JUST WHO IS DOING THE SHOPLIFTING

Not for the first time by any means I found I had been double charged on a €2.35 item bought from Mercadona. In Iceland, anything on special offer has to be manually entered at the till. Often the check out will just scan the bar code. This means you pay the full price.

My bill on one occasion was much higher than my casual mind calculation. I checked the receipt. I had been charged for two ducks, something I have never purchased.

Now, had I wandered from the stores with pilfered unpaid stuff I would be publicly humiliated, perhaps the police would be called and I could be charged. When the situation is reversed, when it is the store doing the shoplifting, there is just a shoulder shrugging ‘sorry and ‘mistakes happen’ response.

I urge all shopper, especially at supermarkets, to carefully calculate the cost before reaching the till - and always after settlement. If my recent experiences are shared by all other shoppers I would say this is an annual, multi-million Euro heist. It is not an acceptable crime.

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Afraid it seems to happen everywhere.  I've been charged twice in UK, something the store manager said was impossible due to the till system but I was.  In Tescos I was charged full price for something on offer.  The difference was the manager then gave me the offending item for free which definitely wouldn't happen here (or many other places in UK).  Walmart in the States have calculators attached to the shopping carts so you can add up the items as you go around, something I once (long ago) saw in Asda but apparently people kept nicking the calculators.

 

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Mike,

You should put your hand slightly deeper into your pocket and shop somewhere better than Mercadona. The quality of produce on sale there is absolutely terrible. Yes it's cheap, but it's nasty.

You do make a good point though about doing a mental calculation and checking your receipt. Carrefour are really bad for putting things on offer and then not entering the reduced price into the system. I've found myself going directly from the checkout to the customer service desk on a few occasions because they have overcharged me. The final price of the shop is usually a bit more than you calculated (especially in Carrefour) but at least you know, if it comes out way higher than expected, you need to have a good look at the receipt.

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Hi all,
I have just returned yesterday to the uk from Condado. When we went to the Carrefour at Cartajena I bought some coconut milk which I thought was a great buy it said special offer 99c. So I bought 2 because you can get it for that price in the uk so my husband bought a few things too and I did not think to check the bill at the checkout.
It wasn't untill we got back to our apartment and checked the receipt and discovered that we had paid almost 3euros for 1 tin so 6 euros for 2, omg now if that was a uk supermarket I would have taken it straight back.
Then I bought some sliced bread from spar on Condado because it said 88c on the shelf but when I paid for it it was 1.95, so I went back into the shop she gave me a refund, I asked for the manager cos I needed the bread, we went to the shelf she said the price was for bread pretzels which were piled up next to the stack of bread. So the staff put it in the wrong place. If it was a uk shop they would have given it to you at that price so I ended up getting another type of bread. So yes everyone check your receipt because it's possible you are "being fiddled".

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You do need to check as sometimes the prces shown on the shelves are per 100 grammes or per kilo or per litre etc

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Fartharder,

I know we have all a right to express our opinion but I would love to know what you find wrong with Mercadona goods.

We shop around and use other stores but buy a lot of lovely food etc in Mercadona and have done for a long time. 

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Lifeline

I find the majority of Mercadona goods to be of poor quality. My partner bought some chicken breasts from Mercadona and the texture was so bad, I wasn't convinced it came from a real chicken. It was awful, as is so much of their produce. 

I consider myself a sensible shopper. I don't mind buying a supermarket's own brand for certain things as it's not always neccessary to buy the leading brand, but I don't want Hacendado ajonesa  because it tastes like crap, and I won't eat Hacendado crappy chocs for breakfast either. And therein lies the problem with Mercadona. All other supermarkets sell their own products alongside an excellent range of brand names, so you can choose. Mercadona have scrapped the majority of brand name products in favour of their own, and while you might think it's good quality, I don't.

I know it's a matter of opinion, and there's mine.

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I'm with Lifeline. We buy from Hipercor, La Casa de la Carne, Aldi, Mercadona & Lidl. I've found nothing wrong with Mercadona (Navalmoral), but we don't generally buy meat & fish there. Casa de la Carne are best for fish & meat. At Hipercor you can leave your car to get the tyres changed while you shop. For jamon iberico & embutidos it's best to go to the producer - there's no such thing as bargain jamon. Wine & cheese are also best directly from the producer. 

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Far.harder,   I cannot recognise the ‘Mercadona’ which you describe.

 

I have used Mercadona for my ‘main weekly shop’ for over 15 years and almost always choose their ‘own brands’over more advertised brands.

I can recall only a couple of instances when I have been disappointed with a product.

They are always at the top of the list for supermarket chains which give best value and get most approval by shoppers, and the 4.7 million ‘homes’ which shop there daily cannot all be wrong.

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Well done, everyone, but the post has gone well off topic. Wherever you shop is a matter of taste and convenience. Wherever you do shop, take a calculator and check the till receipts. My experience suggests that the buying public are being scammed for millions each year by sloppy till staff. Shoddy practice and the abuse of customer trust.

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'Shoplifting'  big style ! 

 

Some years ago in UK I check my till receipt from Makro and found that the price of each item included VAT and then at the bottom VAT was added again to the total.

 

Makro were astounded when I pointed out the programming error.

 

 

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There's always someone who has to prove that your opinion is wrong, as if you're wrong for even daring to share it. Very sad!
Back to the topic. I recently bought some plants and stuff from a garden centre and the total cost surprised me. It turns out that their prices were excluding IVA. When I headed back to the car, I looked around the entrance to see the sign informing us of this but there wasn't one. I'm not sure that's even legal.

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