Pretoria - As consumers we have a right to expect that the price we see on the shelf is the price we’ll be charged for that item at the till.
But for a variety of reasons, that is often not the case and the till rings up items at a higher price.
I dare say most people don’t notice; others do but are in a hurry or don’t want to “make a scene”, or both, so they let it go.
It’s a supermarket scenario which incenses many consumers, or at least erodes their trust in the brand.
So I’ve long admired Pick n Pay for introducing its Scan Right policy as a means of compensating shoppers who’ve had the “wrong till price” experience, and providing store managers with a good reason to ensure that their shelf and till prices correspond.
This was how Pick n Pay worded that policy: “If any item scans at a different price to that displayed on the shelf label, and the barcode corresponds, then that item is free. And the balance of the purchase of the same product will be at a lower price.”
A few years ago, I got a rash of complaints from Woolworths customers about wrong prices being “rung up” in various stores. Most said they were being charged the normal price for “two for the price of one” type specials.
A Woolies spokesman protested at the time that only a tiny percentage of items were rung up incorrectly. In that case, I said, the company had little to lose by introducing a policy similar to Pick n Pay’s Scan Right.
So that’s what they did. And then they extended the policy beyond food to all their divisions. If the price scans incorrectly, you get it free.
Ironically, Pick n Pay has, from this month, done away with its Scan Right policy and replaced it with a diluted version – the Double the Difference policy: “If any item scans at a higher price than displayed on the shelf and the barcode corresponds, we will give you the item at the marked price, plus double the difference off the first item and the subsequent items at the lower price.”
One of the readers who alerted me to the change found this out recently with a mis-priced pack of chocolates.
“It was marked R43.99 on the shelf, but it scanned as R54.99 at the till,” said the man, who asked not to be named.
“But instead of getting it free, I was charged R21.99 (the difference of R11, doubled). “Obviously, the compensation is now not nearly as good for the customer.”
Asked to comment, Pick n Pay’s customer director, Jonathan Ackerman, said the new policy – advertised in store and on its website, he said – was “still very generous to the customer, and penalises stores that do not get pricing right”.
“Both the old and new policies are aimed at over-compensating the customer if there is a discrepancy between the shelf price and the scanned price at the till. It maintains the promise to our customers that if we get pricing wrong, we will correct this, while simplifying the system.”
The “over-compensation” is now less generous than before, but it’s a voluntary policy which other supermarkets don’t have. - Pretoria News