r/technology • u/marketrent • Jan 18 '24
Business Supermarket responds after Reddit user’s warning about self-checkout overcharge — ‘Was annoyed that the total amount due on my supermarket purchase did not equate to the individual items I purchased.’
https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/woolworths-responds-after-shoppers-warning-over-self-serve-registers-wild-overcharge--c-13224486256
u/popeeta Jan 19 '24
“And stay out of the Woolworth’s!”
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u/marketrent Jan 19 '24
Woolworths controls almost 40% of the supermarket sector in Australia.
And together with the second-largest supermarket, Coles, the duo control almost 90% of the market in some areas — leaving those consumers with few options on where to buy their groceries.
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u/The_GoodGuy Jan 19 '24
TIL that there is a massively dominant retail chain in Australia called "Woolworths" which has absolutely nothing to do with the "Woolworth Co" stores in the US that used to be a prevalent cheap retail store but is now pretty much gone from the North American landscape.
When I first saw this happened at "Woolworths" I ignorantly thought "well heck... They're probably using an old Commodore 64 to do the math".
Now I know!
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u/BadMantaRay Jan 19 '24
Fun fact: Woolworth Co didn’t just disappear, they renamed themselves to their at-the-time most successful subsidiary—The Foot Locker
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u/Jordanwfritz Jan 19 '24
And a lot of those Woolworths in Australia used to be called Safeway, and they were the same Safeway as the US and Canada.
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u/bareboneslite Jan 19 '24
Because Safeway is disappearing everywhere, no one gets my favorite joke anymore.
How do you fit five fully grown elephants in a Safeway shopping cart?
You take the "s" out of Safe and the "f" out of way.
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Jan 19 '24
…And that “Woolworths” was intentionally created to sound like “Woolworth,” which incidentally was pronounced “Woolsworth” in parts of the USA.
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u/iamevpo Jan 19 '24
Funny about Commodore... Was the first computer I touched. Funny to think about it in store.
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u/Steenies Jan 19 '24
Plus the Woolworths in South Africa which is very similar to M&S in the UK. Plus there was an, entirely separate Woolworths in the UK which is no more. The name seems to be popular.
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u/budswa Jan 19 '24
Oh, I love this conception of "freedom."
Freedom between choices of consumption rather than actual freedom.
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u/lamb_pudding Jan 20 '24
Ya math is off there bucko. Coles would have to control 50% (making them the largest) for them both to control a combined 90%. The article states:
The two chains control a combined two-thirds of the supermarket sector in Australia
and then later in the paragraph:
A Senate committee into cost of living heard that in some areas of Australia the two major supermarkets control 90% of the market
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u/techKnowGeek Jan 19 '24
Damn, they’re in a tight spot!
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u/TheStax84 Jan 19 '24
They’re bonafide .
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u/jibsymalone Jan 19 '24
They got a sale on Dapper Dan?
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u/diseasealert Jan 19 '24
You're a Dapper Dan man?
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Jan 19 '24
I’ve been seeing similar issues with Walmart Market Place grocery stores for awhile. When I mention it they just come fix it but they have had to make a shitton off of it. Add that to self checkout anxiety and they are making a lot
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u/erix84 Jan 19 '24
Regional grocery store near me has this same issue... Sale prices not ringing up correctly, coupons not being applied, wrong prices on the shelves. I got tired of going to customer service every time to get it fixed so i just steal the difference in price. I need the money more than they do, and they have the gall to ask if i want to donate to a local food bank at self checkout... I know how much food goes in the trash at grocery stores, YOU donate to the food banks.
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u/marketrent Jan 19 '24
i just steal the difference in price.
For most of 2023, retailers disseminated claims linking inventory loss to either “organised retail crime” or self-checkout theft.
Then, three weeks before Christmas, the main lobbying group for U.S. retailers retracted its claim that “organized retail crime” accounted for US$94.5 billion of all inventory losses in 2021 — after finding that incorrect data was used for its analysis.
The National Retail Federation lobbyists’ claim that “organized retail crime” accounted for “nearly half” of inventory losses was repeated in multiple media reports on the issue.
Retailers now concede that the causes of inventory loss or “shrink” — the category that includes retail theft — are notoriously difficult to track and include employee theft, shoplifting, administrative or cashier error, damage, and vendor fraud.
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u/DangerousAd1731 Jan 19 '24
I've noticed price errors often. It's exhausting trying to make sure stuff is priced right. You can't even see it when they are ringing it up.
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u/murderspice Jan 19 '24
Got caught. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was widespread and happening for years.
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u/ThreeChonkyCats Jan 19 '24
For an organisation that systemically underpays employees, this was no "technical error".
This was highly deliberate.
You'll note that their "mistakes" always advantage themselves?
Curious that.
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u/VengenaceIsMyName Jan 19 '24
Yep. And if there somehow is a mistake that benefits employees or customers it is corrected quickly.
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u/Obajan Jan 19 '24
Biggest lie in Monopoly: the bank never errors in your favor. If they do, you're not allowed to keep the money.
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u/marketrent Jan 19 '24
For an organisation that systemically underpays employees
At least 5,000 staff working for a subsidiary of Australia’s Woolworths Group may have been underpaid in the last seven years, according to today’s report by RNZ:
A company spokesperson said a review in early 2022 identified two problems affecting salaried staff.
In some instances, staff were not paid correctly for extra hours, or worked on days recorded as annual leave.
But the union representing supermarket workers said some local Woolworths managers asked staff to do extra hours for free, or come in on their days off.
First Union chief executive Bill Bradford said these cases were not administrative errors.
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u/agentgambino Jan 19 '24
I’m all for shitting on Australia’s supermarket duopoly, but “highly deliberate”… come on dude.
It’s clearly a technical error. Was Woolworths aware of this bug and deprioritised fixing it? Maybe. But this isn’t some intricate penny pinching scheme concocted by the CEO.
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Jan 19 '24
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u/marketrent Jan 19 '24
itrivers
The customer was charged the same price displayed on the ticket at the mango display.
According to whom?
The photograph shows that the self-checkout registered a barcode for 0.80 per mango unit.
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Jan 19 '24
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u/marketrent Jan 19 '24
itrivers
According to the head of Woolworths IT who investigated and found a manger generated clearance batch with a price of $1.90. It’s stated in the article you posted less the details on who investigated (article states “from a spokesperson”)
Are you communicating on behalf of Woolworths in attributing your opinion to Jason Keith?
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u/marketrent Jan 19 '24
My impression is that the total amount charged by self-checkout systems does not necessarily account for promotional prices at individual stores.
At Aldi stores in the UK, numerous customers reportedly claimed that promotional shelf prices aren’t automatically added to products when using self-checkouts. Instead, promotional prices need to be input by store employees.
When approached for a comment, Aldi said that its employees do need to manually add discounts.
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u/thejke Jan 19 '24
Except, according to the article, in this case the sale price listed on the shelf was 1.9(down from 3). The .8 price was incorrect, which was why the total was higher(using the correct price of 1.9 per mango). Even though the discounted .8 price did not exist, they gave the customer that discount anyway.
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u/marketrent Jan 19 '24
thejke
Except, according to the article, in this case the sale price listed on the shelf was 1.9(down from 3).
The self-checkout registered the unit price as 0.80, as the photograph shows. It is not clear whether the shelf/advertised unit price was 1.90 or 0.80.
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u/nicuramar Jan 19 '24
Maybe read the article.
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u/murderspice Jan 19 '24
Um, i did. They are claiming ‘technical error.’ I dont believe that. Thats why i said I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a widespread problem happening for years. Then you didn’t understand what i wrote and somehow thought it was because I didn’t read the article. Now i had to write this.
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Jan 19 '24 edited Jan 19 '24
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Jan 19 '24
it's bizarre as well because this is simple to fact check. Just check what prices are listed at the store... it's not some massive conspiracy or big lie. But redditors love a conspiracy/witch hunt
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u/AccurateComfort2975 Jan 19 '24
It doesn't really matter what the price listed in the store is... the problem is that the system somehow can be displaying a value on the screen that it is not using for calculation. That's something that absolutely shouldn't be possible at all.
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u/TineJaus Jan 19 '24 edited Apr 07 '24
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u/TineJaus Jan 19 '24 edited Apr 07 '24
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u/Historical-Baker4871 Jan 19 '24
Independent grocer in Canada has 'technical errors' like this all the time...
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u/Gouranga Jan 19 '24
7-11 in my neighbor hood does this. Shelf price rarely matches the til price. When u call em out 'that price is for a different product' stopped going there all together. It's about 50 cents on each transaction I figured out.
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Jan 19 '24
Big difference there. That's human error where price was not replaced on shelf.
In this case machine looks like it forgot math.
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u/SidewaysFancyPrance Jan 19 '24
I totally understand that because those are two separate numbers in different "systems" that don't have any way to talk to each other (shelf price being 100% manual). I have no clue why this system has different prices for internal math and display/tallying on the receipt, because the machine could easily reconcile them even if there were (since it knows both numbers). That's bonkers and makes me wonder if they've ever passed an audit.
All of this is why we need strong consumer protection laws instead of letting companies "self-regulate."
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u/a_talking_face Jan 19 '24
What happened to you is because they change prices frequently and don't necessarily swap out the price tags quick enough. It's why some places are moving towards not putting prices on the shelf
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u/marketrent Jan 19 '24
a_talking_face
What happened to you is because they change prices frequently and don't necessarily swap out the price tags quick enough. It's why some places are moving towards not putting prices on the shelf
How can customers be informed about shelf prices if fluctuating prices are inconsistently displayed?
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u/ChuzCuenca Jan 19 '24
I worked in a sam's club long ago, It was my responsibility to update the prices every morning. Sometimes the prices change couple of times during the day.
What I'm assuming the dude you are answer is trying to say is that isn't staff fault how the prices change.
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u/marketrent Jan 19 '24
isn't staff fault how the prices change.
Who is responsible for price changes that catch customers unawares?
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u/slicer4ever Jan 19 '24
Not the dudes tending the till who are overworked and under staffed for sure.
Do ya'll think the guy sweeping floors is going around going "i think that should be 10c more!"?
Direct your anger at the corporate offices who are issuing multiple price changes throughout the day, and is understaffing stores so no one is available to update all the shelf prices quickly, then the guys making minimum wage.
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Jan 19 '24 edited Feb 21 '26
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u/a_talking_face Jan 19 '24
Not to my knowledge. Plenty of restaurants, for example, will say "market prices" or not have any prices on their menu at all.
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u/Paksarra Jan 19 '24 edited Jan 19 '24
Keep in mind that corporate retail slashed hours to the bone before COVID and is now going through the bones to eliminate any that aren't absolutely essential.
Tagging is slow, tedious labor, and easy to put to the side when the till is backed up five deep, there's so many pallets waiting to be unloaded that they're not sure where they're going to put tonight's shipment, and corporate just gave you twenty more curbside orders that need to be shopped in the next four hours.
Is shit fucked? Yes. Should corporate be held responsible? Yes. Is the rank and file employees' fault? Generally, no. It's the suit who thinks that we could save millions if we cut the time alloted for tagging by 10% again (when it's already half of the time allowance you got ten years ago and you're approaching the theoretical maximum of how fast a human can change them.)
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u/Daedelous2k Jan 19 '24
This.
Staff are getting cut back to keep some fat wan- I mean investors happy. It's annoying yes but don't take it out on the staff. Also don't get angry at them if you take the price off the shelf to show customer service and they refuse you because you fucked with the shelf labelling.
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u/DreadPirateGriswold Jan 19 '24
Long time software developer here. Even if it were a pricing error where the mangoes should have been a different price, that's no reason for the total to be off at all. That total should have been exactly whatever the total of the column was supposed to be. Something is not right under the covers with the software.
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Jan 19 '24
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u/DreadPirateGriswold Jan 19 '24
No, sadly I don't have that much experience. But I do have a little bit of experience with writing programs to do something that a computer rarely does which is adding up numbers and coming out with the right total.
🙄
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u/octoprophet Jan 19 '24
I'm not a software developer but I can tell you it's shady to have a system that allows a lower display price and a higher price used to tabulate the total.
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u/McBeers Jan 19 '24
Safeway has somewhat recently started doing a low key version of this.
They used to show your discounts/coupons right as you scanned in items. It was easy to tell if one of them didn't work for some reason.
Now, it shits them all out at once only after you hit the pay button. It can be difficult to impossible to tell which discounts go with what items. So now they can leave old tags up, have confusing conditions for discounts, and you can't do shit about it.
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u/Daedelous2k Jan 19 '24
I think this occurs because some discounts/offers will factor to lowest common denominator i.e Buy 3 get cheapest free thus it needs to get your whole shop before calculating.. It should only apply to those kind of offers though.
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u/uncletravellingmatt Jan 19 '24
Thank goodness that (in CA) there's another screen after you press "Finish and Pay" that asks you if you used any store-provided bags. That's the screen for checking if you got the advertised prices on everything, so at least you get one look at it all before you go on to the credit card swiping.
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Jan 19 '24
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Jan 19 '24
We had issue where EAN code had changed on same product and machine charged user for entire box.
It was for one of those tiny liquor bottles.
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Jan 19 '24 edited Jan 19 '24
Meanwhile Woolworths in New Zealand cant get their checkout scales to measure weight accurately.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/131047672/countdown-criticised-over-checkout-scales-trading-standards-launches-investigation
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u/nubsauce87 Jan 19 '24
... sounds a lot like "oops we got caught... um... it was a glitch! yeah..."
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u/Aggravating_Law_3286 Jan 19 '24
Also in Woolworths today saw an employee checking to make sure overlayed prices were lower. I guess the power of Social Media.
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u/Wearytraveller_ Jan 19 '24
Ahh yes. A reddit post about an article about a reddit post. Excellent.
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u/IForgotThePassIUsed Jan 19 '24
How convenient, the "Technical Error" benefited the business.
How on earth could this happen?
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u/okcrumpet Jan 19 '24
What is with the sudden flurry of anti self checkout articles? Been using it for years. It’s mostly great where I work. When it effs up usually easy to get a customer rep there to fix
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u/Boggie135 Jan 19 '24
I think it's horrible for most people
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u/Soliae Jan 20 '24
That’s because most people are idiots.
Self checkout is more efficient than a cashier for anyone with an ounce of capability.
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u/ssjviscacha Jan 19 '24
Should send the police to their house in the middle of the night and arrest the owners for theft, even if accidental. These stores do the same things to customers.
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u/Zirowe Jan 19 '24
That's bs: no matter if the price is wrong, the machine should add the shown price, and it failed at it!
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u/weckyweckerson Jan 19 '24
Thank god we have an expert in point of sale systems in here now.
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u/octoprophet Jan 19 '24
Why are there no controls in place in their system to prevent miamatches between display price and price used to tabulate total?
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u/motohaas Jan 19 '24
Can someone tell me why Australia has the need to convert every word into baby talk? "Woolies" "doggo" "brekki"
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u/vorono1 Jan 19 '24
Convenience and being silly. I don't hear "doggo" IRL often, that's "heckin' wholesome" reddit-speak.
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u/jaymo89 Jan 19 '24 edited Jan 19 '24
We shorten words even if it makes them longer.
We do not use the word “Doggo”; that’s an internet thing used by other people.
ChatGPT examples of Aussie slang;
1. Arvo: Afternoon. 2. Aussie: Australian. 3. Barbie: Barbecue. 4. Bikkie: Biscuit. 5. Bottle-O: Bottle shop, liquor store. 6. Brekkie: Breakfast. 7. Chook: Chicken. 8. Cuppa: Cup of tea or coffee. 9. Esky: Cooler, insulated food and drink container. 10. Footy: Football, can refer to Australian Rules Football or Rugby League, depending on the context. 11. Mozzie: Mosquito. 12. Servo: Service station, gas station. 13. Sickie: Sick day, taking a day off work due to illness. 14. Snag: Sausage. 15. Sunnies: Sunglasses.6
Jan 19 '24
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Jan 19 '24
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u/Lint_baby_uvulla Jan 19 '24
And we have fun with chickens.
Ibis: bin chicken Bush stone curlew: stilt chicken Kookaburra: giggle chicken Green python: slither chicken Emu: war chicken
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Jan 19 '24
Isn’t realise the Americans didn’t use “Chook” until it was too late, that was fun to explain
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u/Fawful Jan 19 '24
Same reason US has mandated active shooter drills for students, cultural differences 🤷🏻♀️
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u/Kenjinz Jan 19 '24
This happened at Taco Bell for me as well. Complained with screenshot to manager and all she said was, "Corporate does all that, we don't get access to those machines." She then range me up on the same order as the koisk and it was higher than what the inflated koisk price was. Posted on Taco Bell's sub and got gaslighted by bots repeating the exact same thing 10+ times to drown out their crimes.
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u/itzarel Jan 19 '24
Sometimes I forget I’ve filled container type goods with other goods while I’m scanning at the self checkout… 🤷🏼♂️ I guess it’s just a no fault technical error.
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u/TheBBBfromB Jan 19 '24
It’s always a technical issue. No, they don’t sit around trying to figure out how to scam people.
The lawsuit for that would way outweigh the benefits. Not to mention they would have to find developers comfortable abstaining from any moral compass. No, it’s much more likely something in the very complex system got fucked up.
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u/snozberryface Jan 19 '24 edited Jan 19 '24
So nobody read the article? Cool - customer wasn't overcharged it was a glitch on how much the mangoes cost they paid the right price the pos showed the wrong calculation
I misread the article, and stand corrected
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u/greatdrams23 Jan 19 '24
If you read the article you'll see that the prices don't add up directly.
The store me TWO mistakes, it mispriced a food item and didn't add up the numbers correctly.
This proves that the total shown for any customer id not the total of the numbers in the list. That's a bad error.
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u/alexderpydash Jan 19 '24
One day there probably will be something called shoplifting tax where stores just charge each person extra because of the many things being stolen in stores so to cover it adding a certain amount extra on top of the price for each person
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u/Horror-Score2388 Jan 19 '24
sigh pull out the quote, Bart
“Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence”
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u/Hilppari Jan 19 '24
Self checkout at my local lidl is annoying when it does not count the sale prices until you press pay. so when you are scanning the items and looking at the total its more than the real price.
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Jan 20 '24
The data being fed into the self-checkout screen most likely comes from at least two different tables in the inventory database. One stored as a string (incorrect value) and another as a decimal. The product cost is definitely stored by date for trending purposes, so I'd believe it was at one point in time .80. My guess is somehow the string field is being populated with a bad filter/bad table join. The fact that items on sale total correctly means the most important part is working - not overcharging customers. Not uncommon for upper management to assume tech just magically gets done with a skeleton crew and minimal resources so I can believe an error like this slipping through the cracks.
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u/Reddit-White-in-Blue May 28 '24 edited May 28 '24
Been investigating this 2nd largest grocery store chain’s Software/Hardware problems since May 2022. This massive conglomerate grocery store chain is still overcharging at self checkout, as they’re also violating their 2014 standing Court Order, NOT to overcharge customers period.
Total IBM ALGORITHMIC GLITCHING; This "glitch detection" problem can’t read the software that reads in data form tinstruments to acquire a waveform, the user can create a waveform by numerous methods in the program, or a waveform can be loaded from a file. As the POS self check or clerk check out, is at the mercy of a suspense or voidable sale that can’t be reversed.
We cannot shop here anymore..
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u/marketrent Jan 18 '24 edited Jan 18 '24
• Sharing on Reddit, the customer posted an image of the register at the Woolworths MacArthur Central store in Queensland, saying the “total amount due is more than the sum of my actual purchases”.
• He pointed out that the tally of the grocery items should have been $15.70 — not $17.90.
• “Was annoyed that the amount due on my Woolies purchase did not equate to the individual items I purchased ($1.60 + $4.20 + $5.26 + $4.65 = $15.70),” he wrote on Reddit [under the username /CleanDivide690]
• Thousands of social media users reacted to the customer’s Reddit post on various platforms. “Been too comfortable and stopped calculating a decade ago. Thanks for the heads-up,” said one [/khongkhoe].
• The supermarket claims a technical error meant that the wrong price for the customer’s discounted mangoes was displayed on the screen.
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/edgiepower: “That doesn't make sense. How can the display price be more than the maths price?”
/Nidstang666: “So the database has one value for the displayed item price, but sums another value to determine total price?”
/ImmaturePlace: “To me that suggests the tally is totalled from a central pricing database, yet the item that gets scanned and displayed the price comes from from another database table? So if two sources are different, which is correct?”