Everyday money

Nearly half of Aussies robbed at checkout

Aug 17, 2017

Checking over your receipts could save you money.

If you’re anything like the rest of the population, more often than not, you don’t check your receipt after buying groceries.

But a new survey has revealed that two in five of us were overcharged at the till in the past year.

The finder.com.au survey of more than 2,000 Aussies found that one-quarter of us don’t bother checking over their dockets and of those who did, they’d only demand a refund if they’d been overcharged by $10.

Bessie Hassan, finder.com.au money expert said it wasn’t up to grocery staff to spot mistakes, the onus was on customers to challenge errors should one be discovered.

“You might be left out of pocket and not even realise,” she said.

“An advertised discount might fail to be applied or an item might scan twice — whatever the reason, shoppers get overcharged all the time.”

Recently, Woolworths made headlines after a “glitch” withdrew money from customers’ accounts for purchases made months earlier.

But it’s not all bad news for customers: under the Scanning Code of Practice, if an item scans with an incorrect price, depending on the retailer, a customer may be entitled to the item free of charge.

Woolies is the only supermarket giant to honour the code while Coles and discount-supermarket Aldi each has its own version.