I’m not sure if supermarket business is now so tough that Vons/Pavillion/Safeway are resorting to some shady tactics. I have been running into instances where the shoppers can easily end up much bigger bill than expected:
- Very similar items that are not on-sale will be placed together with on-sale items. Unless you read the description of the item closely, you will often pick up the items that are not on-sale.
- On-sale items are very specific to sub-types under the same brand. If you pick up orange juice instead of grape juice for OceanSpray brand, you won’t get the sale price.
- Mis-placed tags or mis-placed items will cause you to pick up items that are not on-sale, when you think that you are getting a good deal. The description can match very closely, except for the brand.
- Prices are simply not correct at the check-out.
If you don’t check your receipt and/or roughly calculate what you are buying, 9 out of 10 times you will walk out the store with a bigger bill without knowing it. There are no other ways besides checking your receipt and read the price tag description carefully when you shop.
