Walmart Shoppers Claim Self-Checkout Is "Trying to Rob" Them by Overcharging
A TikToker filmed a recent shopping experience where a random item was added to her order.
Unless you easily fall prey to impulse buys, it's fairly difficult to overspend at Walmart. With its low prices, the big-box store is built for shoppers who want to save money, not shell out more. Still, we show ourselves a bit of grace when we go over budget—it happens—but what we don't want is to get home and realize we've been charged too much. Or worse, that we've charged for something we didn't even have in our cart. Some shoppers say this is what's happening at Walmart, as they accuse the self-checkout machines of overcharging.
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In a March 31 TikTok video, user Jazmine Ashley (@jazmineashley06) shared her recent experience with self-checkout at Walmart.
"I'm in Walmart shopping and I noticed this as I'm scanning," she explains in the video, zooming in on a $16.98 line item for "Girls Casual" clothing.
"It ain't nothing over here that says girls, nothing. This is food," Jazmine says, panning to her already-bagged purchases. "How did this get on here? I need to understand this. Somebody's got to explain because I know y'all not just adding stuff and people not paying attention."
Jazmine goes on to say that had she not spotted this, she would have paid the extra $17.
"I'm not blaming you, I'm not upset with you, it's not your fault," she says to the Walmart associate assisting her and looking at her bags. "I'm just saying somebody got to tell me something—that's crazy. Ain't no extra stickers, ain't no clothes in there. That's literally frozen food items."
In text overlaying the video, Jazmine warns her 85,400 followers to "pay attention" for rogue line items while checking out, alleging in the caption that Walmart is discreetly "trying to rob" people.
Best Life reached out to Walmart for comment on the video and will update the story when we hear back.
Interestingly enough, this doesn't appear to be an isolated incident. Several TikTokers said they've had the same experience while using Walmart self-checkout.
"YES this has happened to me more than once and the first time it was a $80 item and the second time around $10. I always check now," one commenter wrote.
Another added, "I was charged 5.99 3 [times] for something that wasn't even named. It was just a straight up [Universal Product Code]. Almost like it was manually entered but I went through self-checkout."
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Some also offered explanations for the random item added to Jazmine's order, with former Walmart employees chiming in.
"My guess is that whoever labeled out the items to put them on the shelves had labeled the items wrong and it will [scan] as something else," an ex-associate wrote.
However, Jazmine replied saying "all the barcodes were fine" upon double-checking her scanned items.
Yet another former employee claimed this happened while they were working at Walmart, and could be due to a customer scanning an item but not going through with the purchase.
"Was the screen blank when you started scanning? Because when I worked at Walmart this [happened] a lot. People would scan something but walk leaving the item still on the screen," they wrote.
Jazmine had a response to this as well, saying that she scanned her items before the random "Girls Casual" clothing item popped up.
