Last night we told you about the case of the very suspicious receipts coming out of Public’s Supermarket. As we demonstrated, three receipts contained marginal errors of both multiplication and addition. The result was that the totals on those cashier’s receipts were off by a few cents in every case – as much as ten cents total on a thirty dollar purchase. Now that’s not anything to raise an alarm about, but what about those large purchases? And what about the principle of a fair exchange?
All that was in the breech it appeared....until Public’s called us today to explain that what we found to be an error is really no error at all – it’s all a product of the way the 10% sales tax is factored into the price of the product. Jules Vasquez went back to Public’s today for an explanation.
Jules Vasquez Reporting,
This is how a standard public receipt looks – and when you add it up – yes, the totals for the items are wrong, but Public’s storeowners say it’s not that you’re being cheated, they say what you are paying
for is what you are getting – it’s just that the computer is making a different kind of calculation.
Here’s how it works: the price you see on the shelf includes sales tax - in the case of this toothpaste $5.09. I picked up three of them which would being my total to $5.09 times three which totals $15.27. That’s what I should expect to pay. But when they tally it at the cash register, the computer subtracts the sales tax on the itemized list and comes up with a unit price of $4.62 - that is the price of the toothpaste minus sales tax. Multiply that by three and it should $13.86 but the total on the paper is $13.88.
So, then, I’m, being cheated, right? Wrong says Susan Fuller, who is the consultant that set up the system. Using a calculator, she showed me the figures that the computer in the register is working with which shows a total for the toothpaste minus sales tax at $4.6272.
Susan Fuller, Consultant
“To find the GST exclusive is actually $4.6272.”
Jules Vasquez,
So the new receipt will have 4.6272 multiply that times 3?
Susan Fuller,
“Time three.”
Jules Vasquez,
1388.16.
So the problem is that the register is working with four digits, but only printing two on the paper – that’s the two we see which leads us to conclude we’re being cheated but Fuller says we‘re not.
Jules Vasquez,
Were customers being cheated?
Susan Fuller,
“No they were not. Not at all. It is just a matter of the display of information. As consumers we are accustomed to seeing cents in two digits. The computer says no. A digit is as long as I want it to be. What you’re seeing at the end of the receipt is basically a sum of the GST inclusive prices which is the shelf price.”
So in the end the bottom line on the receipt was right: the price on the shelf multiplied by three does give me $15.27 and that’s what I expected to pay when I picked up the items. But as long as there is a computational discrepancy – between the item total and the stated cost the consumer will continue to think he’s being cheated. And that’s why the receipt will change to reflect figures that look more like this.
Jules Vasquez,
A receipt should give a customer satisfaction that he paid for is what he has gotten.
Susan Fuller,
“Abolsutely so what we did as it was brought to our attention, we’ve been working with the technicians for them to basically customize the calculation on the printed receipt to reflect Belize’s GST tax in the format in which the average consumer will like to see.”
But all that computer talk seemed to have no effect on the store today. It’s a Friday end of month and one of the busiest shopping days at Publics - those shoppers seemed hardly worried about a few cents.
So for the sake of clarity, the solution as we understand will be that the prices will now contain four figures after the decimal points, meaning that it will show the dollars, cents and those fractions of a cent which have been causing all the confusion. And while shopper can figure that out, Public’s is not giving refunds because their finding was that there was no real error. But they did concede to us that they were unaware of the discrepancy in the figures until we showed it on the news last night.
