Suppose you’ve just picked 30 items off a store shelf and taken them to a checkout lane for a cashier to ring up with an electronic scanner. What are the chances you’ll be overcharged on at least one item?
In Wichita Falls and McAllen, Texas, the odds were more than 70 percent, according to data collected by inspectors for a Texas Department of Agriculture crackdown on electronic scanner overcharges.
In Longview and Abilene, shoppers didn’t have to worry: Of the 20 or more inspections conducted in each city, the department didn’t find any overcharges. Statewide about a third of the inspections turned up overcharges, usually on one or two of the 30 items checked per inspection.
Although retailers say undercharges often offset overcharges, state officials have registered their concerns-and have fined hundreds of stores a total of more than $90,000 for charging too much.
Why be so tough when overcharges averaged only $1.21 and occurred on less than 2 percent of 70,350 items checked?
“If you were leaving the store and just as you’re leaving, someone actually reached in your pocket and took $1.25 out of your pocket, how would you feel about that? And (what if) it had to happen each time you went?” said Kevin Zarling, the department’s attorney overseeing the scanner inspections.
The veracity of electronic scanners, designed to speed up checkout lines by electronically reading bar codes, has become a concern for consumers nationwide.
The retail and grocery industries have tried to calm the rancor, saying the inspections are subjective and the error rates are low. Retailers and grocers have told Zarling that cash registers made more mistakes and that human error, not scanner mistakes, is the problem.
“The biggest problem would be sale prices not getting into the computer when advertising goes out, or when the sale’s off and the price gets changed in the computer but sale signs are not pulled down,” Zarling said.
The state inspected only about 2,000 of the tens of thousands of Texas stores that use electronic scanners. But the inspections have led the Texas Food Industry Association to consider a voluntary certification program for stores that use scanners.
“We’ve woken some people up,” Zarling said.
In Wichita Falls, officials found 13 overcharges in one Food Lion and 10 in another, according to a computer-assisted study of inspection data by The Austin American-Statesman.
In many of the cases, shelf signs did not make it clear that the advertised discount had been marked off the price of the item, said Mike Mozingo, a Food Lion Inc. spokesman. The others, he said, were errors in matching prices on the shelf with prices in the scanner computer.
Zarling said consumers should not conclude that stores intentionally are overcharging because the rate of undercharges, found in 26 percent of inspections, was comparable to the rate of overcharges, 31 percent.
Other states also fine stores that undercharge, figuring the store probably is making overcharging mistakes as well.
Texas does not because it assumes a store would be more eager to correct undercharges than overcharges, said Robin Abbett, a state Agriculture Department paralegal.
Inspections of electronic scanners vary from state to state, although the National Institute of Weights and Measures issues guidelines and is trying to develop model guidelines for all states.
“Right now there is little uniformity from state to state as to how price verification or scanner tests are done,” said Peter Larkin, vice president for the Food Marketing Institute in Washington, D.C. “And frankly, like any other inspection procedure, the results can vary greatly depending on the methodology.”
The institute is a national trade association for food retailers and wholesalers.
