If supermarkets and some big box retailers like BJ's Wholesale Club get their way on Beacon Hill, shoppers may soon have to play "Guess the Price" in the food aisle. These companies are lobbying lawmakers to pass an anti-consumer bill (H. 4089) that would allow them to remove price stickers from grocery items and substitute do-it-yourself price scanners in some store aisles. The bill has already passed the House.
While a price sticker is about as low-tech as you can get, no one has yet invented a better way to disclose prices. The electronic scanners that retailers are proposing to install — only one every 5,000 square feet — create a major inconvenience for already harried shoppers. Since you can't always find or trust often outdated shelf signs, do you really want to hunt for the one scanner in the store that will print prices, or lug a cartful of groceries two aisles over just to verify or compare prices?
Worse, the very scanning machines that stores propose to install have repeatedly been proved to be unreliable. Consumer World tested nearly 150 of them in over a dozen stores like CVS, Target, Walmart and Home Depot, and found that 70 percent of them failed to function properly or otherwise comply with state law. It makes no sense to extend this failed technology to our supermarkets too.
Adding insult to injury, some notorious violators of the current pricing rules have been mysteriously written out of the new law. Warehouse clubs like BJ's will no longer be subject to any inspections whatsoever on the accuracy of prices on grocery items, on price signs, or on do-it-yourself scanners in their food department. Sure sounds like Beacon Hill politics favoring the few over the many.
Watching out for shoppers, consumer advocates recommended dozens of consumer protections that never made it into the bill, such as requiring stores to test aisle scanners daily, authorizing fines for broken machines at other types of retailers, requiring all aisle scanners to print price stickers, and improving enforcement by giving customers an incentive to report non-functioning scanners or outdated price signs.
By not requiring price stickers, retailers and legislators ignore consumer sentiment on the issue. Two-thirds of shoppers in a survey released by WBZ's Call for Action in 2009 said that having the price right on the item is their preferred method of price disclosure. Over 90 percent disapproved of a plan to install do-it-yourself scanners and remove prices from items. And 95 percent said they wished that stores like Target, CVS and Home Depot went back to putting prices on items.
For shoppers, nothing beats the benefits of the good old fashioned price sticker: it makes it easy to find the price, to compare prices around the store, and to tally one's basket while shopping. In addition, it is the surest way to catch overcharges at the checkout or after going home. How in the world can you check if you were charged the right price if you cannot compare the price marked on the item with the price displayed on the register or shown on your sales receipt?
Everywhere we turn, we are bombarded with ever more sophisticated retail pricing strategies and gimmicks. Shoppers need more and clearer price information, not less.
While retailers push for less price disclosure, the Senate should push back to make sure Massachusetts sticks with what works best for shoppers.