StR I.
Yelp
How often do you check your receipt at a grocery store?
I always do this at this HEB (and the other one in College Station).
Try it yourself, and you'd be surprised.
Why? Because once every 2-3 visits I am overcharged.
This typically happens with the items that are "on sale", typically fruits or vegetables.
Today, I was overcharged $1 on a $2 honeydew melon. That is 50% more!
(... and about 5% of my today's, relatively small purchase.)
Sometimes, the price difference is even higher (I remember as high as $5 overcharge for one item!)
If I notice it at the cashier, it takes time them to send somebody to check the price and then to do the adjustment. When I don't notice until after the check is finalized and paid, I have to go to the customer service, sometimes wait until other people are helped, and then again wait until they check for the price label in the correct department.
Most of the time it happens, and especially at the customer service, they don't even bother to apologize. But they always have the same well rehearsed excuse: "We have many items, and the prices changed every week, and so we make mistakes".
Well, if you do a mistake, you go and fix it, don't ya?
On more than one occasion, when I came back in a day or two, before Wednesday when the sale changes, and I am overcharged again for the same item. They don't bother to fix it.
Today's visit was on Saturday, in the evening. The sale started on Wednesday. So, for half a week, including a half of the weekend, they've been overcharging all customers 50% on these honeydew melons! And I am sure (and according to their "logic" and statistical analysis, that there must be other items that are also charged a wrong price. And after some 6 years in BCS, I am yet to see any of the prices to be wrong in the other direction.
So, overcharging everybody some 1-2% of the entire purchase on average must be systematic.
It might not that much on a single purchase scale, but "a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money." as the former US senator Everett Dirksen once said.
This store doesn't have the policy where an item that was charged the wrong amount is given to the customer for free (as it is done in many if not most big supermarket chains around the country). So, the store has no downside for making their frequent "mistakes" that increase their profits. And how many customers check their HEB receipt every time (or at all)?
I leave the judgments if it is a store-level scam or not to the reader.
How often do you check your receipt at HEB?
I always do it here!