Consumer Rights

Kalle123

Good morning Has anybody had repeated issues with a supermarket advertising prices on shelf talkers but finding that the price upon checkout tills are being charged a higher price than what has been advertised.

I have brought this to the attention to staff management twice being given refunds for the difference. However yesterday this happened again and I have written to customer services and received an answer Thank you for raising this issue but bla bla …

Any suggestions to a harder action plan as I believe vulnerable people whom are afraid to complain are being short changed ' politely said ' and supermarket increasing profits!!

Did not know whether to name supermarket at moment.

Thank you

PLRFD

Try this here.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6340172/lidl-prices-displayed-not-matching-charge-at-till

Nelliegrace

It happens all the time @Kalle123 especially as prices are changing rapidly. Keep checking the receipts at the till.

Some Asda vitamins were £2 more than the shelf price this week. I pointed it out and got the shelf price, and the 3 for 2 offer, and the 10% Blue Light Card discount.

cymruchris

It's common when shops change prices on the system but the shelf edge labels haven't been updated. It can be a more localised problem where some store teams are less efficient at updating labels than others. (Partly down to the retailers themselves driving staff productivity percentages down, maximising their profit and minimising their wage spend). In these current times prices appear to be all over the place - but it may be worth an email to the company head office naming the local branch and outlining the issue, so that it can be added as an action point for the next area manager visit. They should be picking it up anyway on their data analysis based on percentages of refunds to sales if it's a particular problem in a particular store - but some managers are good at covering their tracks :)

pumpkin89

To be clear on consumer rights - you don't have a legal right to buy the product at the price advertised.  As far as contract law is concerned, you are offered a price at the till and if you complete the purchase you are deemed to have accepted that price.

However, there is a separate law which makes it illegal for a shop to advertise something at a price lower than they offer a customer at the till.  As they don't want breaches of this to be reported, most companies have a policy of refunding the difference.

But they're within their rights to offer you the choice of returning the item for a full refund or keeping it at the price you were charged.  (And you're within your rights to take legal action for false advertising.)

Forwandert

cymruchris said:

It's common when shops change prices on the system but the shelf edge labels haven't been updated. It can be a more localised problem where some store teams are less efficient at updating labels than others. (Partly down to the retailers themselves driving staff productivity percentages down, maximising their profit and minimising their wage spend). In these current times prices appear to be all over the place - but it may be worth an email to the company head office naming the local branch and outlining the issue, so that it can be added as an action point for the next area manager visit. They should be picking it up anyway on their data analysis based on percentages of refunds to sales if it's a particular problem in a particular store - but some managers are good at covering their tracks

Several of the largest supermarkets don't have a system where the price changes are sent from head office and then the SELs then get printed/ replaced when someone gets around to it maybe in the early 00's or the European chains. 

There's been systems in place for the last 10/15 years where the printing of the SEL triggers the updated price change usually on the hand held printers so the person printing is swapping the SEL and automatically changing the store price at the same time.

 The problem with doing it either way is the products coming off the offers have usually been placed in multiple locations to highlight the promotion during them and when the new SEL is printed chances are all the locations the product is on sale haven't been captured. That's the one that causes most price change issues.