'Customers are being duped': how murky grocery sales tactics are squeezing some Kroger shoppers [View all]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/may/14/kroger-supermarket-sales-tactics

‘Customers are being duped’: how murky grocery sales tactics are squeezing some Kroger shoppers

Kroger stores in multiple states have overcharged customers by listing expired sale tags and then ringing up regular prices – a practice that adds extra burdens on struggling US families

Ted Genoways, Michael Hudson, Derek Kravitz and Theodore Ross
Wed 14 May 2025 06.00 EDT

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When they tried to save money by buying stuff on sale, they said, many of the discounts vanished when Kroger rang up their carts at checkout. Personal pizzas posted as on sale for $1 a piece rang up for $1.25 each. An 8oz jar of minced garlic listed at the low price of $2.49 cost $3.99 at checkout – a 60% jump.

“Almost every single time I go in the store, the listed price of an item is NOT what rings up at the register,” Allison Hadfield, who home schools the couple’s two children, wrote in December in a complaint to Ohio’s attorney general. “I want Kroger to stop screwing over people especially when they are the only store in town!”

The family’s experiences are not an isolated problem involving a single store, an investigation of the supermarket giant’s pricing practices by the Guardian US, Consumer Reports and the Food & Environment Reporting Network has found.

Kroger stores in multiple states, the investigation has revealed, show a pattern of overcharging customers by frequently listing expired sale prices on the shelves and then ringing up the regular prices at checkout – a practice that adds additional burdens onto American families already struggling under the weight of the soaring costs for eggs, meat and other groceries.

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The shopping tests by the media partners found expired tags that resulted in overcharges in 14 of the 26 stores reviewed in Washington DC and 14 states, including Arizona, Michigan, Oregon, Virginia and Ohio. The tests in March, April and May identified more than 150 items with expired sale tags for which Kroger was charging more than the sale price – producing average overcharges of about $1.70 per item, an 18% markup over the discount price.

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