Publix Sued for Overcharging Customers – Pricing Error or Deception?
In the latest edition of Omni Talk’s Retail Fast Five, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Simbe, and Ocampo Capital Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss:
🛒 Publix is facing a class-action lawsuit over allegations of overcharging customers on weighted food items. Did a simple pricing error cause this, or is there a bigger problem with grocery store transparency? In this week's episode, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Simbe, Mirakl, and Ocampo Capital, we break down what happened, why electronic shelf labels might help prevent these issues, and how customers can protect themselves.
For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/rTReEPz6yR8
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Transcript
Talking about another battle between Florida shoppers at Publix and Publix.
Speaker A:Publix is being sued for allegedly overcharging Chris for weighted items, According to Grocery Diet.
Speaker A:Publix is facing a class action lawsuit alleging the grocer overcharged consumers for certain on sale foods sold by weight, such as meats, cheeses and deli items.
Speaker A:The grocer's point of sale system allegedly altered the weights of sale items to way more than they actually did, according to the complaint filed February 19th in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, by one of somebody, definitely a grandfather or grandmother of one of the listeners of this podcast.
Speaker A:It could have been mine.
Speaker A:I definitely can see them going and complaining about the weight and their receipt.
Speaker A:So let's keep going into this.
Speaker A:The complaint notes, for example, that the plaintiff purchased 2.83 pounds of pork tenderloin tenderloins that were $2 off with a sale price of $4.99 per pound.
Speaker A:Publix point of sale system showed that the item weighed 3.96 pounds with the 499 sale price, resulting in the plaintiff being charged $19.78, a 40% overcharge or $5.66 more, $5.66 more than the advertised price.
Speaker A:The lawsuit also alleges that Publix regularly displays signs for expired sales and stores and displays incorrect pricing per unit shelf stickers for baby formula.
Speaker A:Chris, as a former store manager, what's your assessment of the lawsuit Publix faces over its pricing practices?
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:Well, I kind of use this expression already once in this podcast, but I'm going to go back to the.
Speaker B:Well, and there's a lot of meat on this bone.
Speaker B:Figurative and literally.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:You know, first, first we have to.
Speaker B:First you have to ask a question like is publics being deliberately misleading here or is it a function of their process?
Speaker B:Yeah, my, my hope is that it's definitely the latter.
Speaker B:Because if it's not, if it's the former, like, whoa, look out, we've got a big story here.
Speaker B:But, but I think you have to assume there's a gap in the process.
Speaker B:There's some gap in the process of tagging me and other fresh goods on markdown.
Speaker B:My hunch is whoever was tagging it, like just reprinted the sticker from the previous one he tagged.
Speaker B:He or she tagged and slapped it on.
Speaker B:On this, this pork tenderloin.
Speaker B:This aforementioned pork tenderloin, which is a fun phrase to say.
Speaker B:Um, you know, so these processes are oftentimes in the fresh meat Fresh meats and produce areas are oftentimes manual, so.
Speaker B:So I can see why there's errors.
Speaker B:But a customer should never be charged 40% more than they expect.
Speaker B:That's not something you want as a retailer.
Speaker B:So the other part about the expired signs, I mean, I've been railing against that for years.
Speaker B:I mean, it's happening.
Speaker B:It happens to every retailer out there.
Speaker B:Yeah, we talked about it on our podcast with Revionics to some degree.
Speaker B:And it's one of the reasons I like electronic shelf labels, because in theory, they should always update to the most current price so you never have an old, outdated promo sign on a product that they're not getting credit for at the register.
Speaker B:But with that said, electronic shelf labels don't solve the problem that's discussed here with fresh Meat.
Speaker B:That's likely still a process problem, pure and simple.
Speaker B:And so, you know, Publix has to dig in and understand where's the gaps and how do you improve it.
Speaker A:And there are solutions out there that can help with this.
Speaker A:I think it's just figuring out what are the right ones that can help you eliminate these problem areas of the process that can ensure price transparency for the consumers and for the retailer, and then maybe even free up the process part of what people are having to accomplish in one day so that these types of things aren't happening.
Speaker B:You know, it just shows you that why there's so much energy around fresh food.
Speaker B:Because if you can combine, like we said, like Bennett, we talked about Bennett, combine the processes, the technology and the people to figure this out.
Speaker B:There's a lot of money to be found here and better customer service and better customer experience at the end of the day as well, right?
