January 28, 2006
$102.13 for 2 tomatoes
What, You Got a Problem Paying $102.13 for 2 Tomatoes? - New York Times
Three times in the last three months, Mr. Hinde says, he was overcharged at the grocery. In the first instance, it was an extra $1 on an $8.95 bottle of olive oil. In the second, a “buy one, get one free” discount for caramel dip did not show up. And, in the third, he was charged $102.13 for two tomatoes, bringing the bill to $180, well over what he would typically spend on groceries.
“I said to the cashier, Can this be right?” Mr. Hinde recalled, noting that at that point he knew only the total. “She assured us it was.”
Mr. Hinde and his wife, Lorraine, isolated the mistake on the way to the car (the tomatoes should have been $2.13), returned to the store and got their money back. But, Mr. Hinde said, it illustrates the need for consumers to check their receipts.
Surveys indicate that consumers lose $1 billion to $2.5 billion each year because of scanner pricing errors.
Wow - that’s pretty surprising!
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2 Comments to “$102.13 for 2 tomatoes”
January 30th, 2006 at 8:46 am
I think there’s a law where if you catch a scanning mistake, the store is penalized… I can’t remember what the penalty was exactly though; I think they have to pay you back the mistake + 5x the accidental amount up to $5?
January 30th, 2006 at 10:10 am
From the article:
“The proposed law in Illinois — the Retail Consumer Protection Act of 2006 — would establish fines of up to $5,000 for each price scanner incident and require every store to name one employee to verify that shelf prices and checkout prices are the same. If the mispriced item is under $3, the customer gets the item free. If the item is over $3, the customer pays the correct amount and gets $3 back — in essence a $3 reward for being overcharged.
The law, he said, is modeled after one in California, which has some of the most stringent regulations in the country when it comes to overcharging.”
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