Lucky Corrects Sale Price on Vitamins

Lucky Stores Inc. officials admitted Tuesday they had made a mistake when they cut prices on one line of vitamins with English language labels and failed to cut the prices on the same line labeled in Spanish.

Twenty California stores carry the Spanish-language version of Nature’s Bounty vitamins. In Ventura County, the Spanish-labeled vitamins were found at Lucky stores in Simi Valley, Newbury Park, Camarillo and one Oxnard store.

Lucky cut prices on the Nature’s Bounty line of vitamins Dec. 6 and the mistake occurred when the store chain’s food buyer failed to realize that the products were the same, despite their different labels, said Meredith Anderson, a spokeswoman for the food chain.

“It’s a very basic human error that resulted in this pricing discrepancy,” Anderson said. “It fell through the cracks. At this moment, we are working on upgrades to our computer system to prevent this from happening again.”

A 100-tablet bottle of 500-milligram Vitamin C that was originally priced for both labels at $3.69, was sold for $1.84 in the English version, a savings of $1.85. The Spanish version was also put on sale but at a price of $3.25.

Other items incorrectly priced included a 100-tablet bottle of 400 I.U. Vitamin E, 100-tablet bottles of 1000-milligram Vitamin C, 90-tablet bottles of 500-milligram Vitamin C, 50-tablet bottles of 1000 I.U. Vitamin E, 120-tablet bottles of Beta Carotene, 100-tablet bottles of Bounty Bears, a children’s multivitamin, and 100-tablet bottles of Multi-Day and Multi-Day with iron.

Anderson said the prices on all nine items would be corrected immediately and the sale was being extended by almost four weeks to enable customers to take advantage of the new prices.

She also said that any customer who purchased a bottle of the Spanish-labeled products after Dec. 6 would get a refund with a proof of purchase.