THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 1, 1994 TAG: 9410010009
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: GEORGE HEBERT
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
How much?
Sometimes the label on the grocery or sundry shelf will tell you. That is: what you will be charged at the check-out counter for an item in supermarkets or similar self-service establishments.
But sometimes the price plaque is missing or has slipped over into some space where it doesn't belong. The routine is all too familiar. You puzzle over the missing information and decide you'll have to run down the price yourself. You look out in the aisles for somebody who works for the store. Maybe you find a stock-wise employee. Maybe not. You may be compelled to head up front to a service booth, often waiting in line until a supervisor can look up the price.
Sometimes the shelf-price is not merely missing or misplaced but plain wrong - out of date or in error for some other reason. And you may not discover this until the check-out clerk has about finished with your tally. The 79-cent can of soup flashes out at 89 cents on the register screen. You then notice and protest or notice without protest.
Some marketers, alerted to customers' frustration and/or cynicism, make a special effort to post prices that agree with what the bar codes tell the electronic check-out machines - and advertise this effort with strong guarantees against mix-ups.
This kind of thing helps, sure. But there is another way to de-confuse the confused, and avoid having to make amends or give apologies. My wife and I ran across this common-sense aid to shoppers in a general-merchandise store, one of the Target chain, in the Midwest not long ago.
At a convenient point out among the goods racks, we saw a piece of equipment prominently placed on an aisle post. It was one of those bar-code readers, set up for customers instead of store staff. Shoppers could do their own scanning - and see in advance exactly what they would be charged when they checked out.
I don't know how many other merchants around the country have made such scanners available; that was the only place I've seen one. But by rights, installation of this patron-friendly apparatus ought to become a booming trend.
Aside from being provided with a neat solution to a persistent nuisance, the buyer enjoys a little bonus: He or she gets to dabble, for a moment or two, in some of today's mysterious retail high-tech. MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star.
by CNB