How do you react when you suspect the cashier has "undercharged" you?

[DireWolfSpirit]

Do you question them whether they've missed an item or two?

Do you chalk it up to "a wash" because you suspect you've probably

been overcharged a few times and didn't catch it?

Say nothing and giddily exit quick and quiet?

Insist they recheck your order?

How do you react when this happens?

[Xray the Enforcer]

If it's at a shop, I'll mention it and let the cashier take it from there.

If it's at a bar, I just assume that the bartender bought me a round and I tip extra-generously.

[Theda Baratheon]

Go back ans twwll then they made misyake happens to me i dnt mind somtimes i do make mistrake is all good they will fix it

[Theda Baratheon]

I gave man wronf change today ir waf fine i fix it straight away

[Arch-MaesterPhilip]

It depends on where it happens and who does it. I'll speak up most of the time because I'd feel guilty if someone got in trouble because I was dishonest. But every now and then I keep my mouth shut and go about my business.

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

On bonfire night a stand was selling doughnuts for £2.50 for 4. I paid with a fiver and received £7.50 change and the doughnuts (the vendor obviously thought I'd given her a tenner). Normally, I would have told her and given the money back, but there was a large crowd and I no longer had her attention, so I left with the money and gave some of it to a homeless man (who gave me a bus ticket in return) and the rest to a guide dog organisation I believe.

That's the only time I've noticed being undercharged.

[S John]

Most likely, I wouldn't have noticed either.

[Fragile Bird]

Maybe when I was young and poor I may have ignored it, I can't really remember such occasions, but when it's happened to me any time for years now I have pointed it out to the cashier 99% of the time. I have gone out to the car after buying my groceries and found a missed bulb of garlic and was not going to run back in and say, sorry, here's this 29 cent item I forgot. I have pointed out large items the cashier has missed at the bottom of the cart. I figure I have thrown away lousy food items enough times that the grocery store is far ahead, like earlier this week when I started to cut open a cabbage and found that all the leaves as you peeled them off were edged with mould. Since I'm allergic to mould, I tossed it, couldn't be bothered to go back to the grocery store and demand my money back. And the amount of beautiful but virtually inedible fruit I've bought over the years and that has been thrown out is pretty extensive.

The only occasion I can remember happened when I was a university student and my mom and I were shopping at a large department store at an end-of-winter clearance sale and I found a leather coat for dirt cheap (we were quite cash poor at the time), $25 iirc correctly, and while standing in line and looking at the tag I was wondering if it was actually $75, or maybe it was $125 but the 1 ran into the dollar sign, either of which was a lot of money 35 years ago, but the cashier looked at the tag and rang it up as $25. When we got home my mother and I really looked closely and thought it said $75 (or $125, can't remember), but hey, we could have been wrong, and we figured the clerk knew the markdowns better than we did.

More bothersome to me is seeing other people's thefts. Young men who buy sliced meats at the deli counter, who go hide in an aisle and open the package and a bag of buns and make and eat a sandwich, and the walk out abandoning their shopping cart. Once my mom saw a young woman who bought an expensive cut of meat and slipped it under stuff in her baby stroller. She ended up behind her at the cashier and did not speak up, because she was torn over thinking about how poor we had been when we were babies and the theft. It always bothered her conscience, though.

[DireWolfSpirit]

I suspect many consumers would be shocked to find out how often they are overcharged.

They did an investigation of many retailers years ago and

discovered it was way more prevalent than most realized.

Kmart Assigns Monitors To Prevent Overcharging

October 18, 1994

Kmart Corp. has agreed to assign a checkout monitor in each of its stores to prevent the kind of overcharging that occurred during an investigation by the Michigan Attorney General. The Troy, Mich.-based retailer also said it would place warning signs at each register informing consumers they can get a refund of the overcharge amount and an additional payment of $1 to $5 whenever an overcharge occurs. Investigators making purchases at Kmart stores as part of a statewide inspection found that computer scanners read incorrect charges 20 percent of the time, and most often the error favored the stores, Frank Kelley, Michigan's attorney general, said at a news conference.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Tell them. If I'm right I pay what's due.

[Theda Baratheon]

I repeatedlt undercharge ppl some old cds dvds scam diffrent to back wnd front so i scan cheaper barcode if they nice or normal/more expensiv barcode if they rude

[Wise Fool]

As a cashier, we don't really care anymore. Human motivations are a dull and alien concept. You want money? fine. You give money? Fine. You need me to physically throw you out of the building? FINE MOTHERFUCKER.

But yeah, sometimes I get those nice, well--meaning souls who want me to charge them that crucial 1.99/lb for that one apple rather than a criminally-low 99c/lb. It means nothing. Life is despair and finite.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Regarding those answers where some of you said "it depends".

I think I know that experience.

I remember getting some of those gas station nachos a few years back and running into one of those

obstinate type cashiers. The type of personality that a few of you mentioned that might sway sway you to

say "forget about it" and just leave or to swipe the CD for the higher price ( if it were a rude

customer).

I make my nachos and try to turn the cheese drip thingy off.

Only it doesn't want to stop oozing out! I'm like "holy sh*t it's gonna make a mess it wont stop."

So I'm like fidgeting with this thing, tapping it and what not and I'm looking at this 10# bag of melted goo

that's now coming out like the Niagara Falls.

I'm thinking wow this is a mess, I better tell the clerk right?

So I go I go up to the counter,

and inform the lady that there's somethng wrong with the cheese drip thingy on the nacho machine.

She cuts me off and very curtly says "No, theres nothing wrong with it!"

Okay I said and walked away.

I couldn't resist looking back over as the cheese was beginning to dribble over the edge of the bowl i put

down to temporarily stem the inevitable mess that was coming.

But hey who am I to argue with this know it all that can finish and correct my sentences?

I guess the retail experience

has brought the pettyness out of me a few times.

I think it may be a similar phenom to road rage,

perhaps road rage and the ugly shopper are sort of cousins?

[IamMe90]

I definitely get giddy

[Castellan]

If its for a small amount I really wouldn't feel guilty and if they were particularly obnoxious I would be very pleased.

If its for a lot of money, or its not much is a place I know I'll be going back to, I'll check with them. Yes, 'going back to' is included because I wouldn't want to be known to be dishonest.

and often I think this might be the situation so I say nothing:

"But yeah, sometimes I get those nice, well--meaning souls who want me to charge them that crucial 1.99/lb for that one apple rather than a criminally-low 99c/lb. It means nothing. Life is despair and finite."

[BigFatCoward]

On bonfire night a stand was selling doughnuts for £2.50 for 4. I paid with a fiver and received £7.50 change and the doughnuts (the vendor obviously thought I'd given her a tenner). Normally, I would have told her and given the money back, but there was a large crowd and I no longer had her attention, so I left with the money and gave some of it to a homeless man (who gave me a bus ticket in return) and the rest to a guide dog organisation I believe.

That's the only time I've noticed being undercharged.

that's theft that is.

there are a lot of dishonest people on this board reading the thread. i was undercharged for some beers at a restaurant recently, i owned up, and 10 minutes later found twice that much on the floor outside my building, life sorts shit out.

[The Marquis de Leech]

that's theft that is.

Yep.

[Deedles]

I find I'm undercharged way more than I'm overcharged and I bring it to the sales persons attention.

Overcharging, if it happens, tends to be a different price than that advertised, and as I'm not particularly price sensitive it tends to not bother me. I want object a, I will pay for it. The odd time I bring it up but mostly I let it go. The other is where I'm brought completely the wrong bill, e.g. 3 starters and 4 mains for a table of two.

When I'm undercharged it tends to be in restaurants where a drink or side is left off. I always draw the servers attention and about half the time they let it do, more particularly if it's a drink.

I'd feel bad if I didn't say anything.

[Isalie]

Tell them, pay for what you bought and be done with it.

[Seli]

I think all cases I remember involve receiving back too much change, and I do tell the cashier in those cases.