In Australia if you break something in store, they typically wont charge you, but if they do, they have to charge at cost. I wonder if this another reason many stores dont charge. As any store with a larger markup would have to let you know that $55 vase they were trying to sell you cost them $6.
I think the rule is that, when a business charges a consumer a penalty fee of any kind, the fee must relate to actual costs that the customer's actions imposed on the business. A business could estimate the cost of bananas, but they couldn't use the sale price if that was usually ten times the cost. This applies to things like bank overdraft fees and hotel cleaning charges as well. The idea is that consumer contracts can recover costs, but aren't allowed to punish people.
"sir, you ate 4 grapes in store. Our grapes average 2seeds/grape, so we've calculated lost sales in the range of $800.
You see, those seeds could each grow into a vine that will produce an estimated $100 worth of grapes over the lifetime of the plant. You're basically stealing that money from us!"
I may be wrong... I read this previously that was very clear about the customer was due to pay the supplier cost. But I did a google now to find the article and the best I could find is this is a civil case and not "not covered by the Australian Consumer Law" and it seems to be at discretion of the court for value lost and how at fault you were.
