Associated Press
Friday Jul 3, 2015
Whole Foods Market is apologizing to its shoppers for incorrect pricing, a week after a New York investigation found that the natural food grocer routinely overcharged for prepackaged fruits, vegetables and deli meats.
“Straight up, we made some mistakes,” said co-CEO Walter Robb, as he stood beside co-CEO John Mackey in a YouTube video posted Wednesday. “We want to own that.”
Robb and Mackey said that the pricing mistakes were unintentional and that the company will increase its training at stores around the county. Going forward, Whole Foods will give items away for free if customers discover they were overcharged. “We apologize to our customers for any discrepancies that may have occurred,” the company said in blog post.
Last week, New York’s Department of Consumer Affairs said it was expanding its investigation after finding that Whole Foods stores in the city regularly ripped customers off, including overcharging $14.84 for a package of coconut shrimp and $4.85 for eight chicken tenders. The department tested 80 types of prepackaged items and found all of them had mislabeled weights. The investigation focused on eight stores in the city.
In a statement, Commissioner Julie Menin said that the Department of Consumer Affairs was “gratified” that Whole Foods admitted to issues with its prepackaged food labels.
Mistakes are made on both sides of the ledger in this business. They got caught and admitted it, nothing wrong with that. We’re lucky to have them, King’s, and Stop and Shop in our backyards. I’ll take that convenience any day.
I don’t care if they cheated. Before they came on the scene you couldn’t get an apple without that poisonous chemical. I tried and the supermarket managers used to be annoyed.
You couldn’t get no BPA containers of food when you wanted to give your kids foods without that chemical. And all the rest.
It’s everyone else in the industry who is a day late and a dollar short., Hail hail Whole Foods. You know what, people should donate to them; they are so marvellous.
At least they apologized ; that is better than the corporations who poisoned our foods for years and still do.
Whole Foods made us aware of the dangers of antibiotics and hormones and all the rest. Get down on your knees in devotion to them. They made us aware of sooo much. The importance of local foods. The importance of supporting local farmers. at farmers markets.
It is because of Whole Foods that ordinary supermarkets now have an organic section.
Eating the poisons, antibiotics and hormones makes you strong, resilient !
bull shit, they all new the prices are way to hi.
3:23pm – you are joking, correct? You obviously haven’t been around long enough to remember when “organic” meant it was grown in sewage sludge laden with heavy metals… Do you remember the knock-down arguments over the definition of “organic” and the debates about tilth standards. Whole foods didn’t direct these conversation or bring them to the forefront, they commercialized the debate and capitalized on it. Organic foods have always been available although Whole Foods made them easier to get.
And any good that Whole Foods has done does NOT negate the fact that they were stealing from their customers. Yes, STEALING. Warm and fuzzy is nice but criminal is criminal.
can u say a rip off.
I was overcharged by $10, on a 6 dollar piece of fish today. Their system just rung up the 250% inflated price. Had I not been watching the screen at the moment the item was scanned, of course I’d never have noticed. The cashier insisted the $16.60 price was correct, after she scanned it 3 times. I finally convinced her it was wrong, when I pointed out that 1/2lb. piece of fish was priced at $11.99/lb–or a sale price of $16.60+, was impossible. She corrected the error, and when I tried to report the problem to customer service (this overcharging is certainly affecting other customers), I got nothing but arrogant attitude from the “customer service” team member. Rather than apologize on behalf of the store, she demanded with a stony face, “Where’s the fish?!”.
Considering that I’ll have to monitor every transaction in the future to assure I’m not being cheated, combined with the arrogance and defensiveness of the person assigned to resolve customer problems, I don’t know if I’ll be shopping there again. Problem is, no one compares to their selection of quality organic produce, fresh fish, breads, etc. It’s really a dilemma.