Despite a brilliant piece of legislation, called the Consumer Protection Act (CPA), consumers are still getting nasty surprises when ending up at the cash register to pay for their groceries or goods.

The price you see is the price you pay. In short, this is what the CPA boils down to when it comes to the pricing of goods and services. First of all, Section 23(3) of the Act stipulates that all products or services offered must be displayed with a price (this excludes products displayed for advertising purposes). The Act, in Section 23(6), makes it very clear that a supplier cannot require a consumer to pay a price for any goods or services higher than the displayed price. It further states that, if more than one price is displayed for a product, the lowest price is what you pay at the till.  

Yet it seems that many businesses are still not adhering to this legislation, charging customers more at the till than the prices displayed on products on the shop shelves. There are also those businesses that don’t even price their goods, forcing customers to wait in queues to enquire about the price of a product. These businesses are on dangerous ground, as a contravention of the Act can lead to heavy penalties as set aside in Section 107 of the Act. These include fines and/or lengthy imprisonment, or a fine not exceeding 10% of the business's annual turnover during the previous financial year or R1 million, whichever comes first.

The past week, the issue of incorrect pricing was pushed to the fore with the Zoutpansberger receiving several complaints. One of the complainants was Mr Jacques van Heerden. He and his wife went shopping at Checkers in Louis Trichardt last Wednesday. They also ended up at the till having to pay more for a product than the price displayed on the shelf. He refused to pay for the product and removed it from his shopping bag. “I told them that they cannot have one price on the shelve and charge a different price at the till – it is dishonest,” Van Heerden said. He added that the manager ran to remove the price label from the shelves. “But I told him I will not buy there again,” Van Heerden said.

Another Louis Trichardt resident, Mr Ben Harris, had a similar experience at Choppies, also last Wednesday. He makes weekly puchases of bags of apples at the store for his church’s soup kitchen. When he came to the till, however, he found out that the unit price per bag was almost R2 more than what was advertised on the shelf. He also refused to pay. “They told me that they were unable to override the computer system,” Harris said. Eventually they were able to assist Harris by charging him a lower per-kilogram price for the apples.

The author of this article had a similar experience at Soutpansberg Spar in Louis Trichardt the past week, where products at the till were being charged for more than the shelf price. After a complaint about this, the shop manager apologised for the problem, voided the transaction, charged the shelf price and promptly replaced the label with the correct shelf price.

It would seem that the main “culprits” are the national chain stores. It would not be strange to hear similar stories from shoppers at other national stores, apart from those mentioned above. But is it really a question of these stores' just blatantly being dishonest or is there more to the story?

The Zoutpansberger went to speak to Mr Luke Enslin, owner of both Louis Trichardt and Soutpansberg Spar, about the discrepancy in pricing experienced at one of his stores. It was soon clear from the interview that incorrect pricing really had little to do with store owners' or managers' trying to be dishonest.

Enslin shed more light on the logistical nightmare they face of having to re-price products almost on a daily basis, due to price increases. Spar, he said, as with almost all other national retailers, works through a central national computer system. Each day, the system pushes through new prices on certain products. New price labels are then printed locally and it is up to the shelf packers to make sure that these prices are put up on the shelves as soon as possible. In Enslin’s case, he has numerous shelf packers who work in shifts.

To put the issue into perspective, Enslin explained that at his Louis Trichardt store, he has a product range of over 11 500 products, while this number increases to around 13 000 products at his Soutpansberg store. “It is not our intention to cheat people and we always strive to act in line with the law, but you would agree that it is almost an impossible task to check each product by hand every day,” Enslin said. He added, however, that although this was no excuse, consumers should take into account the human factor. “We are very strict when it comes to our shelf packers. If they are found to have made two or more mistakes on the shelves they are responsible for, they receive written warnings,” Enslin said.

He further added that the Spar Group makes use of an external company to perform “spot checks” at stores to make sure that their products are labelled correctly. These “mystery shoppers” come on a frequent basis to do his or her shopping at all Spar stores. “The first time you see them is when they stand in your office, asking you to explain why some products were labelled incorrectly. You are penalised for mistakes,” Enslin explained. On the other hand, Enslin said, Spar rewards shop owners who manage to obtain a “clean audit” through very rewarding incentives.

In cases where prices are incorrect, Enslin said, all his managers (as is probably the case at all chain stores having to deal with similar logistical problems daily) are trained to void and correct transactions at a customer’s request. He added, however, that due to the human factor and customers' complaints, he was looking at the option of installing an electronic labelling system at both his stores. “But it comes at a price, with the system to cost me about R1,5 million per store. One must, however, look at the benefit of such a system. Not only would it assist one with stock control and bookkeeping, it would also factor out the human factor as the system automatically updates daily if new prices are pushed through,” Enslin said.

As a spot check, Enslin invited the Zoutpansberger to play “mystery customer”. The newspaper was allowed to select random products from the shelves and compare the shelf price to what was charged at the till. In total, 21 items were selected. Of these 21 items, 19 were priced correctly. One was priced to the benefit of the customer and one was priced to the benefit of the store. In both cases, however, the amount was small. Despite this, Enslin immediately corrected the price labels.