County Cites 10 Stores in Overcharges : Consumers: Inspections reveal that computerized checkout scanners were not adjusted to give advertised sale prices.

Ventura County inspectors have cited 10 grocery and drug stores whose computerized scanners overcharged customers by as much as 33%.

The companies were given citations after routine inspections revealed that scanners hadn’t been adjusted to give advertised sale prices.

Since July, when the new fiscal year began, five of the stores have paid fines after they were convicted of misdemeanor offenses in Ventura County Municipal Court.

They include a Target store in Oxnard, a Ralphs supermarket in Thousand Oaks, Sav-On drugstores in Camarillo and Oxnard and a Vons grocery store in Camarillo. The companies paid fines ranging from $100 to $500.

William Korth, manager of the county Weights and Measures Department, said the stores were cited for charging a higher price than advertised.

Cases are pending against five other stores that have been accused of overcharging customers because of errors in the scanner system: the K mart store on Arneill Road in Camarillo, K marts in Oxnard and Santa Paula, and Thrifty drugstores in Oxnard and Camarillo.

In one case pending against the K mart on Channel Islands Boulevard in Oxnard, a bath rug that had been advertised for $28.47 sold for 33% more at $37.97.

On a purchase of $94.54 for five miscellaneous household items at the same store, an inspector reported that the store had overcharged by $28.74.

Korth attributed some of the errors to lean economic times.

“The only thing we can think of is, with the recession and the tight times, the stores have cut down on their help” to change price codes in the scanners each day, he said.

Overcharging often goes undetected because prices are not listed on the shelves and customers do not check their receipts, Korth said. If undetected, continued overcharging would result in losses of hundreds of thousand of dollars to consumers, he said.

A Target store in Oxnard, for instance, charged $3 more than the $14.99 advertised price for a pack of 15 golf balls.

If the store sold 15 packs each day, an inspector wrote in a report, customers would be overcharged $16,425 during the course of a year.

Consumers who have been overcharged may take their receipts back to the store for a refund, representatives of the companies said.

Inspectors check each store in the county once or twice a year or in response to complaints, Korth said. If a store has been cited, inspectors visit more often, he said.

In some cases, supervisors failed to communicate problems with the system to their workers, Korth said.

He discovered one problem when he was painting his house. He bought paint on a Sunday at a Santa Paula K mart, only to have a clerk ring up a figure that was twice the marked price.

“I said, ‘You better get that price corrected.’ I went to the same store, and it was still not corrected on Tuesday,” he said.

Some managers of cited stores declined to discuss their computerized scanning systems, saying only that they have tried to correct the problems.

But Erwin Ortega, manager of the Thrifty drugstore on Arneill Road in Camarillo, said his workers simply made a mistake.

“It was our mistake. We didn’t do the price changes that we had to do. It was just our fault,” he said.

However, he said he still believes that the computerized system used to ring up items is usually accurate. “Our system is very good,” he said. “We usually have satisfied customers.”

Jeff Bick, manager of a K mart on Arneill Road in Camarillo, declined to discuss a pending citation against the store. But he also backed up the computerized scanning system.

“We have an accurate scanning rate at this store,” he said. “It’s accurate as far as we’re concerned.”