Watch out when you check out! In a list of the top 25 supermarkets in NYC fined for overcharging their customers this year, the Foodtown on McDonald at Albermarle is #11.
There has been a lot of news in the past year about supermarkets failing consumer affairs inspections. Stores can be fined if they're not in compliance with Consumer Protection Laws--most often, stores are fined if items don't have price tags or if check-out scanners are inaccurate. But until the New York Post filed a Freedom of Information inquiry, the public was only told what neighborhoods were experiencing the worst offenses.
Pat Brodhagen, a spokesman for the Food Industry Alliance, which represents major supermarkets, insisted there's nothing sinister going on. "When you have the customer counts we have, the volume of business we have and human beings behind the counter, there will be mistakes," she said.
As an example of an unintentional error, she explained that a customer at a deli counter might be overcharged if a clerk mistakenly used heavy paper on a scale programmed to subtract the weight of lighter paper.
The Foodtown was fined $4,175 between July 2009 and June 2010. It seems the renovations a couple years ago helped the surface, but there is still some work to do on the back end.
Of the top 25 stores, 17 are in Brooklyn. None in Queens made the list, even though 255 were inspected--while Brooklyn had 298 inspections.
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