outage.
At two Walmart stores in Louisiana, though, the decision was made to allow EBT cardholders to purchase during the outage.
Here's the kicker. These two Walmarts saw no spending limits reported, so they took that at face value: no spending limits. These customers were being allowed to purchase without a spending limit.
And, oh boy, some of them spent like gangbusters. Word spread, and surprisingly quickly there were enough “opportunity seekers” to overrun the stores completely. Some left with hundreds of dollars worth. Others had eight to ten shopping carts full of merchandise. Each.
After the glitch was fixed, and the announcement was made over the store loudspeaker, people abandoned their carts as-is, where-is. Freezer items and all, left to spoil. The store shelves were picked. Absolutely. Clean.
Unjust enrichment.
“Bank Error in Your Favor” is reserved for pretend Monopoly money. A real bank error in your favor won't remain so for long. The bank will find it, and if you haven't already given your filthy lucre back to the bank, they will come to get it. If you refuse, you could be fined, or sent to jail. For theft.
I'm not saying that Walmart's decision to “keep the cash registers ringing” didn't contribute to what happened. It must have. If the people hadn't been allowed to use their EBT cards during the outage, or if the Walmarts had called the number on the back of the card to verify for sufficient balance, there wouldn't have been any perceived window of opportunity.
A good part of the coverage on this story discussed which company was going to take the hit for the shopping sprees: Walmart or Xerox. There was detail about what the shoppers did — cleared shelves, shopping frenzy, loaded carts, etc. — but not a whole lot of discussion as to what would happen to them. You'd think (hope?) that there would be action taken against these shoppers. It was clear that the shoppers knew what they were doing, and that they only had a short time to do it in. What's more, it would be trivial to determine whom. The state had their number — literally.
Plain and simple!
Well, the Louisiana state government is calling the shoppers' behavior what it is: abuse, theft, and fraud. The sanctions are nothing to sneeze at: 12 months' suspension for the first offense, 24 months for the second, and permanent disqualification for the third. “You're OUT!”
Good. If someone hands you a signed blank check from someone else's checkbook, it's still wrong if you buy stuff with it. The shoppers who tried to game this showed an impressive lack of class and morals. Yet they'll squawk loudly if adverse action is taken against them.
It's good to see them called to the mat. There are too many people working too hard who can't qualify for EBT — or who won't accept it — to make this kind of abuse tolerable.
There is opportunity, and there is theft. This is the latter.
Character is revealed when there is no one around and it is just you and the situation. In this case integrity seems to be a rare commodity.
I wish I could say that this behavior is surprising, but unfortunately reading this, it didn’t surprise me one bit. As long as ‘someone else’ is paying for it, many people these days do not seem to really care much. Pride seems to be out the window, replaced by the ability to blame everybody and anybody for personal problems.
Well said.