When you buy three baskets of strawberries at Aldi, just how many can you be accidentally
charged for? One Australian customer found out the hard way, and it turns out she's not alone!
Here's why you should always check your receipt when shopping at the grocery chain.
Aldi shoppers should take "buyer beware" seriously, especially when it comes to
their receipts, because they might be paying more than they're supposed to. One victim of
overcharging brought this message to the Aldi subreddit, saying that they had gone
to Aldi because they saw that certain candies and candles were around 80% off.
"Aldi. The stock up store."
No Aldi aficionado could bear to pass over such savings. but after paying and gathering
themselves in the car, the person saw that the discounts weren't noted on the receipt.
The customer service line was pretty long at the time, and not really worth
waiting on to get their $5 back, so they went home. This Aldi shopper warned :
"If you're on a budget and you buy clearance items, make sure you get the advertised price."
A self-professed store associate responded, saying that their store had a computer issue earlier
that day that prevented the discount from being processed. Other self-identified employees chimed
in with similar cases. Either way, the associate said it's best to check your receipt anyway. So,
there's nothing nefarious here, but buyers should beware of paying more for Aldi's wares.
Mistakes happen. And when they happen at Aldi, it can cost people money. In January 2021,
Australia's 7 News covered a similar story, which the site also brought up in June 2020. Namely,
that members of the Aldi Mums Facebook group had noticed they were being double-charged for items.
These aren't always simple cases of being charged
for two containers of milk instead of one. One reasonably shocked member exclaimed:
"I was once charged for 33 [small baskets]
of strawberries instead of three. Didn't notice until I got home!"
That's 11 times the correct price, after all. In response to those cases,
an Aldi spokesperson rolled out the solution in a statement:
"In the unlikely circumstance that a customer is overcharged,
we encourage them to return to their local store to receive a refund."
The spokesperson also noted that when making the return, you just need to bring the original
receipt. Tracing the downward trajectory of Aldi's apparent cash-register mistakes,
we move from charging for certain items twice to charging for whole orders twice.
In August of 2017, the BBC reported that certain Aldi stores in the UK's Midlands
who made purchases on August 4th and 7th were charged a second time on the 24th. Apparently,
this was due to a regional processing error, and a spokesman claimed that everyone had
been reimbursed within 24 hours. However, as The Sun reported, the second charge caused
some customers to suffer more than a mere inconvenience. One response Tweet read:
"Thanks for taking an unauthorized duplicate payment out of my bank
just before the Bank Holiday and payday. Now I'm overdrawn #broke."
In the case of overdraft fees, the Aldi spokesperson said that the customer would
have to sort the issue with the bank themselves. While no eagle-eyed scanning of your receipt can
protect you from Aldi's algorithms charging you a second time weeks after the fact,
it shows how serious the bugs that cause these problems can be.
The previous examples present a situation where the customer should be on guard against slip-ups,
which is a good policy for just about any store anyhow. However, a good business can't thrive
when the public has to hold the company under constant scrutiny. In New York City, for example,
the Department of Consumer Affairs is tasked with ensuring customers are charged the proper price.
Jonathan Mintz, New York City's consumer affairs commissioner, told ABC in 2010
that it shouldn't have to be up to customers to serve as the watchdogs of the checkout.
At the time, more than half of the stores in a 1000-store investigation had failed the
department's inspection. These inspections usually involve selecting random groceries
and seeing what the cashier charges. The more prevalent issue seems to not be double-scanning,
but pricing items by weight. In a 2015 press release, New York City's Department of Consumer
Affairs announced that Whole Foods overcharged for 80 different types of pre-packaged food, 89%
of which deviated in weight by a larger than allowed amount.
The worst offense was the claim that certain types of packages always weighed the same when
such consistency would prove practically impossible, such as with vegetables.
Buyers should definitely beware.
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