Tales from the Trenches: OverCHARGE!

On Sunday, I went to Target to pick up a few things.  Here's my count from them:

Covergirl Simply Ageless Foundation- marked $12.09 on the shelf.  I did a flick scan on that as I was cruising through the store and it scanned as $13.99.  I went back to the shelf, took a photo of the product display with the price and took that to the register.  They didn't debate the photo, gave it to me for the shelf price, took my coupon for $1.00 off and all was well.

Q-Tip 625 count with bonus 170 pack-  peg marked $3.89.  There were several pegs stocked with the same thing and all were marked $3.89.  I cashed out, started looking over my bill and found that I had been charged $5.49 for the Q-Tips and went to customer service.  She had to call, informed me that someone count have "moved the product" and I understand that, but in the end, I wasn't crazy and I was given the $3.89 price.  I had a coupon for 30 cents I had used and told her that I had been pretty happy at $3.59 for all of the Q-Tips, but not at $5.49. 

If you've added correctly, you'll see that on only two things, I was overcharged $3.50.  That is an overcharge of 21.9%.

I went to Staples to stock up on some of their sale school supplies.  We'll be having a fundraiser at school and one of the prizes is school supplies for the following year.  I got my items, I cashed out, I checked my bill and there was an item that was to be 50 cents ringing for $2.99. 

Not again.

I went back to the peg, read it carefully and saw that while the whole peg was stocked incorrectly, it was only the single pencil sharpener and not the dual sharpener that was on sale.  I grabbed a sale sharpener, took it back up to the cashier and he apologized profusely.  "I should have caught that."  "Sir, it isn't your fault.  The peg is stocked wrong."  In the end, I switched it around and was given the credit back to my card.

If you've figured correctly, you'll see that I was charged $2.99 for a 50 cent sale item.  That is a huge over-ring.  Grant you, that wasn't the exact item on sale, but it was stocked incorrectly.

My husband reports that each time he goes to Walmart, there is always at least one overcharge on just a small handful of items.  Long ago, I worked at a grocery store.  Our scanning was inaccurate, so weights and measures (AKA the state) took away the scanning privileges.  As a result, I can now do a 10 key adding machine with great speed.  Still, if the penalty was so severe then, why can't it be that way now? 

What about you?  How is price scanning going on in your life?  Seems as though I'm at customer service a whole lot.