Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Beware of supermarket ripoffs

From the NY Post:

New Yorkers are getting short-changed by supermarkets, delis, drugstores and gas stations that illegally inflate weights and measures, charge higher-than-marked prices and slap the sales tax on nontaxable items.

City inspectors issued 2,976 violations so far this year to retailers who soak their customers -- a 58 percent increase over last year's 1,882 tickets.

Between Jan. 1 and Nov. 17, virtually every grocery chain in the city was slapped with "weights and measures" violations, which carry fines up to $600 for the first offense and $1,200 for each additional offense.

The list includes Fairway, Gristedes, Associated, D'Agostino's, Pathmark, Key Food, Food Emporium, Met Food, Stop & Shop, Waldbaum's, Foodtown, C-Town, Pioneer and Western Beef.

5 comments:

Taxpayer said...

So if your butcher says he is all thumbs, maybe you need to ask him to keep them - all of them - off the scales.

Anonymous said...

What happened to those scales you used to be able to use to re-weight your purchases?

Anonymous said...

New York City is all about scams and bilking, from the street peddlers all the way to the city government.

Anonymous said...

Just so happened a couple of days ago while in Met store I asked where was the scale in produce. Owner just smirked at me and pointed to checkout.

Another illegal consumer pricing they do is one price for bananas in bag and another for loose. Reported them a a few years ago and they were fined and stopped. Now they are doing it again (except FH Key food). But I did have to report Key Food for not one but three managers refusing to remove the contaminated pet food during that pet food horror.

So please, call 311 regarding these food violations, they will inspect and god only knows what else they will find. You may evan save a life.

Anonymous said...

It seems that my local "Farm" store has kid that I observed rest their thumbs on the scale as they create the price sticker for cold-cuts. They also tend to over-slice and ask if it's ok if it's over the requested weight. well I do eat everything anyway so be it, but it's annoying regardless. Some folks make a really big stink and otherwise once gone the employees continue the practice. Is this laziness, carelessness or store policy to push up the volume in profitable Cold-cuts?