Hi OzBargainers, earlier this month, my wife was doing our monthly grocery shopping at Woolworths, while I watched our 3-year-old daughter at the mall. It was a warm day, and my daughter asked for ice cream. So, I went to Coles in the same mall and bought a 4-pack of Peter's drumsticks, enjoying 2 cones myself.
I then received a call from my wife asking me to come to Woolworths to help with the scanning. When I arrived, I realized she had forgotten to pick up my Up&Go drink. I left the half-eaten box of drumsticks in the trolley and grabbed my flavoured milk from the store.
Later that day, after we got home, I found out that my wife had scanned the ice cream box at Woolworths as well. The price at Coles was $4.50, while Woolworths charged $9.50. I decided I would return to the store on my next trip to rectify this.
Today, I spoke with the in-store manager and explained our mistake. She informed me that they couldn’t issue a refund because Coles and Woolworths sell many similar products, and she could have assisted me if I had contacted them on the same day. I was curious, though—since Woolworths is a large retailer, shouldn’t their inventory be recorded via the barcodes of product batches? Wouldn't this allow them to distinguish their products from those sold by other retailers?
Guess lesser weight doesn't trigger an alert, it only flags when more than expected weight is detected.
I once had grapes scanned twice, the system allowed it without complaints. Went to a different but closer Woolworths to rectify, they refused to help, claiming discrepancies in their inventory. What BS! As if they were going to count the grapes.
Anyway, went back to the original Woolworths a week later, they refunded the double scan with minimum fuss.
Another time the self checkout machine hung after selecting a payment method, was partially paid using container vouchers, still $5 to pay by card. The assistant knew that he couldn't re-scan the vouchers, it will create a different problem if he was to re-scan the items at another checkout. So he said don't worry about it.
The point is they can exercise discretion to correct certain errors, if few dollars they say they can't help, it is because they don't want to help.
Perhaps reach out to their social media accounts via DM, explain the situation, show them receipts, credit card transactions, see if they can help.