Walmart Is Under Fire for Doing This to Shoppers—Look for These 3 Words
One customer is warning others to check their Walmart receipts carefully.
Millions of shoppers rely on Walmart's guaranteed low prices—especially right now as the nation continues to battle high inflation—and have made trips to the mega-retailer a weekly event. But if you're a regular Walmart shopper who is drawn in by the great deals, you'll want to pay extra attention to your receipt the next time you're there. One shopper is now calling out a significant issue, and there are signs it's not an isolated incident. Read on to find out which three words you need to be be on the lookout for when you're shopping at Walmart.
READ THIS NEXT: 5 Warnings to Shoppers From Ex-Walmart Employees.
Walmart has faced backlash from shoppers in the past.
When a company's as large as Walmart is, it's bound to court controversy from time to time.
Back in June, Walmart was sued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for alleged money transfer fraud, with the agency claiming that the retailer had "fleeced consumers out of hundreds of millions of dollars."
The company has also been hit with a number of lawsuits and charges over pricing fraud. The North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumers served Walmart with fines in April and August of this year after more than a dozen of the retailer's stores in the state were found to be overcharging customers through price-scanner errors.
A customer from Illinois also filled his own lawsuit against Walmart in August, claiming that the retailer has prices on the shelf that don't match with what rings up at the register.
Now, another shopper is lashing out against Walmart for allegedly deceiving customers at checkout.
A shopper noticed something troubling on her last trip to Walmart.
A Walmart shopper is now warning other customers to be on high alert after a troubling experience.
Julia Taylor, who goes by the username @julesakajuliataylor on TikTok, posted a video on Oct. 19 that has garnered more than a million views, explaining that she was overcharged during a recent Walmart trip and nearly missed it.
In the video, Taylor said that while she noticed her grocery bill seemed quite high, she initially chalked it up to "inflation or whatever." But after double-checking her receipt and the products she bought, she claims she found a major discrepancy.
"There's something on [the receipt] that I didn't buy," Taylor said. "There's an item on here for $19.86 and I'm like, 'I'm pretty sure that I didn't buy something for $20.' Like I always double-check the price on the shelf before I pick up an item."
RELATED: For more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter.
The shopper is warning others to check their receipts.
In the TikTok video, Taylor said that after noticing the mysterious charge, she scanned her Walmart receipt on a popular app called Fetch, which allows shoppers to collect rewards for purchases. "I don't understand what this line item says on my receipt from Walmart so let me check my app to see what it says," she explains.
According to Taylor, the Fetch app showed her three words that raised a major red flag: "universal unknown item." After seeing that, she went back inside the Walmart store and spoke to customer service, who looked up the item twice to find that it was listed as "not available" in the retailer's system.
"That's sketchy … I think I'm getting scammed," Taylor said, adding that the Walmart employees were quick to refund her for the unknown item, but could not tell her how it happened or why it wasn't coming up in their system either. "I was very thankful that they [refunded it] and thankful that I caught it. But y'all this is a warning to check your receipts because if it was $5, I wouldn't have noticed."
Other Walmart shoppers say they've had the same problem.
This may not be an isolated issue. In her video, Taylor said she had seen other videos on TikTok about mysterious receipt charges before this incident, but did not believe them. "I didn't think it was real so I just ignored it," she said. "But this stuff actually happens."
Other users chimed in on the comment section of Taylor's video to say that they've seen this happen as well. "This happened at Walmart last week. I had bread, bananas and a canned items," replied Shanna Taylor, who goes by the username @shannataylor6 on TikTok. "It totaled 50 when it should have been 20. The girl had no idea what the charge was."
Another user commented, "How is Walmart not getting sued big time for this? So many people have been having this problem."
Best Life has reached out to Walmart about these claims, but has not yet heard back.
