Wow, this sparked a memory! 50 years ago I worked in the readymade drapery department at Montgomery Ward's. At some point the price on some packaged draperies had been raised. The shelf placard with the available sizes had the correct prices, as did most of the packages. The customer and I had to rummage through the shelf to find her enough of the size she needed. Up at the cash register I started ringing things in and discovered that several packages, probably buried at the back of the shelf, had the old lower price. I pointed that out to her and that I was charging her the lower price on those marked that way, and the higher, correct price on those marked that way. Next shift I worked the department manager let me know the customer had come back to get the lower price on everything. I still think that was pushy when I thought I was doing her a favor!
Twelve years later Cliff and I were grocery shopping. The shelf price on some wine, said one thing and the bottles had stickers with a lower price. Not like we’d cleared the shelf out, so not sure what triggered the clerk to peel the incorrect price off our couple of bottles and charge us the shelf price. If there was a bar code scanner, I’m surprised he would have even noticed the sticker. Anyway we balked at having him remove price tags and charge us more. He stood his ground, we walked out leaving a week’s worth of groceries at the register. I cried when we got to the car because we still had to go somewhere else to shop for groceries.
We fired off a snail mail to the corporate office. I am unsure if we got a response, it certainly wasn’t an invitation to come back and get some free groceries! A couple weeks later Cliff told the story to work cronies at lunchtime (actually this makes me think we got a letter of apology that prompted him to tell the story) and come to find out one woman’s son worked at that store. Apparently the wrath of corporate was visited upon them and they were told to forever after honor sticker prices.
