Our Chris Willis went shopping with a hidden camera and found out you could be getting ripped off.
The checkout scanner is a device that makes your life easier, but at what price?
"Sometimes, there's actually a price tag on the item, and then of course, there's the scanned price," Better Business Bureau Vice President Erin Jones said.
Trillions are spent each year in retail stores. Electronic scanners tally most of that money.
So the question is: do you trust them with your money? Maybe you shouldn't.
Thanks to budget cuts from the 2003 Legislature, nobody is keeping regular tabs on the accuracy of checkout scanners.
We found that people are getting ripped off.
So we decided to check them for you. We took our undercover cameras to big box retailers and grocery stores in Central Texas.
What we found may surprise you because if we're being taken, the odds are so are you.
Clearance items can really cost you. "On sale" can really mean a sneaky full price. You're about to see who's watching out for your bottom line.
Stephen Pahl is the Regulatory Programs Branch Chief for the Department of Agriculture.
"The scanner itself doesn't cause the inaccuracy because it's just a device that scans something, and it spits out the price it has scanned," Pahl said.
It's his job to make sure you're paying the right price, but lawmakers cut his random scanner checks.
The agency now acts only when a consumer complains.
"A program that we have to, you know, deter those that may be a little unscrupulous," Pahl said.
Store managers don't usually allow our cameras to come in and check things out so we used a hidden camera and went shopping.
The first stop is the Wal-Mart on 183 and I-35. We went straight to the clearance rack, which is supposedly where the best deals are, right?
We pulled a child's sweater set off the rack, which was marked $9. On the big clearance aisle, we found a halogen flood light for $3.
We also found a baseball batting glove in the 50-cents clearance bin. We ended up paying more than 20 times that price for the batting glove.
"Consumers may not be double-checking their receipts," Pahl said.
But if you do double-check your receipts, you could catch the blatant mistakes. We checked our receipts, and we found mistakes.
Of the 18 items we purchased at the Wal-Mart on 183 and I-35, three were scanned incorrectly, but the overcharge was enormous.
The sweater set scanned at $13 -- an overcharge of $4.
The halogen flood light scanned at $7.47. That's an overcharge of $4.47.
Our deal of the day turned into the biggest rip-off. The batting glove in the 50-cent clearance bin scanned at $12.46. That's nearly 23 times the sale price. It's an overcharge of $11.96.
Our 18 items totaled $70.62, which if the scanner was accurate, should've been $50.19. It was an overcharge of $20.43.
"There are many different places where pricing is shown," Jones said.
The Better Business Bureau says they're not flooded with scanner complaints because they believe consumers don't even know they're being overcharged.
"In Texas, they have about an 85-percent accuracy rate," Pahl said.
It was better, but still inaccurate when we took our hidden cameras to the grocery store.
We looked for items specifically marked "on sale" at the Fiesta on I-35. Of the 12 items we purchased, one was incorrect.
The Zip Lock bags marked "on sale" at $2.49 scanned at $2.69.
It was a 20-cent difference. If it happened to us, it likely happened to the thousands of other shoppers that day, and that can add up to huge profits for them and money out of your pocket.
"We just don't tolerate that here in Texas, so it's a zero tolerance in Texas," Pahl said.
It's fair to mention, we also went to Randalls, H-E-B and Target.
Their scanners got it right.
Wal-Mart sent us this statement, "We stock hundreds of thousand of items and can make more than 5,000 price changes per week. We strive for 100 percent price accuracy. We do audit our stores to make sure our pricing is as accurate as possible."
This is a problem you, the consumer, have complete control over. Check your receipt. Match it with the sale prices.
If you are overcharged, you can call 1-800-TELL-TDA . They move quickly and will get out to check the scanners immediately.
