Sense of Adventure

Is your supermarket ripping you off? Probably!

It might just be worthwhile to stay alert. Specifically: make sure the price the item is offered at on the shelf is what you get charged. If you look closely, you just might find it often isn’t – that you get gouged a higher price.

Just now I went to the Lowe’s across the street to buy some English muffins (I shouldn’t be eating the starch, but as I’ve said I’m not making equal progress on all fronts.) They had the regular ones for $1.99. There was also a big sign under the sourdough ones offering “Meyer’s” sourdough English muffins for $1.59. Now, the name on the label says “Nature’s Grain.” But two things: these were the only items the sign could refer to; and you’ve probably noticed that sometimes one umbrella corporation operates numerous different brands, sometimes actually in competition with each other.

- And as if by magic - the magic of the Internet! - here we have an excerpt from an article on Harlan Bakeries: “Meyer’s Bakeries … [p]urchased by [Harlan’s] subsidiary, Southern Bakeries…. [T]he business also sells baked goods under the Nature’s Grain brand.” So yes, in fact, Nature’s Grain products are distributed through Meyer’s, as the article mentions a couple paragraphs later. The items marked as on-sale were in fact the ones I tried to buy.

So I decided to go with the sourdough bagels and save 40 cents. No big deal. I like ‘em well enough, and with food costs skyrocketing every little bit likely helps.

The cashier, who was a young woman I haven’t seen before, rang them up. The price: $1.99.

This annoyed me. I didn’t blame her; she could only go by what the machine registered. I did say that I’d go ahead, then, and get the ones I really wanted, and went off.

The intent was also to confirm that the sign was there, and clearly referred to the product in my hand. Yep, and yep. I grabbed a bag of the regular muffins and headed back.

When I returned I saw there was no one in line but a middle-aged, moustached guy in an Aloha shirt wearing a store employee badge. I decided to make an issue of this. “I’d like to speak to the manager, please.”

“I’m him,” Mr. Aloha Shirt said.

I explained my difficulty. He said that, well, that was the price that was in their system. So I asked him to go back and tell me just what item the clear and equivocal (and legally binding) sign referred to. We went, and he saw the “Meyer’s” name on the price sign and the “Nature’s Grain” and instantly said, “I’ll give it to you at that price, but somebody made a mistake.”

And I call bullshit on that.

First of all, of course, the mistake wasn’t in placement of the sign: Meyer’s English muffins and Nature’s Grain English muffins are one and the same thing. The mistake, if mistake it was, was not entering the product properly in the system (the same computerized system, presumably, which recorded receipt of the products from Meyer’s distribution.)

I hasten to say that I have no reason to believe Aloha Shirt was consciously lying - or maybe, given that he was supposed to be serving a managerial role, hence have a clue as to what was going on in his store, I have insufficient evidence to conclude he was. It’s also possible a mistake was made - that happens. I’ve even been known to make mistakes. (I know: you’ll not credit that. It is hard to believe. But true.)

But overall - no. This happens to me on a nearly weekly basis and has for years. You’d think these big chain stores - and Smith’s is a far, far more frequent offender in my experience than Lowe’s - would get these little details of inventory control sorted out, wouldn’t you?

If they were mistakes, mostly. But how many of them are?

Here’s the scam: the store offers an item for one price, clearly and unequivocally, on the shelf. Sometimes it makes a big deal about a discount sale price. When it comes time to check out, you get charged more - in the case of a discount, usually the full “non-sale” price. But sometimes it’s actually more than the “regular” shelf price.

But see, let’s say the store’s crowded, you have a lot of items, and you’re busy. What’re the odds you’ll even notice the problem?

And if you do - well, the cashier will say, and almost always innocently and truthfully (I presume), “It’s what it rings up.” What do you do? Make a big fuss to save a couple cents? And how do you prove the item was listed for the lower price, when you’re up front at the register with a million people behind you and a life to lead? They’ll do a price check, generally; lots of luck with that. As often as not the poor adolescent who gets sent comes back utterly confused, or claims the price you got charged is the right one. What then? Is he lying? Innocently mistaken? Might you be mistaken? Admit it, it happens to you too. I know.

Unless you’re packing a digital camera or camera phone (a good idea, I’ll add; sadly I lack same) what are you going to do anyway? Go back to confirm the lower price? How will you prove that? And will you abandon the purchases you’ve just spent half an hour putting in the cart to do so, or make the people behind you wait?

You might, as I successfully did today, invoke the manager. Again, what if you’re mistaken? And if even if you’re right, that doesn’t guarantee a favorable outcome. At Smith’s up on north Fourth some months ago I had a manager, who was working the register, argue with the employee he had sent to check that the price of the plant I was trying to buy was actually discounted to $12 instead of the full $18 he was trying to charge me - and employee, plant, and “on sale” sign were all twenty feet away in plain sight. The employee stood her ground (thanks, nameless corporate serf!) and waved the sign at him, and justice prevailed. I.e., I got the discount.

All that fuss. And all over just a few cents? It isn’t worth your while. The forty cents I saved today sure as Hell weren’t near a reasonable return on the time and effort expended to save them.

And that’s how it works. First, the overcharge (which, never forget, is fraud) is likely to be overlooked. Second, even if noted, the customer’s at a disadvantage in proving the fact. It’s almost never economically worthwhile to fight about it.

A couple cents apiece on a small percentage of total sales ain’t much … until you multiply it by few millions or tens of millions of total purchases a day in a big chain. You’ve just enhanced stockholder value!

And sadly, that is how MBAs and CPAs think. Not all of them - but the unfortunately large numbers of them who have poisoned so much of commerce in this country and basically done more to undermine capitalism than all you dumb Commie bastards out there combined.

So: experiment to try if you will: watch your ticket at checkout, and see what happens. And when you can, might it not be worthwhile to take a stand against getting ripped off?

Oh - those of you who are familiar with me might wonder why a staunch defender of free markets (and all forms of freedom) is suddenly saying all these nasty, divisive things about big corporations and CPAs. Since I try to leave this blog as free as possible from the foul taint of politics I’ll just leave you with this question: what makes you think those things have anything to do with free enterprise?

Tags: scams

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.