Woman’s Viral Supermarket Savings ‘Trick’ Breaks the Law

With food prices significantly higher than overall inflation, we all want to save on groceries, and one woman’s money-saving trick is going viral, but, before you try it, attorneys are warning this tactic actually breaks the law.

Woman’s supermarket savings trick goes viral

A woman is sharing a supermarket savings “trick” she uses as a way of getting a “discount” when using the convenient-self-service checkouts at supermarkets – and the technique is going viral.

As everyone knows, at the self-checkout register in supermarkets, you slide the item’s barcode over the glass and laser reader, and it inputs the price. However, it isn’t the same for all items – and this is where so-called “savvy shoppers” can pick up a bit of a discount.

How does the trick work?

When it comes to purchasing products, such as food and vegetables, some checkouts do have a sticker on the item with a barcode you can scan.

However, some do not. And even if they do have the barcodes, you’re not required to scan them – you can input the item manually.

The user is required to look up the item (e.g., banana, tomato, etc.) to tell the system what the item is, then either input a quantity or leave it over the reader – which also functions as a scale – to weigh the item.

A woman says when she is purchasing more expensive fruit, such as avocado, she inputs it through the system as a brown onion instead, the Irish Mirror reported.

Attorneys warn “self-checkout trick” breaks the law

According to a friend of the woman, who revealed the trick, the woman using this “discount” technique believes it’s perfectly legitimate because “she’s still paying something” for the items.

The woman who is utilizing this “hack” to get a discount on groceries ended up in a disagreement with this friend.

The friend ended up writing to a pair of sister attorneys, Alison and Jillian Barrett in Australia, who write for a column called “Sisters In Law.”

The woman told the attorneys that the friend using this checkout trick insists supermarkets work such losses into their price scheme because “everyone does it.”

But the attorneys advised otherwise, rightly identifying it as fraud – which is a criminal offense.

“It doesn’t matter how your friend tries to justify her behavior, her deceitful conduct in intentionally not paying full price is against the law,” the sister lawyers wrote. “Your friend’s technique of using the self-service checkout to pass off more expensive items as cheaper ones cheat the system by underpaying.”

“Her fraudulent behavior is just one of many tricks self-service thieves employ to avoid payment,” the attorneys added.