Pak 'n Save apologises to customers overcharged

Pak 'n Save apologised after a number of unhappy consumers called out the supermarket. Photo / The Northland Age

Pak 'n Save has apologised to its Kaitaia shoppers after a number of unhappy consumers called out the supermarket chain for "misleading" prices.

Te Tai Tokerau MP Kelvin Davis said he was glad to hear the supermarket had apologised for the price discrepancies.

General manager for Foodstuff Retail North Island Doug Cochrane said confusion had occurred when staff had begun to change ticket prices on Sunday, a day prior to the specials beginning.

"The store is still investigating how long this has been occurring, but we understand it is only across two departments (chilled and frozen) where the promotional prices were changed early.

"I would like to apologise unreservedly to our customers in Kaitaia who while they were charged the correct price may have been misled by incorrect shelf pricing. Store processes have been immediately changed and I would like to assure our customers this error will not reoccur."

Last week the Commerce Commission was called in to deal with complaints of consumers being consistently overcharged.

A customer, who does not wish to be identified, said he noticed in March that he had been overcharged more than $20 for wine.

Davis began to investigate the price discrepancies at the supermarket last week and today said it was "inappropriate" to have differing pricing on a product.

"I shop there all the time along with the rest of the community and it is just unacceptable for people to be charged a different price to what is advertised, they just need to make sure its sorted," he said.

While Davis said he didn't believe compensation was an option, he said some sort of good-will gesture would be nice.

"I'm not sure how you would go about measuring who would get compensation, but maybe they could have some good-will gesture along the way."

Davis' office had been collecting shopping receipts from concerned customers since last week to establish the scale of the problem and was gearing up to approach Pak 'n Save. However, Davis said it looked like he no longer had to.

"It looks like everything has sort of been sorted out. That Facebook video that lady did I think really handled things pretty effectively," he said. "If people still believe they're getting a raw deal they can drop the receipts off [to the electoral office] and we will have a look at them and make an approach to Pak 'n Save if we deem it necessary."

Cochrane said it appeared the error was localised to the Kaitaia store and no other stores had similar practices.

One Kaitaia shopper, who made and uploaded a video to Facebook couldn't understand why price tickets stated one price and were scanning at the check out as another.

"If you're going to advertise something and it doesn't come true then who's the one at fault? Us, or them?," the woman said in the video. "They're changing all the tickets - they changed them on Sunday - it's a bit early to do that. If I can see that it says $3.79 doesn't that mean for me, as the consumer, it's $3.79?"