Sale Promotions: How Retailers can rip-off Customers

How many times have you checked your receipt at home after shopping to make sure that you have not paid more than you ought to pay for the shopping?  If you have not been doing this before, you should start checking your shopping receipt for one important reason.   Retailers especially food retailers appear to mislead customers using their so-called sale promotion labels.

I will demonstrate this deception using two similar items that are sold at different prices.  The cheaper item is on promotion but the more expensive item is not.  For the retailer to get customers to buy the more expensive item, the promotion label of the less expensive item would be placed on the shelf containing the more expensive item.  This will lead customers to pick up the expensive item thinking it is the cheaper one.

This deception is rarely identified at the check-out point.  Only a few customers tend to check the item prices at the till to make sure they are correct.  This can arise when there are too many customers in a queue waiting to be served and nobody wants to be seen as a time waster.   Shoppers may also fail to establish the right item prices if they have put too many items in the basket or trolley.

Whenever they are caught red-handed retailers tend to apologize to customers for these dirty tricks.  They can say things such as "we are sorry because this item has been placed on the wrong shelf” or “we will find out the staff responsible for it and make sure this incident does not recur”.  Visit the store next time and you will find the same problem again.

Who can stop retailers from this unfair practice?  Some people might think that the Local Trading Standards which is responsible for ensuring that retailers play fair games in their dealings with consumers can stop this practice. Unfortunately, this body cannot identify the deception even though they were to visit the offending stores daily. You can only discover that the wrong item has been put at the wrong place during check-out.

Therefore, the only person who can stop retailers from these false sale promotions is you.  Yes, you can do it by checking the prices of items you bought during check-out and report any abnormalities straight away.