Sunday, August 22, 2010

Big problems at supermarkets citywide

From NY1:

The city's Department of Consumer Affairs says one out of two food stores it inspected in the city was overcharging its customers.

According to the DCA Commissioner Jonathan Mintz, the agency checked out 983 supermarkets across the five boroughs over the past year to see if mistakes were made at the cash register.

"The results of our inspection were very troubling," Mintz said. "We're very unhappy with what we're seeing out there."

Inspectors checked whether items were priced correctly, weighed correctly and taxed correctly.

The DCA issued 516 violations as a result of the study. The supermarkets could face more than $380,000 in fines to the city.

Mintz said because of the results of the sweep, inspectors will do double the number of inspections in the coming year.

DCA officials says the most common violation was for a lack of item pricing.

2 comments:

Auntie Invasion said...

Maybe this is because the majority of supermarket workers don't speak English and have no intention of learning it.
When shopping for a well known product, I've asked the stock person for it and got a look like I'm from another planet. I've had to spell out the product name and describe what it is. They not only they don't know what it is, they're not going to find out. They act annoyed that I disturb their multi culture experience here in my country. How dare a native speak to them?
The worst are Champion Food on Roosevelt Avenue in Woodside, the former Key Food. When it was Key Food, the cashiers were a diversified mix of English speakers. Currently it's all Spanish all the time, with paid off the book illegal immigrant women from take your pick of South American countries.
Wander over to Food Dynasty between 62nd & 63rd street and you get a mix of Spanish & Arabic non English speakers presided over by Arabic managers. One from Morocco stated that he's in this country to kill the Jews!
I am not surprised that the DCA found so many violations. When I've pointed out that the price on the container is different than on the shelf or the store circular, often the people behind me on the line get bent out of shape. Of course the manager has to be called since the cashiers DON"T speak English.
start with a language proficiency test for cashiers and supermarket workers.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to say same problems at Key Foods in Forest Hills. I travel to Mexico quite often and shop in their super markets - beautiful, very, very well run, and very very helpful and courteous.

My Spanish consists of about 25 or so words.