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In today’s news about how corporate America is screwing over the little people, we have Walmart. Two years ago, Wally World got busted for pulling a little “bait-and-switch” action with their pricing. Essentially, in August 2022, a working class hero named Yoram Kahn discovered that a Walmart in Illinois had been ringing up items for 10-15% more than the sticker price on their shelves listed them as. This is sh-ty, and it’s also illegal! This means that if someone went to buy something that was listed as $10, they were actually being charged $11 or $11.50 at the register. Kahn filed a lawsuit, which claimed that Walmarts in “Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey and New York” had been caught doing the same thing.
I know what you’re thinking. A big corporation is facing a class action lawsuit over not being honest about their prices? They’re trying to rip consumers off?! In this economy?!
Walmart must face a class-action lawsuit claiming the multinational retail giant used inaccurate price labels, according to a ruling to a federal appeals court on July 3.
The court order, issued by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, opens the door for consumers to prove that the company has violated multiple consumer protection laws.
At the heart of the issue is that the inaccurate prices in Walmart stores constitute a “bait-and-switch” pricing scheme in which purchase prices are higher than those posted on store shelves.
The lawsuit was filed by an Ohio resident named Yoram Kahn. In August, 2022, Kahn purchased multiple items from a Walmart location in Niles, Illinois, and found a 10-15% markup above the listed priced. Kahn’s subsequent lawsuit alleged that similar price discrepancies were found at Walmart locations in Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey and New York.
The lawsuit also noted that a 2012 California court ruling fined the company $2 million for “violating a 2008 ruling requiring it to resolve pricing errors at checkout,” as well as two North Carolina-based locations being fined in 2021 for “repeated and excessive scanning charges” that caused excessive charges on purchased items.
In June 2024, Walmart agreed to pay a $1.64 million settlement to customers from its New Jersey locations for “allegations that the chain repeatedly engaged in unlawful unit pricing practices.”
Kahn’s legal team argued it was unreasonable for the average consumer to keep track of the discrepancies between the prices listed on shelves and potentially adjusted checkout prices.
“Who does that?” Judge David Hamilton wrote in the ruling. “For obvious reasons consumers will not undertake such audits.”
Poor Walmart, all they had to do was wait just a little while longer before getting caught, and they could have used the Supreme Court to make this legal again. Meh, I’m sure companies are already lining up to find a way to overturn this rule, especially now that the Chevron doctrine has fallen. Sorry, I digress! This is a big deal, especially for people who are on fixed incomes or need to strictly budget each month. Stores that try to get away with this count on customers not paying attention to their itemized receipts. I mean, it’s not surprising, but it’s disgusting nonetheless.
As for that New Jersey settlement, $1.64 million is a drop in the bucket for Walmart. They make that much in profits in like five minutes or whatever. I hope this class action lawsuit makes Walmart pay enough out that it actually hurts their reputations or bottom line in the same way that they hurt consumers who trust them to honor their lower prices. I know the odds are that it doesn’t teach them a lesson, but I really hope it does. In the meantime, everyone be as vigilant as you can when it comes to checking to make sure your receipts match what a store’s shelf price is.
I have no idea if this has happened to me. I pick something up, put it in my cart, and by the time I get to the check out I couldn’t tell you what the posted price was. I mean sometimes, with something like a birthday gift I’ll remember, but I rarely check the price as I’m scanning it (my walmart is basically all self checkout.)
so I can see how Walmart has gotten away with this for a long time because how many consumers are going back to verify that the price on the shelf is the price they are paying and even if they do, a lot of walmart associates will just tell you that it was in the wrong place or something. Good for this person for noticing and filing a lawsuit over it.
I DO remember prices and you are correct that most of the time, cashiers just assume the price is posted incorrectly (and they no longer honor the posted price even if it’s wrong like they did in the 90s).
I found recently that they don’t even bother to put the price on the shelf. Or it’s in the wrong place and you have to hunt for it.
I’ve had this happen to me and the gaslighting is unreal. I’ve had cashiers insist the price is the correct one when I know its different than what I saw on the shelf. The last time it happened I told them that they need to do a better job of posting the prices, thinking I had misread it. Depending on my mood, I will sometimes make them take the item back. It never occurred to me that they were doing this deliberately, yet I’m not surprised. I hope the lawsuit and penalties are so severe that it discourages Wal-Mart and other greedy corporations from trying this in the future. Yet our corrupt Repubs want to deregulate everything!
About 20% of the time they don’t even HAVE a price tag on the damn shelf!!! Clever because you don’t know the price until it’s scanned, and now you don’t know if that’s accurate since they’ve been scamming us!
Yes! That was my comment above! I should have scrolled down and read further!
And you have to check the item against the price because the stores are a mess in my area and anything could be on that shelf by that price tag. The print is also REALLLLY small too!
Depending on how much shopping I’m actually doing, I’ll remember the prices & if they ring up differently, I am that person who says, ‘that’s not the price on the shelf’, they insist it was, I insist it wasn’t, then they call a person to check who can’t find the item, then I have to go with them to point it out on the shelf, it’s a whole thing. Never, ever occurred to me that some stores, like Walmart, were doing this deliberately. I just thought it was sloppiness, not keeping up with their changing prices & marking individual items, and so on.
That’s why when I go to Sh*t Mart I help myself to a couple of things courtesy of the five finger discount, so it all evens out.
In Canada, there is something called the Scanner Price Accuracy Code. It’s a voluntary program but a lot of retailers participate (including Walmart). In a nut shell, if something with a bar code scans higher at the register than what was displayed on the shelf, and the customer notices and points it out to the cashier, the customer is entitled to get the item for free (if it’s less than $10, otherwise it’s a $10 discount). It’s a great program because the stores will hurry to correct the price (either on the shelf or in the system) so that other customers aren’t duped.
I’m in the UK and in both Sainsbury’s and Tesco I use the scan as you shop app/device and a couple of times I’ve noticed that the digital price is higher than what was showing on the paper ticket (once in each shop). This was when inflation was still sky high and prices were constantly rising. Both times they honoured the paper/shelf price but anyone who didn’t look closely/went through the regular checkout probably wouldn’t have noticed.
Last month I saw a comment on Reddit that our state’s grocery stores were overcharging so I started checking my receipts. I found three errors in the next three receipts: one coupon not applied, two muffins charged that I didn’t buy, and one head of broccoli rung up as three heads. Now I check out, pull my cart to the side, and review my receipts in detail before I leave Stop & Shop. It sucks but it’s necessary.