For the second time around

Egay Uy .

THE supermarket that I wrote about in my Monday column, “Shelf price tag,” was at it again. On Tuesday, I went to the establishment to buy, among other items, parmesan cheese kay gisugo ko sa akong anak nga si Jose kay naay gipaluto iyang nanay Juliet.

The items on display were only in 150-gram package but there was no price tag either on the item itself or on the shelf where the packages were displayed. Instead, there was a price tag (of which a photo was taken by me) for 200-gram parmesan cheese at P249.

Before going to the cashier with the items I wanted to buy, I checked some items on display.  Since the chicharon on display were a little mouth-watering bisag naay cholesterol, I checked them only to find out that not every item on display had price tags either on them or on the shelf.

I picked one specific pack of chicharon from Carcar, Cebu. To my dismay, the expiration date indicated on the package was 02252018 or Feb. 25, 2018.  It could not have been May 022, 2018 not only because the expiration date was stamped by a local source, hence the sequence is month-date-year, but also because there is no 022 in the calendar.

Then I went to the cashier to pay the goods in the basket. I specifically kept an eye on the price of the parmesan cheese that I handed to the cashier because of a similar incident that I experienced in that supermarket a few days ago.

As expected, the price of the 150-gram parmesan cheese that was reflected in the cash register was P249.00.  Naturally, I had to protest. The price should have been lower because what was in the shelf tag was P249 for a 200-gram package. What I bought was only 150 grams.

To save the supermarket staff from going to the shelf, I showed the photo that I took. I ended up paying P249 for the 150-gram pack of cheese because according to the supervisor who came to the rescue of the cashier, the correct price of the 150-gram pack was P249 and that it was an error of their IT personnel, blah, blah, blah.

Then I told the supervisor that they are still offering for sale chicharon whose expiration date has already lapsed Feb. 25, 2018.

I had to other option but to leave a strong word to the supervisor to get their act together, otherwise, they will be facing charges before the DTI for violating the Consumer Act or other related laws.

The whole incident was witnessed by the now long queue of shoppers and Ms. Shara Torralba, one of Councilor George Goking’s staff members who is also active in the CDO Price Coordinating Council.

I had to apologize to the shoppers who were delayed waiting for their turn to pay, saying that the resolution of the matters raised will eventually be for the benefit of consumers who patronize air-conditioned supermarkets.