Anybody else getting overcharged at CUB FOODS?
Gandalf
I've been overcharged. Three weeks in a row.
And, it's happened SO MANY times in the past, I am beginning to believe
it's NOT an accident.
Tonight (Sat.), about 6PM, I bought some of the 'off brand' canned
vegetables that were on sale for 48�/can.
I got a LOT of them, because that's a good price.
I was charged 69�/can.
Now, these have been on sale ALL WEEK at 48�.
Have they been overcharging ALL WEEK on these, and nobody else noticed?
I tried to get the cashier to call a manager, but she said she would
"tell someone later".
The price isn't due to change until midnight, and I KNOW the REGULAR
price is MORE than 69�/can.
I tend to buy what's on sale, and I tend to shop later in the week, in
the evening, when it's less crowded.
So, the CORRECT prices should be in the computer that runs ALL of the
scanners, by then.
But at LEAST every THIRD week, I get overcharged for something; usually
NOT getting the sale price, after it's been on sale for AT LEAST 4 days.
I am beginning to believe this is a store POLICY, just to overcharge,
and make more money, in an inner city store. It just happens TOO OFTEN.
BTW: The Cub Foods store on Lake St. is owned by Jerry's, based in
Edina. Jerry (can't remember his last name) owns some other Cub stores
in the Twin Cities, but I can't remember which ones.
I spoke to him once, after a particularly egregious case of being
overcharged, but it was some years ago.
At that time, he blamed the overcharging on whomever entered (or, I
should say, DIDN'T enter the sale price, into the computer system.
John A. Weeks III
g.ga...@lycos.com (Gandalf) wrote:
> The last THREE times I went to the Cub Foods on Lake St. (closest to me)
> I've been overcharged. Three weeks in a row.
I shop at 2 different Cubs in the south metro. I watch the checkout
like a hawk. I don't recall ever being overcharged in that manner.
In the past, I remember a time or two where I was confused about
what was covered by a coupon, but these days, Cub very clearly
marks things that are are on special or needs a coupon with
signage right on the shelves.
The place that I have seen frequent errors in the checkout
scanners is Target. I simply will not shop there any more
because every time I would check out, there would be items that
ring up wrong. Then I'd have to spend 20 minutes waiting in
line at the customer service because the cashiers were
not able to give the correct price in the check-out line.
-john-
--
======================================================================
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Newave Communications � � � � � � � � � � � � http://www.johnweeks.com
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catpandaddy
"Gandalf" <g.ga...@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:4ae4d65b...@news.iphouse.com...
> The last THREE times I went to the Cub Foods on Lake St. (closest to me)
> I've been overcharged. Three weeks in a row.
Try WalMart. I've never had a misprice over there.
Gandalf
<jo...@johnweeks.com> wrote:
>In article <4ae4d65b...@news.iphouse.com>,
> g.ga...@lycos.com (Gandalf) wrote:
>
>> The last THREE times I went to the Cub Foods on Lake St. (closest to me)
>> I've been overcharged. Three weeks in a row.
>
>I shop at 2 different Cubs in the south metro. I watch the checkout
>like a hawk. I don't recall ever being overcharged in that manner.
>In the past, I remember a time or two where I was confused about
>what was covered by a coupon, but these days, Cub very clearly
>marks things that are are on special or needs a coupon with
>signage right on the shelves.
Yes, you are right about this. Cub does a much better job of marking
sale and coupon items than Rainbow does.
I go to the Rainbow that's about 400 yards from the Cub on Lake Street,
and I can NEVER find the few sale items I want to buy.
Rainbow CONSTANTLY runs out of sale items, too. That is much less common
at Cub; I will give them that.
>
>The place that I have seen frequent errors in the checkout
>scanners is Target. I simply will not shop there any more
>because every time I would check out, there would be items that
>ring up wrong. Then I'd have to spend 20 minutes waiting in
>line at the customer service because the cashiers were
>not able to give the correct price in the check-out line.
>
>-john-
I almost never buy anything in Target any more. They simply don't stock
the things I commonly buy, like the Walmart in Bloomington USED to.
Now I go to the Walmart in Eden Prairie. They still carry hardware,
sporting goods, and automotive, as well as having better prices on
household items like soap, detergent, toothpaste, etc., etc.
osmium
Yes, and as a bonus, you can usually tell what the price of items are before
checking out, and there is no fine print like "must purchase five items",
"must be part of a $25 purchase", and so on. I have had almost identical
results as posted by the OP, a purchase late in the week and a sale item
rings up at the wrong price. Amazingly, as far as I can tell this has been
going on for several days. I don't trust Cub AT ALL. Pharmacy items are
especially bad, my guess is that the pharmacy is farmed out to someone. I
notice this mostly at only one of the three different Cubs I use from time
to time.
But I don't think it is by design, it is just a slovenly attitude towards
the humbling process of running a grocery store, when the manager is
obviously capable of and interested in much better things - running a hedge
fund or sumpin'.
I detest Cub with a passion, unfortunately it is my main source of food. I
can only buy staples at the accessible Walamrt.
catpandaddy
"osmium" <r124c...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:7kj6d3F...@mid.individual.net...
I never rely on just one store. There are specific sections that I find
more reliable at each store and sections that I check as an afterthought.
As a kudos to the local Rainbow, I found an item that was tagged with
conflicting information on the shelf, and even though the flyer price was
right they gave it to me at the LOWER-than advertised price just to honor
the technicality and as a thankyou for finding the misprint. The
information on the shelf card was half-right half-wrong because of some typo
in converting the unit price to the package price to the offer price.
Hell Toupee
> As a kudos to the local Rainbow, I found an item that was tagged with
> conflicting information on the shelf, and even though the flyer price was
> right they gave it to me at the LOWER-than advertised price just to honor
> the technicality and as a thankyou for finding the misprint. The
> information on the shelf card was half-right half-wrong because of some typo
> in converting the unit price to the package price to the offer price.
Roundy's/Rainbow also has an overcharge policy where, if you've been
overcharged, they give it to you free. If you've bought more than one
of the item, you get the first one free and they'll just refund the
amount overcharged on the rest.
IIRC the state attorney general's office occasionally looks into these
complaints, because scanner overcharges are just so darned commonplace
in retail. If a particular retailer gets too many complaints made
against it, the AG's office has a chat with them.
I wish retailers would use registers that more clearly display the
price charged to the customers during the checkout process. A smaller,
supplemental screen positioned for the customer's view would be nice.
Wayne Marsh
> The last THREE times I went to the Cub Foods on Lake St. (closest to me)
> I've been overcharged. Three weeks in a row.
I haven't been overcharged AFAIK, but the cashier did forget to scan
$2.50 worth of manufacturers' coupons the last time I shopped at Lake
St. I didn't discover it until I got home, so I fired off an
I'm-disappointed email to Cub. A few days later I got an apologetic
letter from the manager plus a gift card for $12.50 -- my $2.50 plus a
tenner for my pain and suffering. I'm content.
Wayne Marsh Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
wayne...@mac.com
Melba's Jammin'
Hell Toupee <my...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Roundy's/Rainbow also has an overcharge policy where, if you've been
> overcharged, they give it to you free. If you've bought more than one
> of the item, you get the first one free and they'll just refund the
> amount overcharged on the rest.
So does Cub. I daresay most stores do.
>
> I wish retailers would use registers that more clearly display the
> price charged to the customers during the checkout process. A smaller,
> supplemental screen positioned for the customer's view would be nice.
I believe the cashier can easily turn the screen to face you if you ask.
I have no problem seeing the screen as the item is scanned.
--
-Barb, Mother Superior, HOSSSPoJ
http://web.me.com/barbschaller - Yes, I Can! blog
Welcoming the arrival of Emma Kathryn on 10-22-09;
she is great-grand-niece/-nephew #8.
Melba's Jammin'
> The last THREE times I went to the Cub Foods on Lake St. (closest to me)
> I've been overcharged. Three weeks in a row.
>
> And, it's happened SO MANY times in the past, I am beginning to believe
> it's NOT an accident.
>
> Tonight (Sat.), about 6PM, I bought some of the 'off brand' canned
> vegetables that were on sale for 48�/can.
>
> I got a LOT of them, because that's a good price.
>
> I was charged 69�/can.
>
> Now, these have been on sale ALL WEEK at 48�.
>
> Have they been overcharging ALL WEEK on these, and nobody else noticed?
Could be.
> I tried to get the cashier to call a manager, but she said she would
> "tell someone later".
You didn't go to the Service Counter and ask to see the manager of the
day? Huh!
>
> The price isn't due to change until midnight, and I KNOW the REGULAR
> price is MORE than 69�/can.
A lot more? Vegetables are often on sale at this time of year as the
new harvest and pack get to the warehouses; they have sales to get rid
of older stock. Any chance that the regular price is lower than what it
used to be?
>
> I tend to buy what's on sale, and I tend to shop later in the week, in
> the evening, when it's less crowded.
>
> So, the CORRECT prices should be in the computer that runs ALL of the
> scanners, by then.
It sure enough should be.
>
> But at LEAST every THIRD week, I get overcharged for something; usually
> NOT getting the sale price, after it's been on sale for AT LEAST 4 days.
I have a neighbor who doesn't like to shop at one of the two Cubs near
us; she says she's always finding a mistake at one. I mentioned it to
the the store manager and he said it's a keying error on the part of
whoever changes the prices.
>
> I am beginning to believe this is a store POLICY,
That seems a little far-fetched to me.
> just to overcharge, and make more money, in an inner city store. It
> just happens TOO OFTEN.
:-(
> BTW: The Cub Foods store on Lake St. is owned by Jerry's, based in
> Edina. Jerry (can't remember his last name) owns some other Cub stores
> in the Twin Cities, but I can't remember which ones.
>
> I spoke to him once, after a particularly egregious case of being
> overcharged, but it was some years ago.
Call him up again and tell him what you've told us. Better yet, print
out your post and mail it to him. A phone call to the store manager
will get you the name of the owner. Or a phone call to Cub's corporate
offices.
>
> At that time, he blamed the overcharging on whomever entered (or, I
> should say, DIDN'T enter the sale price, into the computer system.
Seems reasonable to me.
Melba's Jammin'
"osmium" <r124c...@comcast.net> wrote:
> going on for several days. I don't trust Cub AT ALL. Pharmacy items are
> especially bad, my guess is that the pharmacy is farmed out to someone. I
> notice this mostly at only one of the three different Cubs I use from time
> to time.
I don't know about that; when Cub put in a new system and new registers
in their pharmacies a couple years ago, there was a hellacious back-up
of customers. The staff was ready to mutiny because they weren't
getting any help after their training period. I got the name of the
Regional Manager in charge of the pharmacy ops (my niece worked at Super
Valu at the time and gave me his name) and I fired off a rather pointed
email to him. HE was helping them out the next day. Makes me think
that the pharmacists and techs are Cub employees.
WDS
My daughter worked at Walmart as a cashier a couple summers ago and
believe me they have a *lot* of pricing problems with the scanner price
not matching the shelf price.
Doc O'Leary
Melba's Jammin' <barbsc...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> I have a neighbor who doesn't like to shop at one of the two Cubs near
> us; she says she's always finding a mistake at one. I mentioned it to
> the the store manager and he said it's a keying error on the part of
> whoever changes the prices.
Which, of course, is CYA BS. There is no reason the system printing the
card for the shelves and the system for scanning the bar code at the
checkout should disagree at all. If they did have the two disconnected
for some reason, double-entry bookkeeping should be done to validate the
work. Sounds like the manager themselves is not doing their job
properly.
--
My personal UDP list: 127.0.0.1, localhost, googlegroups.com, ono.com,
and probably your server, too.
Doug McIntyre
>In article <barbschaller-38BB...@news.iphouse.com>,
> Melba's Jammin' <barbsc...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> I have a neighbor who doesn't like to shop at one of the two Cubs near
>> us; she says she's always finding a mistake at one. I mentioned it to
>> the the store manager and he said it's a keying error on the part of
>> whoever changes the prices.
>Which, of course, is CYA BS. There is no reason the system printing the
>card for the shelves and the system for scanning the bar code at the
>checkout should disagree at all. If they did have the two disconnected
>for some reason, double-entry bookkeeping should be done to validate the
>work. Sounds like the manager themselves is not doing their job
>properly.
Everyone seems to think that corporate computer systems are so
high-level tied together, when in fact, in my daily experience dealing
with them at the IT level, there's so much room for things to fall
down, with people *retyping* in data from one source to another, and
many manual processes because the corporate IT software sucks so badly..
The Daily WTF outlines alot of the way most companies work. :)
Mike H
wrote:
> > I am beginning to believe this is a store POLICY,
>
> That seems a little far-fetched to me.
>
I don't find it all that far fetched. If this is occuring near the
end of the week, then either no one else has noticed the problem, or
the manager doesn't care (via policy or internal motiviation). I
would expect if I was in charge, and motivated to provide customer
service I would only have to hear of that problem once.
catpandaddy
"Doug McIntyre" <mer...@geeks.org> wrote in message
news:4ae5ded0$0$42844$8046...@newsreader.iphouse.net...
> Doc O'Leary <drolear...@4q2009.subsume.com> writes:
>
>>Which, of course, is CYA BS. There is no reason the system printing the
>>card for the shelves and the system for scanning the bar code at the
>>checkout should disagree at all.
>
> high-level tied together, when in fact, in my daily experience dealing
> with them at the IT level, there's so much room for things to fall
> down, with people *retyping* in data from one source to another, and
> many manual processes because the corporate IT software sucks so badly..
Thank you for pointing this out... that's definitely part of what happens
exactly.
One other thing that sometimes happens, occurs when changing the signs. In
a big store, you can think you took down all the old signs and accidentally
miss some, especially when the product on the shelf takes up many spots on
the shelf. It's just as common in a small store now that I remember it...
when you have to change the signs and watch the cash register at the same
time, it's very easy to accidentally leave an old one up along with the new
ones. When your eyes are in that many places at once, you can be looking
right at something and not recognize it more often than is commonly
realized.
Doc O'Leary
Doug McIntyre <mer...@geeks.org> wrote:
Or, as I prefer to call it out, the way most companies *don't* work.
I'm a tech guy myself, and yet I also offered a solution that dates back
to Roman times. If your IT department can't puzzle a workable solution
out, someone should be fired. If management ignores the suggestions,
someone there should be fired. Instead, customers get shafted until the
reputation of a company falls into the mud, yet everyone without a
golden parachute seems shocked when poorly run corporations fail.
Doc O'Leary
"catpandaddy" <c...@cat.pan.net> wrote:
> One other thing that sometimes happens, occurs when changing the signs. In
> a big store, you can think you took down all the old signs and accidentally
> miss some, especially when the product on the shelf takes up many spots on
> the shelf.
Seriously, how hard is that? If you print 20 signs at the start of a
sale, you make sure you collect 20 signs at the end. Anybody earning
over minimum wage should be able to handle that without breaking a sweat.
> When your eyes are in that many places at once, you can be looking
> right at something and not recognize it more often than is commonly
> realized.
That's why you have checks and balances in a properly run business. For
a small store, I could almost let it slide. But for national chains not
to have an established procedure for properly dealing with store
management and pricing updates? Beyond the pale.
Michael Stemper
>In article <hc5618$vfe$1...@news.eternal-september.org>, "catpandaddy" <c...@cat.pan.net> wrote:
>> One other thing that sometimes happens, occurs when changing the signs. In
>> a big store, you can think you took down all the old signs and accidentally
>> miss some, especially when the product on the shelf takes up many spots on
>> the shelf.
>
>Seriously, how hard is that? If you print 20 signs at the start of a
>sale, you make sure you collect 20 signs at the end. Anybody earning
>over minimum wage should be able to handle that without breaking a sweat.
My grocery store, Coborn's in Elk River, sometimes has a sale on
roasted peanuts. They'll have two big bins in the produce section,
saying "Peanuts $1.x9 (salted or unsalted)". When asked why the sign
can't say *which*, the produce employee said, "the sale price is for
both, and the signs are generated from the sale information".
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
Always use apostrophe's and "quotation marks" properly.
WDS
> In article <hc5618$vfe$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> "catpandaddy" <c...@cat.pan.net> wrote:
>
>> One other thing that sometimes happens, occurs when changing the signs. In
>> a big store, you can think you took down all the old signs and accidentally
>> miss some, especially when the product on the shelf takes up many spots on
>> the shelf.
>
> Seriously, how hard is that? If you print 20 signs at the start of a
> sale, you make sure you collect 20 signs at the end. Anybody earning
> over minimum wage should be able to handle that without breaking a sweat.
The problem is that in your average store it's probably more like 10,000
signs every week. plus you get customers who move the signs around and
check to see what the original price was by removing the sign and ....
Jules
>> The Daily WTF outlines alot of the way most companies work. :)
>
> Or, as I prefer to call it out, the way most companies *don't* work.
> I'm a tech guy myself, and yet I also offered a solution that dates back
> to Roman times.
Yes, been there myself, too. Most tech companies are focused on just that
- the tech. Doesn't matter if it's totally the wrong tool for the job,
or a more efficient / simpler way exists, or the whole lot's going to
implode a few months down the line - just so long as it *looks* pretty and
the marketing department can put enough glitz on it that the customer /
end-user doesn't notice until it's far too late...
IT companies that genuinely have the client's best interests at heart are
very thin on the ground :-(
Lutsen Lumberjack
>
> Everyone seems to think that corporate computer systems are so
> high-level tied together, when in fact, in my daily experience dealing
> with them at the IT level, there's so much room for things to fall
> down, with people *retyping* in data from one source to another, and
> many manual processes because the corporate IT software sucks so badly..
.. corruption
catpandaddy
"Doc O'Leary" <drolear...@4q2009.subsume.com> wrote in message
news:droleary.usenet-8F...@news.twtelecom.net...
> In article <hc5618$vfe$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> "catpandaddy" <c...@cat.pan.net> wrote:
>
>> One other thing that sometimes happens, occurs when changing the signs.
>> In
>> a big store, you can think you took down all the old signs and
>> accidentally
>> miss some, especially when the product on the shelf takes up many spots
>> on
>> the shelf.
>
> Seriously, how hard is that? If you print 20 signs at the start of a
> sale, you make sure you collect 20 signs at the end. Anybody earning
> over minimum wage should be able to handle that without breaking a sweat.
You just /had/ to bring wage class issues into this, didn't you.
We're not talking about one person putting up a mere 20 signs in a teeny
tiny convenience store. We're talking about needle-in-a-haystack situations
with multiple people over unpredictably rotating shifts and an indeterminate
number of hundreds upon hundreds of different combinations of signs from
week to week, often with duplicate facings adding another level of
randomness to the situation, not to mention three-day and one-day "extra"
sales, and it's only one small part of a job in which you have to keep
everything in the air at once. By the end of the day your eyes are blurring
over, unless you are gifted with an eidetic memory, and that is both a rare
trait, and the kind of trait that will have you working in better places
than retail.
Here's what I would have agreed with: "Anyone with an eidetic memory can
handle this without looking twice." Now how many people with eidetic
memories are going to work at a cashiers job, for cashiers WAGES, as you
like to point out?
I'll tell you what, you work on making that happen, and I'll get to work on
making cold fusion work by next year, make two forms of perpetual motion
actually work, demolish all communication barriers, bring about world peace
and invent a form of music everybody will like and nobody will hate. Then
we can meet back here at twenty minutes past "impossible"-o'clock.
Sorry to be snarky, retail consumed five years of my life that I'm never
going to get back. By the end of that all, I got pretty good at it, but the
task is much more complicated than you think unless you've actually done it
while keeping an eye on the front register for customers, greeting each
customer as they walk in the door, doing the product rotations, keeping an
eye out for shoplifters, running to the back to restock the shelves when it
seems like the store is empty enough to leave the register unattended...
..."but really, if you earn more than minimum wage, how difficult can all
that be?"
You're smarter than this.
catpandaddy
"Doc O'Leary" <drolear...@4q2009.subsume.com> wrote in message
news:droleary.usenet-8F...@news.twtelecom.net...
>
>> right at something and not recognize it more often than is commonly
>> realized.
>
> That's why you have checks and balances in a properly run business. For
> a small store, I could almost let it slide.
I apologize for missing this part. Guess it's my mid-size retail war
flashbacks. I'm gonna talk to my VA man, maybe he can find me a specialist
to help get rid of all these shakes and shellshocks.
It could be much worse though, my ex-girlfriend did fast-food work way back
in her college years, and she would regularly wake up in a cold sweat
screaming for someone to change the fryer oil.
"I love the smell of Napalm in the morning."
"That isn't Napalm, you left the onion rings in too long again."
I 100% agree with you, the checks and balances just aren't in place the way
they should be for large stores, and it's endemic of the same situation that
leads them to build 20 checkout lanes and never staff more than half of them
on the busiest of days. And I'm sorry again for blowing my stack in my
previous reply.
catpandaddy
"WDS" <Bi...@seurer.net> wrote in message
news:hc7ja2$gi4$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
I forgot about that! Also, signs that fall or get knocked into crevices
between shelves where they stay hidden until some day when the entire
structure is disassembled. The counting game is fraught with these and many
other variables that cannot be controlled for.
Gandalf
wrote:
>
>"Doc O'Leary" <drolear...@4q2009.subsume.com> wrote in message
>news:droleary.usenet-8F...@news.twtelecom.net...
>> In article <hc5618$vfe$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
>> "catpandaddy" <c...@cat.pan.net> wrote:
>>
>>> One other thing that sometimes happens, occurs when changing the signs.
>>> In
>>> a big store, you can think you took down all the old signs and
>>> accidentally
>>> miss some, especially when the product on the shelf takes up many spots
>>> on
>>> the shelf.
Read the original post: I'm talking about the price the SCANNER brings
up; the price they try (repeatedly) to OVERCHARGE me.
It has nothing to do with the sign(s) by the items I purchase. Those are
usually amazingly accurate.
But that doesn't count for SQUAT, if it says 48� at the shelf, but when
I BUY it, the price comes out different, and they try to overcharge me:
69�
Doc O'Leary
"catpandaddy" <c...@cat.pan.net> wrote:
> "Doc O'Leary" <drolear...@4q2009.subsume.com> wrote in message
> news:droleary.usenet-8F...@news.twtelecom.net...
> > In article <hc5618$vfe$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> > "catpandaddy" <c...@cat.pan.net> wrote:
> >
> >> One other thing that sometimes happens, occurs when changing the signs.
> >> In
> >> a big store, you can think you took down all the old signs and
> >> accidentally
> >> miss some, especially when the product on the shelf takes up many spots
> >> on
> >> the shelf.
> >
> > Seriously, how hard is that? If you print 20 signs at the start of a
> > sale, you make sure you collect 20 signs at the end. Anybody earning
> > over minimum wage should be able to handle that without breaking a sweat.
>
> You just /had/ to bring wage class issues into this, didn't you.
I didn't make an issue of it, as it appears you want to do. The only
"class" factor involves a store manager who shouldn't be earning more
than minimum wage if they can't do their damn job. If you thought I was
insulting the people who put out the signs themselves, you got it
exactly backwards.
Doc O'Leary
WDS <Bi...@seurer.net> wrote:
That simply doesn't hold water. Does the store have established
policies for managing the much larger inventory of *products* they put
on the shelves? Well then, damn it, try applying that model in managing
other things.
catpandaddy
And I apologized for it, I blew my stack and was way out of line. Apologies
again, my bad.
Doc O'Leary
"catpandaddy" <c...@cat.pan.net> wrote:
> "Doc O'Leary" <drolear...@4q2009.subsume.com> wrote in message
> news:droleary.usenet-44...@news.twtelecom.net...
> >
> > I didn't make an issue of it, as it appears you want to do. The only
> > "class" factor involves a store manager who shouldn't be earning more
> > than minimum wage if they can't do their damn job. If you thought I was
> > insulting the people who put out the signs themselves, you got it
> > exactly backwards.
>
> And I apologized for it, I blew my stack and was way out of line. Apologies
> again, my bad.
No need to get worked up; it's only Usenet. Plus, I'm used to people
deciding to hate me for the wrong reasons. It's my superpower! :-)