New scheme by BORGs?

[Renata]

Going to return a quart of paint to Lowes, I dig out the receipt and noticed they charged me for 2 cans when I only bought 1. Haven't had a chance to discuss this with them yet, but in the meantime, I' gotta return an outside light fixture at HD (cause I found a nicer one at Lowes) and what do my eyes behold, but a charge for 2 of them! Now since I only have one light outside the door, and only one door to the outside (except for sliders w/spots overhead), there's no way I'd a picked up two lights in first place, much less misplaced one between the BORG and home. Going shortly to try to get this straightened out. THis one's more critical since it's $45 rather than the $7 for the paint.

Twice in a short interval at 2 different spots. What the heck's going on here?!?

Renata

[Duane Bozarth]

You're not paying attention at the checkout?

[Buck Turgidson]

Just curious - do the BORGS in your area have those self-checkout aisles? God I hate those things except for a handful of small items. They can get rid of 1.25 positions paying $7.50/hour by shifting the work to me.

[Wes Stewart]

Me thinks you need to pay better attention.

Yes they have them here as does the supermarket I shop.

I absolutely refuse to use them. At the Borg I just go to the "pro" line, figuring I'm as professional as most of the contractors I've dealt with. Or I check out in the garden center. At the Blue Borg, the lumber line is usually empty.

My attitude is: If I wanted a job as a sales clerk, I'd put in an application.

[Philip Lewis]

hmmm... i have the opposite feelings towards them. i figure if they can have one person covering 4 checkouts, i'd be glad to load/unload my cart for 1/3[*] the time waiting in line. I'd have to unload to the belt anyway. There is even a chance (HA!) of the supermarket having lower prices because of lower overhead.

[*] the systems do seem to be slower than normal for checking out sometimes... thus the figure isn't 1/4 as you'd expect.

But you keep going to the sales clerk checkouts... that'll keep my self checkout lines open and we'll both be happy. ;)

[Duane Bozarth]

...

I'm w/ Wes...and I don't punch in the credit card data myself, either...

[lgb]

Not only do our Borgs have them the local library now has one. Supposedly puts one library clerk out of a job.

The actual result? If a human doesn't stand there and oversee the device, people pretend to check out and then steal the books.

There's a lot of worse evils in the world, but somehow stealing books from a public library just really irritates me.

[Tim Douglass]

Our library has magnetic strips or something in the books - try to take them without checking out and an alarm sounds.

-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass

[Fly-by-Night CC]

My library has a system like that - though it's policed much like the neighborhood or mall car alarm - hardly anyone even looks up when the alarm goes off. The CDs, cassettes and videos regularly seem to not register with the system when you check them out so the alarm goes off about 30% of the time. I've even had the alarm sound when I return an item.

[Renata]

Ya know, I normally pay rather close attention at the checkout. But, obviously the moment I let my guard down... After spending a fair amount of time picking appliances, and the bulk of the checkout order being the said special order, I probably figured for the additional item I didn't need to have an eagle eye. Silly me.

REnata

[Upscale]

It may be just me, but with every purchase I make, just after paying and getting through the checkout, I always go through the receipt line by line to check prices and amounts. I do this when buying tools, food and anything else that took some cash out of my pocket. At least 10% of the time I find something that needs to be corrected. Easy to do then and there.

[Charles Spitzer]

a new library that just opened near me has rfid on everything. they know if the stack of items you take out is checked out by having a scanner at the exit.

regards, charlie

[Philip Lewis]

[John McCoy]

Renata wrote in news: [e-mail]:

It's not that uncommon for the bar-code scanner to double read on an item, especially if it's a non-flat shape which doesn't get picked up on the first swipe. _Usually_ the sales clerk will notice the double beep and correct it (did you check & see if there was a credit for 1 unit further down the receipt). When it's noisy, tho, they can miss it. It's pretty much up to you to keep an eye on the register, and make sure you don't get double charged.

John

[Vic Baron]

Don't take this the wrong way but what's going on here is you not paying attention to your receipts. Double scanning is quite common - sometimes it

*IS* intentional but most times the scanner burps or the checker hesitates during the sweep.

Maybe a lesson learned?

Chances are you'll be able to recover your overcharges.

Vic

[Eric Tonks]

Not to long ago, I checked out at the lumber aisle with some plywood and some small items. I told the cashier about the items on the bottom of the cart, she bent over with the handheld scanner to scan the small items. A couple of weeks later some of the items were surplus and I went to return them. When I located the cash register receipt with the plywood on it, I found that the items that I wanted to return were not on the receipt. She apparently didn't scan them.

[James "Cubby" Culbertson]

I dunno. Seems to me if I was overcharged $45 I prolly would have noticed pretty quickly!

[Leon]

I gotta say, I think I would have noticed being billed double price had I been paying attention at the check out. When someone is charging and taking my money I tend to pay attention. At this point unless there were other complaints it is your word against theirs.

[Doug Miller]

So you simply gave them back, right?

[Duane Bozarth]

Renata wrote: ...

eye. > Silly me.

I'm certain it's not a case of deliberate attempt to commit fraud by "the Evil BORG" as your first posting seems to imply...given the number of items rung up by checkers, it's not surprising there are errors and that you happened to have two occurrences in near proximity to each other is simply chance.