Wrong price scanning: Wendy on what to look out for

Some people notice the discrepancy, and point it out to the teller, and then the manager, and hold up the queue while it’s being sorted out, but many simply don’t notice that they’ve been overcharged.

And that’s understandable, given the price display system. In the old days there were price stickers on everything, but now in the age of bar codes, in order to be sure you aren’t overcharged, you have to remember the price you saw on the shelf label, plus pay attention when the teller scans the product, and be sharp enough to realise it’s not the same. This in a busy supermarket environment, with lots of distractions. A big ask.

Unless the price on the shelf is a very obvious mistake, the store is legally obliged to honour the shelf price if you’ve got as far as the till, but two retailers have gone a step further with policies that compensate customers when the shelf price and the till price aren’t the same.

Policy relating to incorrect price tags

In Woolworths if a product does not scan correctly at the till, for example if a promotional price does not reflect, the customer gets the product free, and any other items of the same product at the lower price.

That policy was first implemented by Pick n Pay, but then about two years ago, PnP diluted their policy - now if a price scans higher at the till than the one on the shelf, the customer gets double the difference between the right price and the wrong one.

But I often get emails from customers of both stores, complaining that when it happened to them, and they pointed it out, no-one in the store said a word about such compensation and merely gave them the item at the lower price. Is the compensation policy still in place, they asked.

When I raised one such case with Woolworths’ head office earlier this month, I was assured that the policy is still in place, and that the manager in question would be retrained.

But I haven’t seen any in-store signs notifying shoppers about this, and it certainly seems to be the case in some stores, that if the customer doesn’t  know about the compensation policy, and insist that they get the item free, it doesn’t happen.

Anusha Singh's shopping mishap


And it’s a similar story in Pick n Pay.

Anusha Singh of Hillary says she had the same experience with the same wine promotion in a KZN Pick n Pay store, two weeks apart.

The offer, communicated on a piece of paper stuck to the shelf in the wine aisle, was for three bottles of a particular estate’s wine, for a total of R100.

But at the till, the bottles scanned for R47 each - an overcharge of R41 -  meaning Anusha was due double that as compensation: R82. But that never happened.

When she and her husband alerted the cashier, a manager was called, and after a long wait, the R100 special price was charged.

The first time it happened, she says, they challenged one of the managers after the price correction, asking about a compensation policy, but was told there was no such policy. 

The second time it happened, in the same store, the couple insisted on speaking to the store manager, she says, who said it was a system error and also made no mention of the Double the Difference policy.

And come to think of it, I can’t remember when last I saw a sign outlining this policy in a Pick n Pay store.

That made me wonder whether the policy had been quietly phased out. So I checked with Pick n Pay and was assured that it is still in place.

So, given that a fair number of cashiers and managers at these supermarkets have either forgotten about the existence of these policies which were put in place to compensate customers who are overcharged due to system errors, or are choosing to keep quiet if the customer is none the wiser, Consumerwatch is spreading the word in the interests of consumer education.

Anusha told me she clearly remembers consumers’ suspicion when barcodes were introduced, replacing price stickers or tags.

“This seems to have died off,” she says, “but my suspicion is definitely increasing presently due wrong prices being scanned in several supermarket, and not only Pick n Pay.  

“Am I supposed to keep an eagle eye at the checkout to ensure that each price is correct when it is being scanned?  Or am I supposed to go home and check all the items on my invoice, and, if anything is wrong then I must waste my time and money to go back to the store and have it rectified?”

Well, yes, it seems so. 

Even though speaking up can be awkward and time consuming.

“Wrong price” scanning is rampant, so it pays to be vigilant - and know which stores have policies to compensate shoppers when it happens, so that you can ensure that you claim on them.