Target must have some lazy pricing people. I used to work at my local supermarket. In my experience, the people whose job it is to put up new price labels have to check and correct if there is a discrepancy. And since I worked in stock, I would occasionally get customers asking about anything weird they came across. Did I just leave it alone to confuse another customer (who would then have to ask me what the deal is again)? Nope. So what's the deal Target? Are your workers too lazy to either do their job or fix an issue with someone else's? Think about it, there are three different places this could be corrected: the employee setting the new prices, the employee putting the new labels up, and the employee who is bound to be asked by a customer who notices the mistake.

The 2nd picture is misleading. The original price was $1.74 for "UP LMN WPES". The sale tag is $2.01 for "UP & UP" wipes. You are getting 100% more up for only 27 cents extra. It is indeed, a bargain.

@Saboth: I think they both say 35-count though.

@Vanilla5:

That's only referring to the count of actual wipes. The 2nd one contains 100% more up, within those 35 wipes. Also, you don't even know if the original is legit, whereas the 2nd one is definately on the ...

Target wants to be on the site. More like, someone highly enlightened works at Target, and wants to send subliminal messages out to other enlightened folks.

All these numbers mean something. They are clues to reveal a larger pattern. More specifically, how these numbers mutate and interact with each other give us an understanding of how the universe works.

That knowledge has been used to design a Discomathic Drive - A starship propulsion system that can accomplish feats quite outside the normal capabilities of spacecraft. They make all other FTL drives look like a Stephen Hawking sprint.

It can also be used - theoretically - to create a sort of singularity, where a blackhole like contraption can absorb more than 100% of the light - thus creating The Ultimate Window Curtains.

Hey, bad publicity is still publicity, right?

Asda, a UK supermarket owned by Walmart, has unit pricing on its shelf edges, as is usual here.

Yesterday one showed a 7-pack of things, 72p for the pack, which they reckoned was 0.4p each.

I'd have thought they had a simple bit of software for this - but no, I get the feeling someone does it manually.

@cabjf: Unless the pic is snapped before someone reports the mistake.

Still fail on the part of the first two.

@Saboth: In addition, for $2.01, those wipes with 100% more UP can disinfect. Then again, the $1.74 ones do have LMN.

@Skipweasel: I love in supermarkets when they have unit prices listed for large amounts of things that come in tiny bottles. Like $140 per gallon. Hysterical.

Could someone explain what's wrong with the first one? There are two price tags, one of which gives a former price and one of which is silent on the question of the former price. But they both agree on what the current price is. I don't see any discrepency.

It's like if Meg Marco was at a party and she said to one person, "I'm Meg, I write for Consumerist," then she said to someone else, "I'm Meg," and then I swoop down and say, "Which is it? Do you write for Consumerist or not??"

@MostlyHarmless:

I smell the involvement of the Freemasons :0

Every Target has a team called Price Change.
It is their job to ... change the prices.
The team gets a printout of all the prices that need to be changed that day, as well as to report to certain departments to mark-down clearance items. They carry hip printers, and have access to high-end printers to print all their tags. They have to finish all their assigned work that day, or they get penalized and backlogged.

It's possible that the Price Change Team is behind on their work, or not paying attention to all the tags they get.
You can single-handedly blame ALL THE PRICE GOOFS we see here on one small group of people in that particular store.

Have you guys ever asked them for content?

I think you should.

@cash_da_pibble:
I can also tell you right now, the Orlando Store team is damn lazy, and the second picture says they're running out of work and are trying to stay busy.

One of the major areas of 'shrink' in retail operations is wrong pricing, this comes into effect when things go on sale for a certain fixed period of time and when they come 'off sale' the prices are not put back to their regular price and continue to be sold at the now incorrect lower discounted prices.

These adjusting of sales prices are suppose to be made both in the computer and on the shelf, when it falls into a crack and isn't done the store is both shooting itself in the foot for not restoring the original price and if the computer price is fixed but not the shelf tag then it is giving themselves a black eye with consumers who take the product to the register expecting to pay X and it rings up as a higher Y price.

If you are interested in Target information take a look at: [targetfiling.blogspot.com]

@katstermonster: Or they give you the unit price for the same unit that you are buying, like a gallon bottle for $3.99 and the unit price is "$3.99/gallon"

@runchadrun: That is actually not so bad if that is the base unit for that particular item. Especially if all the other containers are marked by price per gallon as well.

@MostlyHarmless: When does the army of evil albinos rise up?

@tmyprod: When enough people have the Palm Pre.

@Garbanzo:
The tag claims it's a new lower price, when it reality the price hasn't changed at all.
if you're gonna set your tags up that way, the old tag should read 13.99. Instead they shoudl put the clip tag and remove the un-sticky sticker alltogether.

@cash_da_pibble: What's the evidence that one tag is older than the other tag? Maybe they were both put up at the same time.

That first item isn't a sale, it's a price change. That implies that it will be semi-permanent. It looks to me like the item used to be $13.99 but will be $10.99 for the foreseeable future. They put a special price cut sign on it to draw attention to it, and changed the permanent tag to reflect the new price. I don't see the error here.

@MostlyHarmless: Yebbut what they usually do is break some down to kilos, some to 100g, some to liters and some to "each".

@cash_da_pibble: Wrong, wrong, wrong. You can tell in that picture that there is a new label over the top of the pre-printed one on the POG strip. (That's so, if the balloon holder gets lost - which happens all the time - the shelf will still reflect the current price.) The function of the balloon and the was/now label is only to call out the fact that the price has changed. As @Garbanzo says, both of these things are put up at the same time.

Actually, here's the deal:

The ORIGINAL price was indeed 10.99 in the first picture. Target has a horrible practice of declaring something is a "Price Cut", when actually, they're just going to be hiking the price to the "Was" price in the coming weeks. It's a less than honest advertising practice, in my opinion, and I've complained about it to corporate because it bothers me so much. People think they're actually getting a "deal", when in reality, they're getting the same price the product was a week ago, and the price is getting hiked in the near future(by a lot in many cases!)

@teapot37:
At the very least, I can see why the OP is confused- considering I was wrong 3x.

@kathyl: That would be exactly what is going on. The price change team covers up the shelf label with a new one reflecting the new price.

A "Temporary Price Cut" sign ONLY receives the sign, while a "Price Cut" receives a shelf label AND a sign.

As for the 2nd one, the sale sign was either in the wrong spot, out of date, or the system simply hadn't had the new price activated for some reason.

Almost every single post on here about Target is ridiculous and could be done for ANY retail store. It has nothing to do with "lazy" workers, it has everything to do with being understaffed, underpaid, and people just not caring. Why would, or even more-so, why SHOULD they care?

@heyfergy: ",and people just not caring."

Isn't that pretty much the definition of being lazy?

When I worked at a grocery store tried to bring every price issue I found to a manager's attention. The manager usually took the lower price sticker down - state law says if an item rings up higher than priced it's free so we err'd on the side of caution.

So this brings up a good point: I was at Target and I purchased some razors that were in a bin with all the same product which was labeled $4.99. At the register they rang up at $8.99, when I questioned the cashier she said "they were probably just in the wrong place. Do you want them or not?" I didn't make a stink, but is this a case where the item rang up at the wrong price and I was entitled to it for free? This drives me crazy.

@watsuk: No, Shrink is when stuff is stolen. Sometimes that's caused by shoppers swapping price stickers or UPCs and trying to get something rung up at the wrong price, but when the store does it to itself, it's just stupidity, not shrinkage.

@heyfergy: Because they should take pride in their work, no matter what that work is or the pay which they agreed to?

@fancyschmancy:
If the bin is full of the wrong product, the price posted should be honored. If it's just a couple out of place things that other guests may have decided they didn't want and just put them somewhere, the price usually isn't honored.

If you're ever in doubt about the price and don't want to walk to a price scanner, there are three sets of numbers on the price label that tell you if the product really does belong in the spot. The bottom number is the UPC, the next one up is the DPCI which is listed on UP&UP and other Target exclusive brand packaging, and the top right one is a vendor/model number. 99% of the time one of these will match up.

You weren't entitled to it for free. Target doesn't give free items for price discrepancies. Items are abandoned or stocked or zoned in the wrong place all the time, it's a common thing. The item rang up correctly, but was in the wrong place.

But even though it was in the wrong place, that's not your fault. You can't be expected to know all the prices and you can tell the cashier that it was in a bin where the price showed $4.99 and you'd like it for that price. They can override prices when these things happen, and should. I'm not saying that they want to do it or that they will do it without manager approval, but if you stand your ground you'll probably get the item for the price you expected it to be. Caveat: some Targets are insane and will say "no" no matter what. They're jerks and I'm sorry for that.

@cash_da_pibble: At my store, the price change team isn't in charge of ad/sale/tpc signing. The only 3x5 signs they change are for items that have price changes. Does that mean your store is different? Because the last time I checked, tearing the ad signs alone takes more time than the price change team has, especially at a large store, and they certainly don't have time to put up every ad/sale/tpc sign. I think you've confused the price change team with the ad set team.

@cabjf: Target is a corporation, the employees feel no real connection to the company. Therefore nobody really cares.

I've sent a few of these pictures in, but Consumerist never uses anything I send for some reason, so I quit doing it. I see them all the time though. In fact, I can't remember the last time I saw a "price reduction" tag at Target that didn't have exactly the same regular price behind it.

@zjgz: yup, from what I have seen... Most targets dont care about the workers that work there, so in turn the workers could care less about the place they work at. They probably see it as a just a job and not a career like other places...

LastError says
7:18 PM @watsuk: No, Shrink is when stuff is stolen. Sometimes that's caused by shoppers swapping price stickers or UPCs and trying to get something rung up at the wrong price, but when the store does it to itself, it's just stupidity, not shrinkage.
==========================================

I worked 19 years in retail and you are wrong. Try 'googling' the term and you will find:

Definition: A reduction in inventory due to shoplifting, employee theft, paperwork errors and supplier fraud.
Also Known As: Loss, Shortage

I bought some college-ruled notebooks that were on sale at Target. They were labeled as being 35¢, at 75% off. They rang up at like seven cents. So apparently it was (more than?) 80% off ... of 35 cents!

I should have bought a crate; my kids would never want for paper notebooks...

@MostlyHarmless: I knew it! The girl in the ad is their leader!

At least there are price tags. At the two Targets I frequent it's almost impossible half the time to find the price tag anywhere near the item on the shelf. I wind up walking halfway across the store with three different 24-packs of toilet paper to check the prices at those customer bar code scanners, and then I leave the two I don't want on the floor right there so some Target drone has to clean them up.

@cash_da_pibble: Except, this is just one in a long series of nation-wide Target sale "goof ups" that Consumerists have noted.

Don't get me wrong. As I've stated before, I love, love, luuuurrrrvvve Target. I think they're the anti-Walmart. But Target has been nailed over and over again on Consumerist for deceptive "sale" pricing. In my opinion, it's happened enough that Target either is doing it deliberately, or at least is deliberately providing no incentive for employees to correct the problem.

If you're a savvy Consumer, you don't automatically believe a sign that says "Sale!" or "Discount!" You get out your calculator and do the math. And maybe -- just maybe -- that's the lesson that the benevolent Gods at Target are trying to teach us.

@OsiUmenyiora: And then you'll complain when they raise prices to cover employees cleaning up after people with your attitude.

I think the problem is that Target has a hard time keeping up with all their labels. In the second picture, the sale sign to the right is expired (I'm assuming this picture was taken recently) and was just never taken down. That sort of thing happens because they have so many different types of labels and signs. And, yes, prices change daily. Sometimes only 5 or 10 cents.

Is it an efficient and confusing system they use? No question.

I would still, though, rather shop at Target than Wal-Mart. At least Target tries. Sometimes.

@LastError: No, shrinkage is the difference between what the inventory system says and what's actually on the floor, both in quantity and value. That includes shoplifting, employee theft (outright theft as well as applying liberal discounts as they see fit), administrative mistakes (mis-pricing) and vendor fraud.

@fancyschmancy: Is that a US thing? I know in Canada, if the item is mispriced you don't get it for free. If the retailer is part of the Retail Alliance they have to give you $10 off the lower price (or free if it's under $10) for the first item, but it MUST be the item for which the sign was wrong. If another customer put the item back in the wrong place, you wouldn't be eligible, but if the sign really was for that particular item, you would be.

@fancyschmancy: You can't have it for free, but they should have honored the price listed. That's assuming there was more than one of that style razor in the bin; if not it's your word against theirs. If it is honestly mis-priced and the cashier refuses to honor the price, ask for a manager. If the manager refuses to honor the price get their name and let them know you'll be phoning your State's Weights and Measures division. Then follow through. Weights and Measures is there to keep retailers (and gas stations) honest, use them as a resource. The mention of Weights and Measures alone will usually get you the discount.
Bonus points if you take a photo of the price tag, product and your receipt for W&M (but keep the photo taking quiet, most big-box stores have "no-pictures" policies).

Second pic is kinda meaningless- they don't leave the 'old price' up, they just stuck a yellow tag on one of the tags.