Walgreens routinely overcharges - weekly ad sales Austin Texas

I often go to two or three different Walgreens stores in my area of town. I shop the weekly Sunday newspaper and web advertisement. They often have good sales like buy one get one free on make up and other household items. Some of the items have to be purchased with a coupon that is in the ad circular that you pick up when you enter the store.

For a long time, I never checked my sales slip and just paid without question.
But about two months ago, I did have a ballpark figure in my mind of what my total should be. I checked out and paid in cash, but did not leave the store as the total seemed considerably over my ballpark amount. The person who checked me out was kind of rude throughout the transaction so I took by question about the total to the photo department where a manager was. I was indeed overcharged in the amount of $8.11. One of the makeup itemes was supposed to be buy one, get one free according to the weekly ad in force at the time, but I was charged full price for both of those same items.

This has happened approximately 4 times so far. It happened on vitamins. It has happened at three different Walgreens stores. I posted a thread in the QVC.com forum community. I was suprised to learn that several other people had experienced the same problem of being overcharged at Walgreens. Now I am referring to non-prescription items sold. I also learned that Walgreens lost a huge law suit for processing prescriptions fraudulently and had to pay over 30 million dollars out. The people who responded said you always have to check your total carefully and should do some kind of ball park calculation before you even check out. They said the same thing routinely happens at CVS pharmacy and their weekly ads.

Anyway, I complained to corporate headquarters on the web and two times got a call from the local store manager for the transaction. The store manager last time said the there are often problems with the way prices are programmed on their computers and that the weekly ad prices are either not programmed at all on some items on to the store computers or are programmed wrong. I told the store manager he ought to be careful to check that his cash registers are programmed to match the complete Sunday adverstisement and he needs to get all of this check and right before the sale goes in to effect on Sunday. He said he does not do that and implied he would not do that. He said when a customer brings it to the attention of the checker, they do correct the price for that item on their cash registers for that store.

Anyway, my impression is that Walgreens headquarters KNOWS they are not programming cash registers correctly. The store managers are welll aware of this too. When a customer fails to catch the overcharge, it is referred to as "slippage" and Walgreens simply takes in all the ill gotten gains. It now is becoming clear to me that the poor low-paid checkers at the stores know that they are checking out wrong prices and they are frequently made to look bad to the customers who come back in to them to get their refunds of their overcharges. The poor employees are aware of the scam but they need to keep working and having their jobs, so they just keep silent about the scam.

I am trying not to shop at Walgreens anymore though I really like some of their advertised sales, especially on things like toilet tissue and household soaps and clearners and make up and cosmetics. I figure they are deliberately operating in a fraudulent way and have no intention of doing what it takes to make their cash register programming match their ad sales, so it is morally wrong of me to go in and be a customer and play along and cooperate with this scam.

I heard there is some state agency that oversees these kinds of matters - something related to "weights and measures" laws -- but I still have not located in Texas which agency that is so I can complain there too.

I find it amazing that a company that was fined over 30 million dollars for operating fraudulently regarding prescriptions is continuing to operate fraudulently in their non-prescription sales.

Jeannon
Austin, Texas
U.S.A.

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