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We needed a roll of packing tape, so my first instinct was to order from Amazon. But I didn’t want a three- or six-pack, and I didn’t feel great about the environmental impact of an Amazon truck driving to my house to deliver an overly large cardboard box containing a single roll, even if it was a bargain at less than $4.
Instead, during my afternoon walk, I stopped by the local drugstore to pick up a roll—which was priced at $5.99. Okay, I mused, I’m out $2, but at least I’d have the roll of tape right away and this was one chore I could now tick off my list.
I headed to the self-checkout, scanned the tape’s bar code and tapped my credit card. As the word “approved” appeared on the card reader, I noticed that I’d been incorrectly charged $8.79.
I immediately imagined what lay ahead: finding an employee, showing him or her the store’s displayed price, getting my purchase cancelled and then running the transaction through at the correct price. How long would all that take? Perhaps 10 minutes?
My younger self would have done it. Maybe even my five-year-ago self would have. But today, I value time far more highly than money, and not just because of my cancer diagnosis. Which is why I walked out the store a few dollars poorer, but richer by 10 minutes.
But I wonder: Would others have made the same choice? When I asked my wife, Elaine, she said, “Hell, yeah, I would have got my money back.”
in these older years, it occurred to me that “time is money” has more than one sound interpretation.
for one, for all the diligent saving of “money” in a lifetime, you can afford more “time.”
i really do like not having to be in a hurry!
I’m with Jon. While I do look at my receipts and try to catch things, I find myself valuing my time as well. If it’s easy to correct, sure. If it’s not, oh well, go enjoy life as the hassle has a cost of both time and emotions. Good for you Jon!
I agree with Elaine hell yes, but for another reason besides getting the right price. For many years I was the price coordinator at a grocery chain. My job was to upload price changes in our system and to make sure shelf tags and display signs were changed. Almost always the scanned price is the correct price. The errors come from a shelf tag or display sign not changed. Also if a store ran an in store special and that wasn’t changed back. Personally I always wanted a customer to let me know if a price is off so it can be fixed. It’s a lot better then having multiple customers get home and find out find out the price is wrong, and they are all going to be rightfully irritated. I can only speak for grocery stores, but each week they do a set of price changes and a new weekly ad. These can total into the low thousands. Mistakes happen. No chain wants their customers questioning price integrity.
I can see Johnathan’s point and have done the same thing a few times over the years but it depends on the dollar amount. While attempting a dual head gasket and cylinder head rebuild on my 1996, 308K mile Chevy Lumina Van last summer, I decided the exhaust valves were too pitted from the hot exhaust gasses to be reused and needed to be replaced. The Rockauto supplier (who was supposed to be a supplier to engine rebuilders) I went with only had four of the six needed so I ordered those (paid extra for 2 day shipping) and picked up up the other two valves locally. When the valves arrived, they didn’t look right. When I compared them to the old valves, they were too short, but all the part numbers were correct. The only thing I could figure was the supplier sourced their parts from other suppliers and one of them had put the wrong valves in the correct bags. I wasn’t going to eat the cost of those valves. It gave me great satisfaction to send those valves back to Rockauto (who paid for return shipping), have them investigate the problem, and credit me a refund.
I think it is important as a matter of principle to seek the right price. It is one of the ways that an individual can add some discipline to the operation of the competitive marketplace.
In most cases, I’d get the overcharge fixed, and in most cases, there is someone empowered to do just that for you without a lot of hassle. There are a few cases where I’d say who cares, or just ignore the issue because I like the business (like a struggling small business or a store I use a lot.) But you invite a business to let the problem get larger by not standing up for yourself.
Just about 5 days ago (it is September 21, 2024), Home Depot agreed to pay nearly $2M to Los Angeles County to settle scanner/shelf pricing discrepancies, when the UPC code led to overcharges at checkout, and pricing that was higher than the consumer had been led to expect when comparing products on the shelves. That’s just one company in one county. I assume most of the time, this activity is not intentional, and is just a store administration detail that fell through the cracks. No matter. Every store has a legal duty not to exploit its own failure to increase its profits.
There’s a passage from the NYT best seller, “The Last Lecture” co-authored by the late Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon professor and Jeffrey Zaslow, WSJ writer, similar to Jonathan’s mindset.
Randy’s local supermarket overcharged him $20 – a pretty big discrepancy. He noticed after checking out, but saw a line at customer service. Thought about it for a moment and just walked out.
He was frugal throughout his life and would have certainly stood in that line ordinarily. But his recent terminal diagnosis had altered his perspective on the value of money vs time. The store could keep their $20!
If anyone here hasn’t read The Last Lecture, I strongly recommend it. Wonderful book.
My wife is with Elaine and Im with you-I mostly cannot be bothered and don’t scrutinize my receipts (as my wife diligently does). Here our little recent retail story: Last week I was with my wife shopping (not my favorite activity..) and she ordered a bathing suit from a retail store in a mall because the store did not have precisely what she wanted. My wife looked at the receipt like she also does and noticed that the item was correct but the size was not. The clerk said she was unable to cancel the order for delivery to our home and reverse the credit card charges “because the item was from a 3rd party”. She said we would need to bring the item back to the store for a refund when we received it. The mall is a 30 minute drive from our home and not on our regular driving routes so this costs time and (gas) money and is inconvenient-we were astounded. As the clerk seemed somewhat inexperienced, we visited a manager who unfortunately reiterated the policy. My wife returned the item and got a refund after it arrived. We then got the inevitable customer service survey in our email. And this time, I could be bothered-I complained about the inconvenience and cost of returning of the item on the principle of it . The manager offered a gift card which I accepted.
The easiest way to cheat people is a small amount of money multiplied by a lot of transactions. So I’d challenge any price tag vs register discrepancy of more than about 10%, and above $.25 or so, on principle — assuming I wasn’t otherwise pressed for time. Home Depot got caught doing this recently by the California Attorney General: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna171574
Here’s my story from yesterday with a happy ending 😊. For several months I’ve been paying only $4.05/month for a digital subscription to a daily paper – a promotional rate that I knew would increase. And it did, to $12.15/month. But my latest credit card bill showed me being charged both rates. After a bit of time, I discovered that I was being charged the correct $12.15, but the $4.05 subscription was going to my daughter’s email. When I texted her, she said she had lost access and I should just cancel it. Instead, I suggested she reset her password (using the link I sent her) and, voilà, she’s getting the paper now and I get props for being so generous to continue paying $4.05/month for her. I’ll have to think about it when hers also increases to $12.15. 😂 BTW, I agree that a factor in arguing about being overcharged largely depends on my mood that day and how much time I have, as well, of course, as the amount involved.
If I was not in a rush, I would definitely request the store correct the pricing error. Not so much for my sake, but to alleviate other customers from being overcharged or hassled with getting a refund. In fact the other day I picked out an item in the frozen section at Costco. When checking out the price was a few dollars more than I recalled seeing. So I went back to check the price and then to customer service. The one lady behind the counter was busy with a customer who was taking forever. My wife said let’s go and I said I didn’t want others buying the product getting ripped off. So I asked if they could get another person to the counter since there was now a line behind me. Another person came to help and sent someone with me to check the price. Well, the price I saw was on the shelf containing the stack of items, where the actual price was on the shelf above. My mistake,10 minutes lost. I’ll be more careful next time.
Interesting point here is “If I was not in a rush” What constitutes a rush when you have terminal cancer? Leave the mistakes for someone else that feels they can afford the time, it seems like a noble act to correct mistakes for others.
This week I spent an extra $30 to buy (save) an hour’s time after already having wasted two hours of time. In my youth, I would align with Elaine and have spent even more time for the cheapest solution.
My 40 year-old battery charger caught fire, so I drove out to the nearest auto store (15 mins away) for a replacement. This major auto store no longer stocks any auto parts and converted to a tire service center only. Argghh!!
Drove a further 15 minutes away to a big box hardware store and bought the very last battery charger on the shelf for $80. Returned to the house 30 minutes later, open the box, and the new charger is defective and has no plug. Argghh!!
Drove 10 minutes to the local-yocal hardware store, and they are sold out of battery chargers. Argghh!!
Drove a further 10 minutes to a local boating store, and they have the identical charger to the defective charger I just bought, but it is $110 or $30 more. By now it is peak commuter time, and the added round-trip time to any alternative hardware or auto store would be an hour – if they even had a battery charger. Argghh!!
Two days later, I spent 30 minutes to drive and return the defective charger.
😂. You must be retired to have this much time. Yikes! What a cazarous (family word of unknown origin meaning a big deal about not much).
Linda – Indeed, Jonathan’s post highlights the tradeoffs of time versus cost which is a key challenge for those of us in the cheap Humble Dollar cohort. Our family is saddled with old mechanical systems (cars, houses, boats, lawn equipment) which are joys when working, but they do mandate a regular maintenance focus. Like Jonathan, I now more frequently pay to save time.
Mike is also correct that Amazon would have been cheaper, but I had a timing issue to meet. The defective part led to most of the time and cost wastage.
Unless you needed the charger immediately, thats a great reason to use Amazon. Probably could have found it cheaper with far less hassle. And with all that driving around, even the delivery would seem to make sense environmentally.
There is no honor among thieves or, today, merchants. While I too have had circumstances during which I walked away from getting the right price, in these days of labor shortages, it is all too common that the price on the shelf doesn’t match that in the store’s computer. So, increasingly, for sale items, I take a cell phone photo of the shelf price sticker which shows the price and skew. The checker can’t fight the photo, and I always get the shelf price without more than a few seconds delay. If the price in the computer is correct, it is easy to delete these photos at some later date. Caveat Emptor!
I firmly believe merchants are doing this pricing game on purpose. Sometimes I take a picture of the item and the price shown on the shelf because of past experience, They always have an excuse or blame it on some other employee for not updating the shelf price.
Recently, I was at Walmart getting some items and noticed they sell an organic energy drink I like. Didn’t buy it there as my next stop was Costco where I usually buy it, but did make note of the price. Costco was $4 higher or roughly 12% more. I wasn’t going back to Walmart to save $4. I mentioned it to an employee at checkout and they just laughed.
Sometimes in situations like these, I let the “mistake” (or was it an intentional overcharge–these days you never know, apparently), stand, and it serves as a “flag” in my memory to be more vigilant about price checking stuff in the future. And heck, in this case, you got to write a whole article with comments about your experience. You (and your readers!) definitely got your $2.80’s worth, I’d say.
Over many years, I’ve had several instances where I was undercharged or not charged for an item. In our early days, I caught a $300 undercharge for paving the driveway of our new house. Most regrettably, after paying for what I agreed to, I seem to end up on the short end of the deal where the final result ends up shoddy or incomplete or I am overcharged on other items or didn’t get the promised discount. My feeling on this is that such undercharges, “are not my money”, so I should do the right thing. Amazingly, I’ve never been undercharged at the grocery store so I get my money refunded on the next trip to the store for mistakes.
It’s a judgment call each time. Time is valuable and, as other posters have said, do not like accepting sloppy business practice.
My younger self would have gone through the trouble to save a few dollars. Now the utility of a few dollars is so low I would not go out of my way for it.
For me, it’s not the money, it’s some sort of deep seated desire for orderliness and fair treatment. I will fight something like this—and I’ll also point it out if I think I’ve been mistakenly undercharged. My wife thinks I’m a little crazy in both situations.
Might depend on whether I was running late, but I would consider flagging it a public service. I don’t always check the amount, and I’m sure others don’t either. If it’s not brought to the store’s attention it won’t get fixed.
But I am getting lazier. This is the first year I haven’t bothered to call and cancel a credit card with an annual fee in the expectation of getting it waived, or at least being offered additional frequent flier miles.
When I was just out of college, I once bought a bag of cheese curls that was advertised on sale for $0.99 rather than $1.09. When I checked out, it came up as $1.09. I politely explained that the advertised price was $0.99. The checkout lady dismissed my statement and said, no the correct price is $1.09. I was annoyed by her patronizing attitude but thought hey, it’s only a dime. But as I walked out to the car, I got more steamed as I thought about how I had been treated. I also wanted to make sure I had seen the price correctly. So I went back into the store and found the display with the sign prominently advertising the sale price. I pulled it down and went over to the manager’s area (near the checkout lines) and quite loudly stated that they were overcharging people and should keep the sign down if they weren’t going to honor their discounts. I walked out with my head high, knowing I had taken a stand on principle. Oh, the heady days of youth.
Just last week I spotted a sale, online, at Costco. Seemed like a good price, so I ordered a box of 2 led, 4ft shop lights for $30.
Before they were delivered I saw the same lights, in the store, for only $20.
I did the same as you Jonathan. I’m still kind of pi€~*d off, and won’t repeat the mistake of not checking the in-store flyer.
Time may have been a factor because I was anxious to install them. A younger version of me never would have taken the $10 loss because money was tight back then. Money isn’t tight any longer, so perhaps I’m getting careless.
There’s always a shipping charge for Costco online even though it doesn’t show.
Dan, in most but not all cases, Costco’s online site will often state that a lower price may be available in-store for a given product. I recently discovered via an article somewhere, that Costco is running a test for some customers where you can now search a store inventory and price of said product via the app (select warehouse, see new store search bar). This avoids having to call the store to see if the product is available there, which I’ve had to do many times. This has been helpful. In some cases, I’ve gladly paid a few extra bucks to have something bulky and/or very heavy delivered, like metal shelving, rather than dealing with a store trip. Our UPS guy even lends a hand getting it in the garage.
For $2.80, probably depends on my frame of mind at the time. I could see myself doing either.
I suspect little pricing mistakes like this even out in the long run. A couple of weeks ago I picked up a package of ribeye steaks that were on sale (with an additional discount if I used a digital coupon). I had a bunch of other items in my cart, most of which were also on sale. I checked out and was proud of the final tab.
When I got home I realized the final bill seemed a bit too low. When I reviewed the receipt, the digital coupon for the steaks had discounted them even lower than the price that had been advertised. But another item–which was supposed to be on sale–hadn’t been discounted at all.
In the end, I saved a few more dollars than I thought I would. But in this world of ‘digital coupons’ and ‘VIP customer cards’, I imagine similar mistakes in the future will even out my bonus savings.
Heh. I would have ordered from Amazon and knocked something off my honeydew list waiting for it to come in. 😀
I’m with Elaine on this one. But I’ll drive an extra 10 miles to save 10 cents on a gallon of gas too!