https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/14/business/home-depot-to-pay-usd2-million-settlement-for-overcharging-customers-and-false-advertising/index.html
"The complaint filed in San Diego Superior Court said that when people at Home Depot brought an item to checkout, they would be charged more money than was written on the shelf tag or on the item itself."
One time I went to buy a power tool that was on sale at Home Depot. I did the self checkout and the sale did not ring up correctly. I got one of the employees attention and they just told me there was nothing they could do, whatever it rings up as is the price and they can't change it. No amount of pointing at the massive sale sign would change that.
So I put it back and bought it from an online site that was having the same sale. Fuck Home Depot... Since then I go out of my way to not shop there.
They totally can. I've watched them do it on their self checkouts.
Everything can be overridden with a manager.
That's totally a won't not can't.
I used to work there. We were allowed up to $50 without approval from a manager. It’s one of the things I liked about working there. If the customer told me the price was incorrect, I’d just fix it. We didn’t fight over a couple dollars. It wasn’t worth it.
I had the same issue a couple of times. I had to order it online for store pick up and just wait for an employee to fulfill the order
While the company admitted no wrongdoing, it must pay $1.7 million in civil penalties, as well as $277,251 to cover investigation costs as well as to “support future enforcement of consumer protection laws.”
Why is it we allow these companies to pretend they did no evil? The penalty should have been a couple orders of magnitude higher, and they should have had to admit what they did. Obviously we don't live in a world where both those things would happen, but we don't even get one of them?
They surely made more than two million doing this and so the fine is meaningless. The real way to make it meaningful would be to force the admission of guilt, and then use the admission as justification to stop them from buying out the competition for 18 billion dollars.
Look how they deceived their customers, good thing they can do it to even more customers now!
I see it less as "being evil" and more about "being incompetent".
Changing shelf labels in a store the size of a Home Depot is incredibly manual, which is why WalMart moved to e-ink electronic shelf tags. That way, the same system that updates prices at the register updates the tags.
Of course that also lets them do surge pricing instantly. "Oh, schools out? Increase prices +.04%!"
Evil was a stretch, sure. Though while I appreciate the concept of not attributing malice to what incompetence explains, I think that needs to be couched by whether or not a profit is being turned by the action.
I see it less as “being evil” and more about “being incompetent”.
Maybe, if items are under-priced as often as over-priced.
In an inflationary environment, prices are only going one direction and the shelf tags are going to lag.
Make it part of the deal. Admit wrongdoing and fix it, otherwise here's a 10 billion dollar fine up your ass. Shame the US has shit for consumer protections.
Someone? I'm talking about having a corporation admit it's own wrongdoing, not a specific individual.