$0.44 which is purported to be the price for the apples was charged at $3. At what point should a business be held responsible for an error, innocent or not, and adhering to their stated policy of honest and accurate pricing?
If that difference is $2.56, at what income level do you think that $2.56 becomes irrelevant and not worthwhile to have corrected? $35K p.a.? $50K p.a. $75K p.a.? Would that error be OK weekly? Monthly?
The same shop policy would come into play whether the checkout person was told or the service counter was approached afterwardsā¦
Why should a customer have to police a business in the expectation that they have done pricing correctly, their staff are trained to correctly input (and recognise) apples or limes, and a shop policy is honoured when a failure happens? And then having a bit of push back?
Actually I think you might find that if you correct it at the checkout - there is no reward for letting them know.
Exactly - why should customers have to spend time making sure they are charged correctly?
For goodness sake a lime and an apple do not exactly look the same. It was careless, āI do not careā, āI am just here to be paidā, āI was half asleep when I was being trainedā.
simple solutionā¦DONT SHOP AT COLES : -)ā¦go to the greengrocer for fruit and vegetables the baker for bread, the butcher for meat and to small family run businesses etcā¦oh unfortunately many of them have gone out of businessā¦because customers preferred the cheaper more convenient supermarketsā¦same with milkā¦the supermarkets sell it for 88c/lā¦because people buy it.its the market at workā¦supermarkets remain dominant because mist people want them!!
obviously if the mistake is a frequent occurrence that woild require retraining and correctionā¦maybe just sack the operator who makes an errorā¦rather rhan looking to see if there is a systematic error that can be fixedā¦maybe barcode every piece of friut??
PLU barcodes are about to appear on every. single. piece. of loose produce in Coles some time this year. A step backwards, but fixes the problem of the odd checkout operator not understanding the differences in apple varieties.
Here you are talking about receiving a benefit because of an error that seemingly is in your favour (and where you could be subject to criminal proceedings if you used any of that money). But if we turn it to what happened to the customer, they were overcharged. Letās reflect on this as a bank example but instead of a credit they apply a debit to your account. So at what point would you argue for the money back? I check and argue about even $0.50 but as an example if it was 0.5%% of your total account balance it isnāt worth worrying about, just let the bank have it? If your employer underpaid you by 0.5% you wouldnāt seek reimbursement? Perhaps in both these cases you might even expect some further compensation or some reasonable apology.
That they have to waste their time correcting a businessās error/s is an issue. You pay a given price for an item or service expecting that to be an accurate transaction, then find that the price has been an overcharge. Would you not be annoyed, upset, perhaps angry if the person expected to assist you to resolve that was [quote=āJoe1, post:1, topic:15103ā]
most dismissive ā¦[The customer] was pretty much treated as being an interruption
[/quote]
I beg to differ, with evidence. A Coles checker entered my royal galas as pink ladies despite the stickers on each and every one of them. I did not notice at the checkout but I keep track of my spend with a calculator and if it is off by more than $0.50 or so I look to see why. The manager refunded the apples in full. Usually it is the weight of lose fruits and veg, but sometimes a scan-price error or they did not enter sale prices properly. Once got a $20 item free because of the latter.
Humans are clever in how many ways they can make mistakes.
I have found one of the best ways to bring attention to bad (and good) practice of any organisation is to go to their Facebook page and post the complaint/recommendation there.
based on this thread individual bar coding should be welcomed to prevent this happening again!!
.individual grapes as well?? and maybe constant monitoring with CCTV and prosecution of the customer who pops a grape into their mouth or who eats a few while walking the aislesā¦coz thatās ummmā¦theft isnt it? it all seems a bit one sided.
ohā¦and the customer was not overchargedā¦the $3 was reversed was it not? and it was suggested that getting the apples for free may not have been required based one some interpretations of the policyā¦
Maybe they should just scrap the policy and replace it with something along the lines of āuntil we fully automate and make all our checkout operators redundant we acknowlwdge that they/we are human and although we try really hardā¦we sometimes make mistakes and if you tell us we will correct it. we are a bit lax on security and acknowlwdge that some customers take advantage of our trusting nature and sneak a taste of the produce or inadvertently miss scan items at the self service checkout and sometimes they even forget to scan items at allā¦but thats alrightā¦while we expect perfection from our poorly paid checkout operators but accept that our customers should not be held to this standardā
re credit vs debit to bank account of course you would alert the bank for any anomaliesā¦debit OR creditā¦even though based on internet chatter, some appear to regard an anomalous credit as a windfall!
Again talk with your feet and go somewhere else to shopā¦I like Aldiā¦cheap cheerful good quality and 100% honest!
You make a good point! Maybe they need to remove the pick list function all together to eliminate this human error.
I forgot to emphasise that these new PLU barcode stickers will have barcodes on them. SO if your checkout operator is scrolling through a list of produce, they will be going the slow route (once this scheme is implemented some time this year). We are supposed to simply scan the barcode and move along, just like nay other product. No need for searching anymore.
