This week I received an e-mail from Nicolette Medina – a producer of Special Projects at CBS here in Los Angeles – informing me that she recently read a blog I published on Vons and their tendency to overcharge on doughnuts at the check-out.
“This seems to be widespread. Our sister CBS Station in San Francisco did this story this past week,” she noted for the record in her communication.
Ms. Medina asked me to contact her so we could compare notes and to verify the facts.
In my response, by telephone as requested, I noted that the doughnut fiasco was true and that I was also going to do a follow up report on another deceptive business practice at Vons which really irks me, too!
For example, last week I spied a quality brand of Greek Yogurt on the shelf with yellow tags screaming out a sale price of 99 cents. Quite a bargain, so – of course – I snapped one up for my afternoon snack.
However, when the cashier rang the items up in my cart, it came to my attention that I was actually charged approximately $1.34 for the item!
At this juncture, I quizzed the customer-service person on duty.
“I thought this yogurt was on sale for 99 cents?”
In response, the clerk dispatched a box boy off to verify the price.
He returned about ten minutes later (!) – while I stood there in the store fuming – to confirm that the price was indeed correct.
“I noticed the 99 cent yellow stickers under the yogurt, too,” he fessed up.
Was that why he was gone so long?
Was in-the-dark about the actual sale price, too?
“I apologize for the confusion,” he muttered red-faced.
“The price tags were misleading.”
I can just imagine how many consumers – who rarely check their bill – were also hoodwinked into buying the higher-priced yogurt because the signs posted were deceiving in nature.
The truth of the matter?
On many occasions I have found that Vons has continually engaged in deceptive business practices when it comes to pricing items on the shelf.
Management deliberately misleads the customer as to the actual price of an item to encourage sales (for products not moving so quickly on the shelves?)!
In fact, Vons is right up there with CVS (recently fined by the Federal Trade Commission for questionable conduct) when it comes to engaging in deceptive business practices which amounts to downright fraud in my estimation.
Consumer beware!
Let’s sick the Feds on ‘em, eh?
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