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submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Supermarket responds after Reddit user’s warning about self-checkout overcharge — ‘Was annoyed that the total amount due on my supermarket purchase did not equate to the individual items I purchased.’::‘Was annoyed that the amount due on my Woolies purchase did not equate to the individual items I purchased.’

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[–] mwguy@infosec.pub -4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Did they call someone over when they saw the discrepancy? Because, you know, mistakes happen.

Not in software. The software is doing exactly what it was programmed to do.

[–] Schmidtster@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

So no software has ever glitched before and output a wrong result? What world do you live in?

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Or a HUMAN forgot to update the pricing. 😱

Fact is, I see this all the time with stuff that's labelled for sale. More than half the time I need a clerk to correct things that have a sale sticker and price on them at the grocery store, because that stuff changes daily.

[–] mwguy@infosec.pub 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If there're two different items calculations one "real" one and "display" that's an intentional choice made because they know there can be discrepancies.

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Most likely an oversight.

The real question would be how did the clerk/store handle it when pointed out?

I've never once had a grocery store quibble over a discrepancy - they've always just overrode the price, right then, and went on with their day. At most taking a minute.

Compare that to before there were barcodes, and just price stickers on things (yes, I'm that old). This was a LOT more hassle.

Ever see a sitcom where the clerk is calling for a price check over the intercom? Yep, that's what they used to do. Most of the time we'd tell them nevermind, don't bother, because it took too damn long and there was a line of 3+ filled, large carts behind us...because checkout took forever as the clerk rang in, manually, every item. Pulled out their sheets to verify prices, code, etc.

[–] mwguy@infosec.pub -1 points 10 months ago

Can't be just an oversight. This has to be an intentional design decision. The "simple" (and economical) way to build this system is to build it so that the scan reads the price from a database and that price is then displayed and used to sum the total.

Keeping two prices, a display and a real one, is a design decision that adds a complexity to the system, makes it more difficult to administer and is an intentional design decision, especially if the numbers are allowed to differ.

A coupon not being applied correctly could be a mistake with that coupon. A sale not being taken into account, a problem with that sale or that UPC entry in the database. Those could be issues with data entry and data management.

This is different. This is intentional. And I'd bet, we've just found someone either cheating the tax man or embezzling funds.

[–] Schmidtster@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yep rounding errors occur, manual changes need to be inputted sometimes, display errors, sales mistakes. Nothing weird about that. In fact their policy probably has specific points to deal with discrepancies between list, scanned and total prices.