Ralphs Accused of Bilking Customers : Courts: The city attorney alleges that seven stores in the Valley overcharge on 18% of sale items.

Ralphs supermarkets have been cheating consumers throughout the San Fernando Valley and other parts of the county by routinely overcharging them for items that are marked on sale, according to city prosecutors who plan to file criminal charges against the chain today.

The city attorney’s office will file seven criminal cases against Ralphs and its store managers alleging that the supermarket chain has been overcharging customers on its “Price Breaker” items in the Valley, prosecutors said.

During undercover shopping trips over a four-month period recently, according to prosecutors, investigators with the county Department of Weights and Measures found that they ended up paying more for one out of every six sale items when they brought them to the checkout stands.

“This is unacceptable, and it is an illegal business practice,” City Atty. James K. Hahn said. “It is a crime.”

Hahn said the county investigators also made undercover inspections at other major supermarket outlets and “felt there were more inaccuracies at Ralphs” than at the other chains. Most of the criminal charges are misdemeanors, each of which carries a maximum $1,000 in fines and six months in jail, or lesser infractions.

Meanwhile, Ralphs and some of its store managers are set to go to trial today in an unrelated but similar case stemming from alleged overcharging on advertised sale items at supermarkets in Koreatown, the Wilshire District and Hollywood, prosecutors said.

Executives at Ralphs, the third-largest supermarket chain in Southern California, refused to comment specifically on the new complaints, saying the company was still responding to the allegations and that no charges have been filed.

“All I can tell you is that the charges are absolutely ridiculous,” said Jan Charles Gray, general counsel and senior vice president for Ralphs. “They are ludicrous and they are wrong.”

But Deputy City Atty. Don Cocek, who is handling the new cases, said the practice of overcharging on marked sale items appeared to be widespread and systematic. In one case, he said, a county investigator took a $9.99 bottle of wine to the checkout counter, and was charged $12.99. At a Ralphs market in Panorama City, he said, a box of Ralphs’ chocolate doughnuts cost 16% more when passed through the computer scanner than the price marked on the shelf.

“The bottom line is they’re getting ripped off,” Cocek said of the chain’s shoppers. “It’s happening all over the county.”

Cocek said he had no evidence to believe the violations were intentional, and that they may result from the fact that prices for the more than 150 Ralphs stores are dictated by a central computer.

He also said that when customers notice pricing mistakes they are charged the lower price for the item and given a dollar coupon to use toward purchases.

Most supermarkets using computerized pricing systems make mistakes on only 1% to 2% of their products, representatives of consumer watchdog agencies said Tuesday. Cocek said an 18% error rate was found at the Ralphs stores earlier this year and that it mirrored the incidence of overpricing that county district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Diego say they found at Ralphs stores more than five years ago. A civil complaint alleging overpricing at the chain was filed in that case and Ralphs settled--without admitting wrongdoing--by agreeing to pay $71,000 in fines in September, 1987.

Over the past few years, according to Cocek and other authorities, Ralphs has been accused of similar pricing violations in courts in Pomona, Whittier, Compton, Alhambra, Pasadena, Los Cerritos, East Los Angeles, Long Beach and the South Bay. Some of the cases are still pending.

Gray, the Ralphs lawyer, said those charges also were the result of county investigators who go looking for problems.

Nahan Gluck, assistant director of weights and measures for Los Angeles County, also said Ralphs appeared to have more of a problem with overcharging on marked sale items than the other chains. And Cocek said other chains such as Lucky and Hughes have “put measures into place to double-check the accuracy of their computers” to make sure overpricing is kept to a minimum.

“If the other chains can do it, it seems to me that Ralphs can do the same,” Cocek said. “But it doesn’t seem to me that they’ve gotten the message.”

He said that because fines are so low, “maybe for Ralphs it is the cost of doing business.” According to Cocek, the Ralphs stores to be cited in the complaints are: 18340 Van Nuys Blvd., Panorama City; 9750 Woodman Ave., Pacoima; 17250 Saticoy St., Reseda; 17800 Ventura Blvd., Encino; 20060 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills; 8201 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Canoga Park; and 22741 Victory Blvd., Canoga Park.

Because of technological advances that make consumers rely on computer scanners rather than price tags, the vast majority of the alleged violations go undetected by shoppers, consumer advocates said. Many of the discrepancies are too small to notice, but Cocek said they can add up to substantial losses for shoppers, and big savings for Ralphs in the most competitive market for food stores in the nation.

“The economy is bad enough as it is,” he said, “and even nickels and dimes are a big deal.”