A bill is advancing through the Massachusetts legislature that will allow supermarkets to leave off item price tags and instead force customers to rely on electronic scanners spaced throughout the store. Although prices will still need to be displayed on store shelves for most items, you’ll have to rely on your memory and your faith in the store’s scanner system at checkout. John Hurst, the president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, “said consumers will benefit in the form of lower prices and shortened lines once stores no longer need to devote resources to item-by-item pricing.” But kjd aa- [thump]
–sorry, we just fell out of our chairs laughing at the idea of a supermarket out there that will heroically pass the savings downstream to consumers instead of profiting directly from it.
The bill’s critics, which include the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group and the ConsumerWorld.org Web site, say consumers will suffer because they may be forced to wander as far away as 5,000 feet in a particular store to scan an item and check its price. If a retailer opts for the scanning system alternative, prices would still need to be displayed on store shelves for most items.
The critics say it will be harder to catch overcharges at the cash register, and the scanning machines may not pick up on sale prices or special prices for customers with loyalty cards.
“Consumer groups worry that item pricing could go away at supermarkets” *warning! obnoxious ads* [Enterprisenews.com] (Thanks to Linus!)
(Photo: Getty)
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Are they for real? This just sounds ridiculous to me.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some pro-supermarket lobby group is behind the push for the law. MA is a pretty small state; I’d just go shop in the next state.
As long as they have to keep the prices on the shelf, it doesn’t really bother me. I am hard pressed to think of many items (other than meats, because they are priced by weight) that have prices on them at the grocery stores I go to.
What? You mean that in some states they still price-tag items?
I’m pretty certain that this isn’t all that uncommon. In NC, VA, OH, KY, and CA (the states I’ve lived in during the past 8 years) I don’t recall seeing price tags on the items themselves. The shelves have prices for the corresponding products, but the products themselves do not have prices.
How the hell does this stuff even make it to the floor of the Massachusetts congress? Seriously?
dumb
want to save money? get rid of cashiers and install only self check out.
I don’t use Cashiers, and i hate when other people bag my stuff.
this bill is stupid
Here is Arizona we don’t have price tags on the items, just on the shelf. I’ve never considered it a hindrance to saving money at the grocery store.
Two Words: Legislative Masturbation.
I didn’t even realize this was a law on the books anywhere. In Pennsylvania, prices are on the shelf at most places.
I live and shop in MA and I seldom see prices on items in stop & shop. What I do sometimes is take a sharpie with me and write the price (sale or not) on the box (if there’s no tag) before I put it in my cart.
Then I check it against the scanner at the register.
they are now going to have to devote resources to the balefuls of items being left at the scanner.. i would put every item into my cart, take them all to the scanner.. then leave what i did not want. i would also tally the items.. and make sure the checkout total was the same..
but this is still ludicrous. pretty soon, stores will just tell us to give them all our money and they will hand back our change.. reminds me of national lampoons vacation.. when he paid for the tires.. he asks, how much for the tires? the guy responds, how much you got?
I can’t remember the last store I shopped in that priced every item individually.
@homerjay: This is why you have a star by your name. Awesome idea.
Exactly my reaction, mobilene. I’ve lived in Maryland, Virginia and now Georgia over the past 35 years and I’ve only seen price tags on groceries at “convenience stores”, not supermarkets, for years and years. I’ve never had a problem with the scanning systems. Ever. That includes Giant, Safeway, Publix and Kroger, Target and Wal-Mart.
Imagine that the MA laws regulate this to begin with! Life is great when the central government regulates free commerce, eh? Nothing like bringing on the future faster.
I don’t understand what the big deal is. I live in Oregon, and the only stores that I ever see with the price actually on the item are the tiny little shops in the middle of nowhere.
Wal-Mart did the scanner thing for awhile, but I think they stopped doing even that.
I guess this sounds crazy if you still live in a state where they put prices on everything. I live in Missouri. I don’t ever recall a time when stores did this and I’m 37.
I worked at two major grocery chains in town for a combined 10 years and neither priced items individually. We never had any major problems. Occassionally an item would ring up wrong but both chains had a policy that if an item scanned for more than it’s shelf tag, the customer received the item free. That was a pretty good incentive to make sure prices were correct.
BTW, to be clear, the bill refers to having prices for individual products on the shelves, not in individual items.
What’s the big hullabaloo? In Texas I haven’t seen price tags on groceries for years. Prices are displayed on the shelves. Works for me.
“consumers will suffer because they may be forced to wander as far away as 5,000 feet in a particular store to scan an item and check its price.”
5,000 feet? That’s almost a mile! Maybe that’s why Walmart insists on receipts. “I’m just going out for a price check.”
Since when do supermarkets price items? The only place I see price stickers nowadays is at the corner gas station, and that is if its not a national chain.
I can’t argue here as I owe a grocery store hundreds. When I worked there, I stole stuff off the back of the trucks (boxes of candy, etc.) and sold them in school.
Step 3 = Profit.
I am shrinkage, hear me roar.
In Michigan they need to price tag items, and if it scans higher than the price tag, they have to pay you ten times the overcharge, up to a max of $5, plus the actual overcharge itself. I catch them all the time, especially at Walmart and Meijer. They all know the routine and we have no problem. I always watch at checkout and if I see the scan is more than the price tag, I keep my mouth shut and on the way out stop at customer service to get my “reward”—–that’s what we call it here. I don’t understand the People’s Republic of Massachusetts trying to stop price tags. I thought they really cared for their citizens!
so they want us to bring items to one spot on the aisle and wait in another line to find out the price before we stand in line to buy the item? that’s pretty dumb…
@mdoublej: yeah except i’ve had LOADS of times where they put the wrong item over the wrong price. like how there are six types of cheerios, so it’ll say CHEERIOS and then some garble of letters representing the type but it won’t be actually under the correct line of boxes. same with things like shampoo, right brand, wrong type, wrong price. so they already fail at the non-individual item pricing.
@homerjay:
“What I do sometimes is take a sharpie with me and write the price (sale or not) on the box”
Hmmm. Maybe don’t deface the store’s property until you buy it and it becomes your property.
@tastybytes:
“they are now going to have to devote resources to the balefuls of items being left at the scanner.. i would put every item into my cart, take them all to the scanner.”
Maybe just look at the price on the shelf where you grabbed the item and save yourself some time.
“consumers will suffer because they may be forced to wander as far away as 5,000 feet in a particular store to scan an item and check its price.”
Are there actually stores that are a mile long? I can’t think think of a store large enough where you’d have to walk 5000 ft to get anywhere.
oooooohhhh…prices on each item. I thought there were no price ANYWHERE, and you had to scan everything…LOL
The only time I see prices on things is in the corner store and bodegas.
@homerjay: My Stop & Shop in Mass. has hand scanners, so you can check the prices as you go. Works great because discounts are almost always figured in (other than the ‘end of the order’ stuff) and S&S still has a price guarantee — wrong price = free.
I’m okay with this. Most Mass. supermarkets don’t do item pricing, except on the shelf, and I can use scanners to find mispriced items. Self-scanners are so much better than taking a single item up to customer service. I use it all the time at CVS to find out if a certain item is included in the sale.
We haven’t had individual prices on items here in California for over fifteen years now. Grow up Massachusetts.
Most stores where I am have the price on the shelf, not the individual item. Not a big deal, to me. The fact that they HAVE scanners available is nice.
@mobilene: Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking… I haven’t seen that in any major chain store in YEARS.
As mentioned above, we in TX haven’t had individual prices on items for years…usually this does not present a problrm as they do have prices on the shelves. One thing I do like about the shelve pricing is that they have helpfully incuded a breakdown on most items for instance it would say 2.59..24cents and ounce..and that makes teaching my daughters shopping skills a little easier. I always carry a calculator with us when we shop to give us a good idea how much we are spending….
Don
I’m with those who don’t understand what the hullabaloo is all about. I’ve only ever been to one grocery store that actually had price tags on the items (it was a health food store) and they recently switched over to a no-tag system.
Gah donopolis you beat me to it! Excellent post.
I haven’t seen price tags on grocery-store items in several years. Everything is scanned from the SKU code on the packaging, or keyed in when weighing produce with numerical codes on little stickers.
Uh…why would this require a legislative act??? I can maybe see one requiring stores that choose to go without pricetags to have a way for customers to verify pricing on their own and of course many states have penalties for scanner errors.
But…a law requiring stores to do away with price tags? I guess the MA legislature ran out of ideas on what they can tax so they have to kill the time somehow! Who knew the barcode scanner industry had such virile lobbyists!
Oh, I’m in Rhode Island, and I also shop in nearby Massachusetts (at Stop & Shop supermarkets mostly).
@homerjay: That is a good idea for people who care!
Not really seeing how lines will be shortened. I guess the added weight saving from not having to put a 0.00001 oz price tag on each item will allow the cashier to more quickly scan them.
Yeah sorry, but working in retail I can tell you that priced items create confusion and nothing more.
Prices change, sometimes for the better (I know, shocking huh?), and if we had to price EACH item, it would require TOO MANY man hours to accomplish.
As long as it’s priced on the shelf location, what’s people’s issue? We price clearance items on a per-item basis and some seasonal stuff… and I despise it, and honestly, if you cut out those man hours in pricing the items, it DOES lower costs.
Let them do it. We’ll be better off with better efficiency.
In Quebec…Yeah in Canada….
Grocery stores don’t need to have price tags on the items, but the price MUST be on the shelf.
The safety catch is that if an item scans wrong the consumer gets the item free (for anything under $10) and gets a $10 discount on the lowest price (for anything over $10)
The current law was written with the help of store operators and consumers.
It helps keep things above board and store owners honest, but you need to be vigilant and question any price you’re unsure of.
I’ve gotten free beer, cheese, canned vegetables and a $50 circulating fan for less than $25.
Giving things away free helps convince merchants to keep their systems up-to-date and honest.
Colorado doesn’t require stores to tag everything.
I’ve never caught my local Albertsons substituting a higher price at the checkout stand than what was listed on tag on the shelf or in the weekly ad, and I’m one of those nutty people who actually reads his receipt.
Grocery stores are in such a competitive, low-margin business, this is one of the few cases where I believe they actually would pass the savings on to consumers, at least in part.
Here in Iowa, tags on the shelf and not on items is standard procedure. For items on sale or bigger-ticket items, I’ll watch out to make sure it’s correct.
For what it’s worth, of pricing errors I’ve discovered later, it’s generally almost always been something that was underpriced (a sale item no longer on sale) rather than the other way around.
I’d rather pay lower food costs to not have all items individually tagged.
I have not seen a shelf item priced individually in years at the chains… small shops? yeah… but Giant or Superfresh… nope.
i like the Quebecois way!
Checking in to say that I’ve lived in MD, PA, OH, WV and DC and have only seen individual prices in a couple places (mainly a pair of rural non-chain stores that didnt have scanners).
I wonder if individual pricing actually cuts down on the number of sale items, since companies wouldnt want to temporarily reprice items.
Not much is individually priced around here. I can’t think of the last time I saw an individually priced item from a big supermarket. All the prices are on the shelves.
Really, it makes sense though. Prices change a lot, and it takes a lot of time to make sure things are priced correctly.
There are two obvious and insidious reasons for removing prices from products:
1) Yes, stores want to save costs and pocket the savings.
2) With no prices on the items, customers can’t do a quick visual total before going to the checkout counter. It would not surprise if their hope is customers spend more than they intend, driving up revenues. Personally, I find it annoying and embarassing to get to the till and find I don’t have enough cash on me.
This is all the more reason to make a shopping list and stick to it. And since you’re carrying a piece of paper or a notepad, why not bring a pen write the prices down as you pick up items? This lets you keep a running tally of what you’ve picked up *and* gives you a reference in case the checkout prices are higher than the shelf prices.
@SnickerDoodle: i’ve seen that sign in a stop and shop here in ct. if the item scans at a higher price than on the shelf you get it free or get like a $20 credit or something like that.
now i wish they’d just put all the potatoes in one freaking spot on their self-checkout computer menus.
@jimv2000: Hmm… Maybe the day you take a job in Stop & Shop loss prevention will be the day I give a crap about what you have to say.
Do they mean banning price tags on each individual item or also on store shelves? There are almost never price tags on each item here, just on the store shelf.