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Large Scale Fraud by the Supermarket Chains

Markus Antonius

I will not name the particular supermarket chain unless a mod gives me the blessing but I wanted to highlight this issue that affects me at least 10-15 times a year and wanted to warn everyone about it.

This has happened to me in more than one of the large supermarkets but there is one in particular that is the worst of all.

Often you see a really good deal on a particular item. You don't necessarily need it but you can't leave it behind at this price. You go to pay and the discount never gets applied at the till. 99% of people are not aware this happens, as who in reality actually checks their reciept after grocery shopping?

"Ah, sher it's only a few euro, don't have time to be dealing with this"

I have made an active effort to bring this up with the staff. First thing they do is dismiss you as having read the wrong price tag. Then when you show them, that it is not a mistake, they say "Ah yes, that deal was yesterday, we just didn't remove the sale tag"

This happens on a massive scale, I have gotten at least 50euro back (overcharged €5.20 again today) in the last year just arguing to have the discount applied. Something I shouldn't have to do as it should be applied at the till.

How do I know it's fraud and not an honest mistake? Because in the last 10 years that I've noticed this happening, the so called "mistake" never, ever once happened in my favour i.e. a discount being applied to an item that is labelled at full price. For this reason, I am certain that this is an active fraud and wanted to

1. Raise awareness to please give your reciept a brief glance to make sure your discount is properly applied and

2. I would like people to report back here if they have been affected to see how widespread an issue this is

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mr j tayto

Im guessing the first letter in their double barrel name begins with S and they certainly don't give value. ??

Ive had the same experience on umpteen occasions with one particular chain. I seldom use them anymore unless I'm badly stuck.

I would suggest it's more than an irregular occurrence with them.

Mena Mitty

Another sales tactic used in a few supermarkets is placing a 350g product on the shelf with the 150g size price tag (€2) displayed underneath. Of course the 350g price shows up on your receipt.

I've seen this a few weeks back with the 2kg of flour with the 1kg price underneath.

'If I had a euro for every time that's happened to me, I'd be a rich woman' as they say.

cold hands

Such practices are illegal and they know about that. You have full right to pay as it was advertised (label with price is a form of advertisement) and store has no right to charge you more than they said through tag price.

Mistakes happens but cutting staff hours to boost 'productivity' and not having enough people to fix prices is something different.

It is not your job to make sure all tag prices are changed when price changes. You pay what you agreed seeing on the tag below product.

I used to buy in local shop where prices were always mess and I had to claim my rights nearly every time doing shopping.

Changed town, there isn't that much problems with tags now.

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122113692#Comment_122113692

I have definitely had this issue on more than one occasion here but the worst offender for me was a certain store that offers 10 off 50.

Looking further into the rules around this. This is clear and purposeful fraud on a grand scale. The citizens information website makes it very clear on what the rules are and these supermarkets are very clearly performing active fraud:

https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/consumer/advertising-and-promotions/unfair-sales-practices/

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122113965#Comment_122113965

I was furious one day with one of the managers when he accused me of reading the wrong price. I am no person to make a scene but I was literally shouting at him at the counter with everyone around looking. I was so sick of being overcharged and thought the only way to deal with this is to expose it at the counter in front of everyone and hope they start checking their reciepts too.

He was mortified and was trying to give me free stuff just to get me out of the shop. 😂

It is 100% directed by the managers, or at least they have the system set up in a way that the sale tags are left longer on the shelf than what is registered in the system.

ToweringPerformance

These are well known practices in the retail grocery game unfortunately

z80CPU

And that's why I handed back my own red card to a member of staff a few years ago.

Still have Tesco and Dunne's cards on me.

bennyx_o

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122113965#Comment_122113965

No, you don't have the right to pay as it was advertised. The advertised price (or an advertisement itself) would be an 'invitation to treat' which is basically an invitation to make an offer on the item. If you then decide you want to purchase the item, you take it to the checkout; this would be where you're offering to purchase the goods at the displayed price. The supermarket are then well within their rights to say the price is wrong or the offer is over as a valid contract hasn't been formed.

As for the issue, I generally use the self scanners so can see if an offer isn't applying, and if it doesn't I just remove the item again

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122114118#Comment_122114118

Not the case according to the citizens information website. You are more than welcome to quote a law that contradicts this:

Clear and understandable pricing
The law sets out how traders must display prices. Prices cover the selling price, the unit price (price per unit of measurement), and reduced prices (indicated by a fraction or a percentage of the previous price).
Prices must be:
Clearly visible and understandable
Easily identifiable as being the price

https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/consumer/advertising-and-promotions/pricing/

antfin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122114209#Comment_122114209

You are citing the obligations of a retailer under the regulations there. Nowhere in the regulations is there a remedy or right bestowed on the consumer to purchase the item at the lower price. There are penalties that may be applied where a contravention of the regulations is investigated and found to have occured.

You are more than welcome to quote the legislation that has reversed the well founded principle of invitation to treat.

Mrs OBumble

I know about this issue. Never had this in Lidl, though.

beachhead

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122113810#Comment_122113810

This is more and more common across all the chains going back at least 5 years.It's either a deliberate policy or just laziness by shelf stockers

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122114277#Comment_122114277

What makes you think it's an invitation to treat and not an offer? Supermarkets don't barter when you get to the till, therefore the price quoted on the shelf is an offer. Bringing the goods to the till is viewed as an acceptance of the offer and is contractually binding unless the retailer made a genuine mistake. I am contesting that they are not making genuine mistakes and are wilfully breaking a contract by not honouring an intentional offer.

Rock Steady Edy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122114280#Comment_122114280

Lidl put their prices above the product, everyone else puts the price below the product. It's confused me on more than one occasion.

When I once noticed the shelf price was lower at Aldi to that coming up when scanned, they refused to sell at the lower price and said the scanned price was the correct one.

In general, if an offer doesn't come up I'm expecting and the shop doesn't honour it, I just ask them politely to remove it. My logic is I'd never have bought it otherwise, so I'm not going to waste money on a product at a price I'd never have paid for it.

I'm sure shops sell lots of goods that end up in customers baskets because they thought were at a lower price, but it's up to us as individuals to refuse to buy it if they won't honour it.

G_R

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122114472#Comment_122114472

It's not defined in statue, it's precedent in contract law.

Not just in Ireland, either. All common law countries are like this.

Google "contract invitation to treat Ireland" and you'll see numerous examples.

Here is some from a text book that includes references to case law

https://www.studocu.com/en-ie/document/dublin-city-university/principles-of-commercial-law-in-ireland/offers-and-invitations-to-treat/8008983

antfin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122114472#Comment_122114472

It's a long settled principle of common law that's been upheld by the courts many, many times that the display of items in a shop is merely an invitation to treat.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122114521#Comment_122114521

Yeah, but you need to distinguish between the common law rules about the formation of a contract of sale and statutory regulations about pricing and and the display of prices. Breach of these requirements — e.g. by displaying false or misleading prices, that you are not actually selling at — is an offence, and you can report this behaviour to the regulator, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.

antfin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122114525#Comment_122114525

As I said earlier, the regulations create obligations for a retailer and breach may result in penalties but nowhere does it create a right for a consumer to purchase at the lower price as the OP asserted. A retailer may honour the price but there is no obligation to do so.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122114527#Comment_122114527

I think an interesting issue arises if the customer doesn't notice until after the transaction has been completed (at the higher price) and then objects that he was induced to enter into the contract by the retailer's false representation about what the price would be. The false representation was not just a misrepresentation but also, in itself, a criminal offence; it would be inequitable to allow the retailer to derive any benefit from their own criminal conduct, and it doesn't become equitable merely because the purchaser failed to notice, at the checkout, that the item was rung up at a higher price than had been represented. I'd fancy the customer's chances of getting a refund of the difference between the price that was represented and the price that was charged.

I agree, if the customer notices and objects before the transaction is completed, the retailer isn't bound to sell at the price they represented they would sell. But I think most will, not just to retain customer goodwill but also on a brutal cost-benefit analysis; it reduces the likelihood of a complaint to the regulator, which typically will cost them much more to deal with than simply honouring the misrepresentation for this one customer.

howyanow

There are fines for retailers for displaying incorrect pricing an example being if a product on a shelf did not have a label to display a price its 300 euro fine per label.

This is one reasom why electronic labels are becoming more common.

Ive worked in retail for a long time and I feel that since its such a competitive cut throat race to the bottom industry,each retailer is trying to have a large amount of products on offer in 3 week cycles however they are possibly just not checking at store level if prices are accurate for these promotions or the IT and staff systems in place to activate and check promotions are just over worked by the sheer number of promotions each time.

On a day that an offer cycle is activated.Staff should be checking prices aisle by aisle to ensure prices are correct but Im not convinced this is a working practice used by all retail chains.On some occassions IT systems can be a problem.Sometimes after promotions have been set up and dates of activation have been set,"price pushes" have not gone through on time and can take another day or so to push through properly.Possibly promotion needs to be set up a day or 2 earlier to avoid this problem.

The retail chain I worked for the promotions had to be set up in each store not centrally and this was a laborious and time consuming task and deffo this allowed for human errors.also barcodes of products do change without manufacturers alerting retailers and this is deffo another reason why offers may not always reflect correctly.still the retailer needs to check this before activating offers and should be focusing more staff hours on ensuring more price accuracy.Retailers are not been visited enough by government agencies to check pricing issues.

I will conlucde with one statement which some of you may not agree with,the retailer is not deliberately trying to mis lead the consumer,they are all focused on ensuring long term customer loyalty so they would not risk delinerately doing anything to risk losing your custom.They do need to pay more attention to thier promotion and price errors to avoid errors occuring.

RurtBeynolds

Let's not forget tesco advertising the club card price, with the actual price being the small print.

Northernsoul

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122114539#Comment_122114539

100% this. I run an independent family supermarket that has been operating for 70 years. It is not in our, or any of the retail group franchisees to commit ‘large scale fraud’. Customer satisfaction and loyalty comes before everything else. We sell almost 3,000 different lines, more than Tesco express. Barcodes are changing all the time, every time a products ingredient changes, size changes (shrinkflation) DRS bottles etc. Do mistakes happen? Yes. Are some staff more concerned with just getting through the day? Yes. To suggest large scale fraud on behalf of the retailer is laughable though.

Fatnacho

I used to work in a supermarket and was on the team responsible for the SELs (Shelf Edge Labels). There were only 3 of us who had to look after a fairly large store. It’s a very manual job with lots of walking around and early morning starts.
With price changes everyday, low staffing and floor workers placing stock in the wrong sections, pricing errors often happened due to genuine mistakes. There was never a deliberate store or company policy to mislead the public. Most mistakes were spotted fairly quickly by the buyers and the price difference was honoured. Electronic SELs would dramatically reduce these problems.
Have to say, there are some strange individuals who deliberately walk around trying to spot pricing errors and then look to get the item for free. Even had one lady who regularly took special offer labels off the shelves and came back at a later date to customer services with the label saying she was overcharged.

Pauliedragon

The consumer is better off a lot of the time with no special offers or sales prices as the money is just made up by increasing pricing on other products. If the price of everything was the at the "normal" price 365 days a year it would be a lot easier to judge if your overspending or not. "Marked down prices" are the best and most effective tool for retailers because so many people fall for probably the biggest scam ever created.

Duvet Day

It's very annoying when it happens particularly if you don't realise it until you get home. I find that it mainly happens in the major supermarket beginning with T, you then have to queue at customer services and battle with a manager. I think it has improved recently but I'm very wary still and try to check my receipt before leaving the store.

finbarrk

The problem is I am usually at home before I look at the receipt. It doesn't happen in Aldi. But does in SV.

Calahonda52

Given the level of modding elsewhere on this site, am surprised that the thread title is allowed stand

Padre_Pio

I suppose many of us have worked in shops in the past.

Its usually an honest mistake that happens very regularly. Oftentimes I'd have the job of changing prices, could be hundreds of labels. The odd thing gets missed, the label gets dropped or lost, or you cant find the item or it's displayed in two or three locations in the shop. I'd always end up with 30 or 40 spare labels of things we don't sell but the system says we do, and a "live" label could be hidden in there.

Sometime a special offer would end on a Saturday or Sunday, but there's usually a different weekend staff working who wouldn't usually update the prices. We would always stand by the lower price to keep customers happy.

It's worth noting the opposite is very true, and no customer has complained the price charged was cheaper than what was displayed. Tesco used to have a "pay the difference" offer in the UK if the shelf price didn't match the sale price, and I remember people were getting PlayStation 3s for £10 due to a pricing error.

Deeec

Yes this happens, I wouldnt call it fraud though. The reality is an employee forgets to change the price on the stock/till system or does it incorrectly so the price checks out different to the offer. Its human error not fraud.

It can happen the other way also - About 10 years ago I was charged 0.01c for a pack of frozen prawns, the next time I was charged the same so naturally I stocked up and said nothing. It took the supermarket 3 weeks to realise this error.

joeymcg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122114737#Comment_122114737

Was it worth the 10 yrs of bad breath?