How Supermarkets Cheat You

Here are some techniques supermarkets use to cheat you:

• Mark an item on the shelf with a lower price, but scan it at a higher one at the checkout.
• Mark items 5 for $5 on the shelf. You buy two, to discover the individual price is $2.50, not $1.00 each.
• Scrambled the tags for the item under a related items on the shelf, so that it looks like an item is cheaper than it really is.
• Mark items that come in many flavours 5 for $5. You pick one box of each flavour. At the checkout you discover only strawberry is on sale. The others are $2.50 each.
• When you get home and open the box, you discover 80% of it is air. The trick is used even in small boxes like Nestlé Smarties.
• The box says made in Canada. You are suspicious because dates don’t grow in Canada. It turns out the agricultural products from around the world if packed in Canada count as made in Canada.
• The flyer offers spectacular saving on some item. You are there when the doors open. They are already sold out. After this happens repeatedly, you come to realise they only had a couple of items for sale. They are using a loss leader lure.

To discourage some of these scams, supermarkets should use electronic shelf price labelling that is in sync with the checkout scanners.

~ Roedy (born:1948-02-04 age:68)