Check Your Receipts

[james.hendrickson]

Here is a savings tip: Check your receipts.

I went to my local Kroger and bought 5 containers of dish soap. There were listed on sale for $1.76, but rang up for $2.56 each. If I hadn't been paying attention I wouldn't have caught the error.

In these kinds of situations you can always take the receipt back to the customer service desk and get the balance credited back to you.

Bottom line: check your receipts. Stores make errors sometimes.

[disneysteve]

Good advice. I try my best to watch as they are ringing stuff up. Another common problem is scanning something twice by accident.

One of many reasons I use self checkout whenever I possibly can.

Our grocery store has the app that lets you scan everything as you shop but I find that to be more trouble than it’s worth.

[james.hendrickson]

Good advice. I try my best to watch as they are ringing stuff up. Another common problem is scanning something twice by accident.

One of many reasons I use self checkout whenever I possibly can.

Our grocery store has the app that lets you scan everything as you shop but I find that to be more trouble than it’s worth.

Great last point Disneysteve, I also have a Kroger app, but the wireless connection in the story is lousy, so I don't get a whole lot out of their app also.

[kork13]

Another similar one: always check your cleared checks with your bank. We pay DD's daycare provider by check every 2 weeks, and one of our recent ones processed for the wrong amount. Instead of $198, our account was charged for $298.

Gratefully I was able to resolve it pretty easily, chatting online with customer service for 10-15 min basically putting in a trouble ticket, then it was fixed by the next day.

Sometimes banks make mistakes too. Always best to monitor your accounts & make sure it's all as expected.

[Jluke]

I refuse to go to a manned checkout line. I will take a big cart into the little area for self checkout if they don’t have the self checkouts open where they have the manned lines. I have experienced them ringing something up twice by accident (like diapers of all things). Also our bakery has tried to pull fast ones on me. Like a cupcake with a $25 price tag they print and apply upon picking the item for me. Or a small cake rung up as a full sheet cake.

prices on the shelves now may or may not reflect actual price because they don’t have enough workers to update the tags each week.

I have thought about using the scan as you shop tool the store provides but I think that would be painful as sometimes I put things back so I’d have to learn how to remove that item.

store apps do come in handy for price checks.

[disneysteve]

I’ve had that happen a couple of times over the years. kork. Checks are all optically scanned at this point but scanners aren’t perfect.

[disneysteve]

store apps do come in handy for price checks.

I like the store app for when I need to find an item I don’t buy regularly. It tells me which aisle or section it’s in.

Our app also used to have a great shopping list feature but then they redesigned the app and I don’t like the new version as much.

[riverwed070707]

Our local grocery chain will give you the item for free if it rings up the wrong price. You can bet I know to the penny how much every item in my cart costs and I'm watching every item ring up. I've saved hundreds in free groceries over the years taking advantage of this store policy.

[james.hendrickson]

Our local grocery chain will give you the item for free if it rings up the wrong price. You can bet I know to the penny how much every item in my cart costs and I'm watching every item ring up. I've saved hundreds in free groceries over the years taking advantage of this store policy.

Um...what grocery chain is that?

[riverwed070707]

Um...what grocery chain is that?

Hy-Vee

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Our local grocery chain will give you the item for free if it rings up the wrong price. You can bet I know to the penny how much every item in my cart costs and I'm watching every item ring up. I've saved hundreds in free groceries over the years taking advantage of this store policy.

OMG that would be amazing. it happens to me all the time and I go straight to customer service and get the right prices adjusted.

[bjl584]

It's a good idea to check your credit card statements after a vacation, especially if you went to a touristy spot and ate out a lot.
A common scam is for restaurant workers to manually adjust the tip amount on the bill.
They figure that most people are going to just pay the CC bill the following month after they get home and won't go through the bill line by line.
It happened to my stepdad more than once while vacationing in Florida.
The server gave herself a nice $20 tip figuring he wouldn't notice.

[james.hendrickson]

It's a good idea to check your credit card statements after a vacation, especially if you went to a touristy spot and ate out a lot.
A common scam is for restaurant workers to manually adjust the tip amount on the bill.
They figure that most people are going to just pay the CC bill the following month after they get home and won't go through the bill line by line.
It happened to my stepdad more than once while vacationing in Florida.
The server gave herself a nice $20 tip figuring he wouldn't notice.

Excellent point BJ.

[james.hendrickson]

Guys - bumping this up.

Last night, I went to Kroger and got like $141 bucks worth of groceries. I gave like 15 dollars worth of coupons to the cashier, and she scanned them. BUT, when I checked the receipt, none of the coupons were applied to the total.

if I had not checked the receipt, I'd be out 15 bucks

Sometimes computer systems at grocery stores don't always synch up, or the cashier might forget to hit the right buttons. So it pays to double check.

So, always check your receipts.

[Bozzdivine]

Thank you. This seems like obvious advice, but few people follow it. Now I've started to train myself to check the receipts all the time.