Supermarket Prices and Special Offers. Do you check your bill?
By Colmuc
@Colmuc (707)
March 31, 2009 2:49am CST
With supermarkets now using barcodes to price products and no longer marking each individual item the possibilities of incorrect charging seems to have increased.
My experiences are limited to stores in the UK and Germany but I would think the same situation exists in most countries. In every supermarket I use in Germany I have found instances of the price shown on the shelf to be less than what they actually tried to charge me. Last December in the UK I was often charged full price for each item where there was an offer of "3 for 2" or "Buy one get one free" etc. It happened so often that I no longer believed it to be a mistake but as an attempt to defraud.
On complaining I was never once given an apology but got comments like "That offer was only for last week" or "It only applies if you take all the same flavour".
Even Marks and Spencers were showing offers that were not honoured at the checkout.
Again no apology.
Another trick was to show the price for a 400 gram pack beside 600 gram packs. The price in large clear figures with the weight in tiny almost unreadable print. Again Marks and Spencers were guilty and I insisted on seeing the manager on that one but without any real positive response. Just the comment "I'll get it changed" which probably really meant " Damn it! Somebody noticed!".
I picked up the differences when I was buying just a few items and can imagine that someone with a full trolley load would not notice the discrepancies.
Be careful, start checking and you might be amazed at how much you can save.
Never once was I charged less than the indicated price!
2 people like this
7 responses
@catdla1 (6005)
• United States
31 Mar 09
I've noticed more and more errors in the checkout as well. I'm most apt to get them on the first day of a sale, where the store does not update their computers to reflect the sale. Or, since many foods have a long shelf life, there may be more barcodes for the same item, than are entered for the sale. Flimsy excuses by the cashiers irritate me to no end. If the sale sign is still up, almost all stores will honor the sale price...and remove the sign right after you leave. I've even walked a cashier over to the display to show them (boy does that make them mad).
Using bar codes and scanners are a double edged sword though. I have found that cashiers do not check to see if items scan at all before passing it down the counter for bagging. Pointing out that an item did not scan, more often than not, makes the cashiers upset too.
@catdla1 (6005)
• United States
31 Mar 09
It happens to me quite a bit, stuff not scanning. If the bar code area on the package is damp or dusty, it sometimes doesn't scan. Sometimes I think the scanning lens itself isn't too clean. Many cashiers (not all) here don't take a lot of pride in what they do. Or perhaps they don't realise that less profits for the store means less pay for them. Who knows? I cashiered for many years when I was younger and loved it. That was way back when you actually had to key in everything. And there were stickers on the items. I too miss the days of finding bargains at the back of the shelf. We saved a bit at the same time helped the store turn over stock. Oh, for the 'good olde days'...lol.
@Colmuc (707)
•
31 Mar 09
Thanks for your comment.
I have never to my knowledge had any item which failed to scan and was not noticed by the cashier. Your comment on the long shelf life reminds me that when items were individually priced with a stick on label you could find cheaper items by taking what was at the back of the shelf.
1 person likes this
@uicbear (1900)
• United States
31 Mar 09
I have to admit, I am not as vigilant on this as I should be. But, the situation of being over charged just happened to my sister the other day. She is part of a program where she scans her items once she gets home, and by doing this she noticed that she was over-charged for some paper plates. I told her to take them back with her receipt the next time she went to the store. She did. They acknowledged their mistake and refunded the full amount that she paid for the plates. I think this is how it should be.
@xParanoiax (6987)
• United States
13 Apr 09
We do check, sometimes we forget to until we get home but we do try to check in case the cashier charges us for two of something when we only got one, stuff like that. It doesn't happen that often but every now and again.
We make it a policy not to buy unmarked items, for the same reason. There's no gaurentee it'll be what it was last so higher or lower, it's just not generally worth the risk.
Bleh ^_^' groceries should not come with complications and stress! Heh.
@kapil_poundarik (960)
• India
31 Mar 09
ye i always check the total of bills that they give us , sometime they just add extra items to earn more ,once i remember i went for my monthly shopping for house hold and the man who made the bill added something around 5 $ extra in my bill,and this has not happened once ,most of the times i see the billing mistake is done in restaurant where the waiter manipulates the amount u have eaten and adds more to ur bill and as many people dont see the actually amount ,all the money u have paid extra is taken as black money.
@Colmuc (707)
•
31 Mar 09
Thanks for comments. Restaurants can also make mistakes but with them it is often an undercharge in my experiences. Whether I tell them or not depends on the quality of the meal, service and value for money. I at least tip the difference! Keep checking and complain when they try to cheat you.
@irene66 (1669)
• Philippines
31 Mar 09
I agree with you. In my country too, this is happening. you will only know it when you try to scrutinize the bill. cashiers who are cheating should be fired at once. I do believed that owners and managers of big supermarket are not aware of this, only the cashiers. let us really be vigilant enough to stop this bad practice.
@Colmuc (707)
•
31 Mar 09
Hi Irene,
Thanks for quote. Nice to hear from you.
In Europe we now have almost always full electric pricing which shows total cost, the amount of cash you give over and the change due so it is difficult for the cashier to cheat. I use a small Asian shop to buy all my Indian and Chinese spices.
This guy offers a huge variety of products which are not individually priced and he manually inputs the price at checkout from memory! I have never caught him out using a price other than what he shows on the shelf. Not just honesty but a fantastic memory!
@Colmuc (707)
•
31 Mar 09
It will only improve if people check their bill and insist on seeing the manager when they are overcharged. There are of course many "innocent" errors as well as deliberate defraud attempts. What annoys me also is that so often no price is shown and in those cases I do not buy. The standard of work is steadily declining.
@eagle_f15 (1827)
• Malaysia
1 Apr 09
This just happened to me yesterday when I went grocery shopping. I saw the elbow macaroni price tag was 3.69.But after checout at the counter I felt I had to check the receipt. And true enough printed on the receipt was another brand viva italia 4.89. So I went back to the cashier and told her. She asked me to exchange the item for something else. I said nope. I wanna cancel the item and not buy it. So I waited a while, they void my credit card payment, took back the elbow macaroni and reprinted another receipt for me.
