Overcharged for grocery items

54321mse

Its 2024, and you buy your food groceries.  You see a knock down price, you take it to the till, only for you to realise you have been overcharged, or, the cashier has doubled the item, and you only have one item.  For example, in my case, you have a big shop, you are suppose to trust the cashier, you put everything through, you pay, as you do not want to hold up the queue, only to realise, that it is higher than normal.  The cashier had, at the end of the shop, pointed out that Baileys was on offer with the Morrisons reward card, do you want one, yes, ok, you say, only to find she has put two bottles through, and the offer is only on one bottle per customer. So, you are overcharged by £15.00.  Then you find the knock down price goods were not reduced on the receipt.  You then take it up with the cashier who was rarely sheepish, and I insisted she call the manager, sure, enough, they refunded - However, the refund is not instant like the goods you buy, I waited and waited for this refund, and still it was not in my Bank, I message them, only to be told it takes 10-14 days.  I reply with, I accept that if I brought goods back, but not when the cashier has made a mistake in charging me double and the shop not correctly down pricing their goods. My question then becomes - Shops, especially supermarkets should be held responsible for their actions, when it was not the customers fault.  There is no need for a refund to take this long, it should be the same as buying goods, in order not to be discriminative to their customers.

Brie

I've never had a delay in this sort of instance.  But I don't shop at Morrisons as there are none in our area.  If I've discovered the error as I'm pushing the trolley out I normally go to the customer service till and get them to sort it.  Occasionally it's just a small amount that I'm getting back (& some would say why bother if it's only 10p, but I do because it's MY 10p) and if it's tiddly they will often refund in cash.  I suspect they know it will cost X to process a refund so doing it this way saves the shop a lot of money.  Tesco did used to have a policy where if there was an error of overcharging you'd get back the overcharge and then a full refund as well so the item was actually free.  I think they stopped that a few years back.

born_again

If the refund is processed by the card machine using chip/pin or contactless then it takes exactly the same amount of time as a debit does.

Cornucopia

I definitely suggest checking your receipt before leaving the store.   Also be aware of which shops apply discounts as you go, and which apply them at the end.   Self-service tills can be better in respect of pricing issues - you can scan, pack and check at your own speed, and won't be up-sold by the cashier.

I'm finding that other new technology is less helpful.   Discounts on apps often have a lengthy Ts&Cs section, and in the case of Lidl, you need to become reasonably diligent on understanding the way that product codes and descriptions apply, especially when multiple varieties are concerned.    Discounts sometimes apply to whole classes of products (which ones?) right down to a specific variety of a product - you just have to be careful if you don't want to be caught out.  

Even with electronic price labels, there can still be labels misplaced on the shelves with respect to the products they relate to.   Shops vary in whether labels are above or below products.

Murphybear

54321mse said:

Its 2024, and you buy your food groceries.  You see a knock down price, you take it to the till, only for you to realise you have been overcharged, or, the cashier has doubled the item, and you only have one item.  For example, in my case, you have a big shop, you are suppose to trust the cashier, you put everything through, you pay, as you do not want to hold up the queue, only to realise, that it is higher than normal.  The cashier had, at the end of the shop, pointed out that Baileys was on offer with the Morrisons reward card, do you want one, yes, ok, you say, only to find she has put two bottles through, and the offer is only on one bottle per customer. So, you are overcharged by £15.00.  Then you find the knock down price goods were not reduced on the receipt.  You then take it up with the cashier who was rarely sheepish, and I insisted she call the manager, sure, enough, they refunded - However, the refund is not instant like the goods you buy, I waited and waited for this refund, and still it was not in my Bank, I message them, only to be told it takes 10-14 days.  I reply with, I accept that if I brought goods back, but not when the cashier has made a mistake in charging me double and the shop not correctly down pricing their goods. My question then becomes - Shops, especially supermarkets should be held responsible for their actions, when it was not the customers fault.  There is no need for a refund to take this long, it should be the same as buying goods, in order not to be discriminative to their customers.

This is why we always use the self scan these days.  It’s easy to check everything as you go.  I did get overcharged once but customer services refunded it to me immediately on the card I had paid with. 

HillStreetBlues

Brie said:

Tesco did used to have a policy where if there was an error of overcharging you'd get back the overcharge and then a full refund as well so the item was actually free.  I think they stopped that a few years back.

It was the good old days of double the difference.
I once bought 10 items that had been yellowed stickered from £5 to 50p but it went though the manned till at £5 each.
I then went to customer services who worked out I needed a £45 refund, I then pointed out the big sign behind then with DtD, after calling the manager I got £90 refunded, oh happy days.

mr_stripey

I've always kept an eye on my receipt; I wouldn't scrutinise every penny but would notice if an offer hadn't been applied or something was overcharged. Often it would turn out to be their error, sometimes mine (perhaps not reading the shelf edge label correctly)

I assume that the move towards electronic price tags which I'm seeing more of in Aldi, Lidl etc should reduce the number of price errors as I imagine the shelf edge lcd labels are syncd with the central pricing computer?