In our last installment, I saved $72 by reading my auto service bill. Here’s the story, and as cautionary tales go, I think it’s a timeless one.

In today’s episode, I catch the supermarket overcharging me — twice — and go and get $37 back on just two items.

I do the grocery shopping once a week. I don’t mind doing it, and I get the added benefit of making sure that high fructose corn syrup doesn’t come into the house, at least not on my watch. On Sunday, I asked the supermarket butcher for the large flounder in his display case ($3.39 a pound), and a roast ($3.99 a pound). This particular butcher was a young guy I didn’t recognize. He got those two items together, along with the rest of my order, and soon the kids and I, having completed our shopping, checked out. Whereupon I learned that the total came to $186.44. This was a surprise. Every week, the groceries run me $150, give or take a couple of bucks. I’ve pretty much got it down to a science. Sometimes, as when we’re going out of town, it’s far less. But 20% more? I couldn’t figure out how.

Later, when I had already begun cooking dinner, I figured out how. Here’s what I discovered after comparing my groceries against the receipt:

• While, yes, there was flounder wrapped inside the one paper, just as I requested, it was labeled as Wild-Caught Coho Salmon. Price: $10.99 a pound — more than three times what it should have been.
•  Also, the roast was indeed a roast, but it was labeled as “Beef Loin New York Steak Bone In” at $9.99 a pound — more than twice what it should have been.

So I called the store. The phone rang and rang and rang and rang and rang and rang and rang and rang. And rang. And rang. I refused to hang up. I left it ringing away merrily on speaker phone for about 15 minutes while I prepared dinner. Finally someone picked up, and I got a manager on the phone. I explained the problem — at that point, I knew only about the overcharged flounder/salmon — and said that my kids and I would really like to eat now, rather than drive back to his supermarket. He said no problem, just to mention his name and say he’d cleared it, and anyone could help me whenever it was convenient for me. After I got off the phone, I then discovered the mislabeled roast/steak, and decided to take photos as evidence. Here they are.

This is the wrapped meat:

And this is what was inside. See a bone in there? Does it look like steak? No.

So I’m just back now from taking my receipt, and this photographic evidence, to Albertson’s and a brief meeting with Patrick. Total refund: $37 and change. Which brought my original bill down to — you guessed it — almost $150 exactly.

Remember kids, always check your receipt. There wasn’t any duplicity involved. This was a simple human error. But it’s still humans who are generating many of your receipts.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 14th, 2010 at 9:04 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.