Customers can’t always pay the price they see

Times Media consumer writer Wendy Knowler writes a weekly column on issues affecting consumers. If you have something you would like her to investigate, send your queries to: consumer@knowler.co.za Follow her on Twitter: @wendyknowler

CAN you demand that a store gives you a product at the advertised or displayed price?

Sadly, that has to be a “yes and no” answer.

That “price you see is the price you pay” line was devised and advertised by the government many years ago when VAT was first introduced.

By law, retailers had to advertise VAT inclusive prices – and still do. So that line was intended to impress on consumers that no retailer could add tax to an advertised price.

It wasn’t meant to give consumers the impression that if a retailer has made a genuine and obvious mistake with a price, they have to honour it and sell the item to them at that wrong price.

But many consumers assume this to be the case.

The Consumer Protection Act (CPA) gives retailers an “out” if the price was an “obvious” mistake.

It states: “If a price as displayed contains an inadvertent and obvious error, the supplier is not bound by it – after correcting the error in the displayed price and taking reasonable steps in the circumstances to inform consumers to whom the erroneous price may have been displayed of the error and the correct price.”

Imtiaz Mansoor saw a pair of shoes marked at R62 at a sportswear store in the Gateway mall, Umhlanga, two weeks ago, but when he went to pay for them, the cashier called her manager and then refused to sell them to him at that price.

I daresay few would argue that a branded sport shoe with a price tag of just R62 was not an “obvious” mistake. Not so in Gisela Edwards’ case. “I have just walked out of ZARA Sandton City store hopping mad!” she told In Your Corner in March.

“I found a lovely pair of black trousers with tag marked R479 – the last pair in my size.

“When I got to the teller, she told me the price was not correct – the pants were marked R629 on the system.

“The manager came over and said the teller was correct – the price was not R479, he said, even though the tag was properly attached to the pants and read R479.”

I took up her case with ZARA’s customer service team, pointing out that a R479 price tag on a pair of pants couldn’t be regarded as an obvious mistake.

Responding, the company said there was no “general rule” on what constituted an obvious error, but since the CPA stated that if there was a pricing mistake, the lower price should be honoured, Edwards would be invited to return to the store where she could buy the pants in question for R479.

“We have clarified pricing errors with managers in the Sandton store, who will take the necessary measures to avoid similar situations in the future,” ZARA SA said.

Edwards has since returned to the store and bought the pants at the lower price, commending one of the managers, Siphiwe Sophazi, for his help.

“He was most professional and pleasant to deal with,” she said.

The National Consumer Commission (NCC) is to launch a price display awareness campaign ahead of this year’s festive season with the tag line: “Pay the price you see. See the price to pay.”

“The messages that we want to communicate are that prices should be displayed, prices should be visible, and they should be in the currency of South Africa,” Commissioner Ebrahim Mohamed stated in the NCC’s latest newsletter.

Take note, all those biltong sellers who don’t put prices on their displays.

I anticipate that “Pay the price you see” will entrench the confusion, given that consumers don’t always have the legal right to pay the price they see.

Ebrahim also slammed the retail sector’s introduction of multiple currency display prices – Pounds, Australian Dollars, US Dollars and Rand prices displayed on the same tag – as having “a potential to confuse a vulnerable consumer”. Check-out price check

What if you get to a supermarket check-out and your chosen jar of coffee scans at a higher price than was displayed on the shelf label?

The store is legally obliged to honour the shelf price – if you are sharp enough to remember it and notice the discrepancy.

But two retailers have gone a step further with policies that compensate customers when the shelf and till prices aren’t the same.

At Woolworths, if a product does not scan correctly at the till, for example if a promotional price does not reflect, the customer gets the product free, and any other items of the same product at the lower price. At Pick n Pay, the customer gets double the difference between the right and wrong price.