Over-charged yet again…!
Not long ago I wrote a blog after being over-charged in a well-known supermarket. It wasn’t the first time either, so I reckoned it was time to go public, or as public as my blog reaches. Here’s the link if you would like to read my thoughts on that: http://www.morethanhoneymoon.com/blog/morethanblog.php/?p=225
I still doubt if everyone is checking their receipts each time they go shopping but there are good reasons to do so because I have yet again been over-charged, by the same outlet as the one referred to in the link above. And on this occasion I was over-charged for an item that I didn’t even purchase – Apples!
Would you expect that? I didn’t, to be bluntly frank. This particular incident is one I haven’t seen before and really caught me by surprise and I was lucky to have purchased so few items, otherwise I might have missed it on a much longer list. The money, $3.50 is not a large sum but it amounted to over 6% more on my bill and that’s my main concern. All these little amounts accumulate into one large amount, and as I’ve said before, the mistake always benefits the supermarket, never the customer. And many of these shops are open all day, practically, well 15 hours a day to be precise. That’s a lot of time for mistakes to occur and a lot of extra ‘FREE’ cash.
So that’s the money argument, but there’s yet another money argument, if you believe in the old saying – ‘time is money’. Each time you are over-charged you have to wait, hover around the busy checkout waiting for someone to give up a refund. In the scheme of things, it’s not a long time but it could take up to 3 minutes. If you think that’s a short time, try this: Get a stop watch and time 3 minutes, don’t speak, don’t watch TV, don’t read, don’t eat – do nothing except breathe and watch the seconds tick by. Doctors in Hong Kong for example, are so adept at prescribing the same ‘quick fix’ for almost all ailments that the average consultancy time is probably around 3 minutes and the cost for this would be at least $300, so add in a bit of administration for filing and then call in the next patient, say in 3 minutes time, that’s 6 minutes per patient – 10 per hour. It’s possible. So time is money. The same can be applied to other forms of business, the fast-food chains being a prime example of fast turn-around of customers. Their hourly rate is pretty healthy. So like many other places, time = money.
So each time you are over-charged in a supermarket it is also costing you time. On this latest occasion I was not in a hurry and I will say I feel sorry for the staff on the front lines because they are the ones facing the customers. The managers, the ones seen wearing shiny suits are rarely seen speaking to customers and could do better to be more ruthless in checking the electronic pricing tags and point-of-sale units for defects. As I write this, there is competition on the way to my area of Hong Kong and although the new chain is likely to be no different to the current one, there is a possibility that the ones in the shiny suits at both markets might be a bit more pro-active to keep their respective operations in ship shape and hopefully serve the customers better by not over-charging them!!
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