‘They said it comes from head office,’ fumes Walmart shopper who was overcharged – store admits it’s a ‘complex’ error

A WALMART shopper was shocked when she found out she couldn’t get a refund for items she was accidentally taxed on.

After the shopper noticed she was being taxed for items she shouldn’t have been, she talked to an employee at the store who told her that they couldn’t override Walmart’s computer system to refund her.

Sally Dossa was charged 18 cents of Goods and Service Tax (GST) when checking out for her items in 2019 at a Walmart in British Columbia, Canada, CBC reported.

The items she bought–apples, yams, flour, tomatoes, and milk–-were all basic grocery items that are legally exempt from the Goods and Services Tax per the Excise Tax Act.

The GST doesn’t benefit Walmart, but the money gets passed back to the Canada Revenue Agency.

After pointing this error out to a Walmart employee, Dossa was refused a refund.

“They said it comes from the head office,” Dossa told CBC.

“They had no answer for me.”

While 18 cents didn’t break the bank for Dossa, she was left wondering how much extra money is being made off of accidental overcharges.

“If they have 2,000 customers going through the store every day and if each one is paying an extra 20 cents…it ends up being a lot of money,” Dossa said.

“If each one of us walked away and didn’t care about these things, then we’re all going to be paying for stuff we shouldn’t be paying for.”

Walmart Canada told CBC that the systematic error was resolved.

“Tracking provincial and federal tax on millions of possible products in-store and online is complex,” said a Walmart spokesperson.

One of the biggest problems about Dossa’s situation, lawyer Jeff Orenstein noted, is the layout of the store’s receipt.

On the receipt, there is no way to determine which of the five items Dossa was overcharged for and which items were exempt from the tax.

Walmart isn’t the only company to have confusing receipts, not specifying which items were being taxed.

Amazon previously lost a class action lawsuit brought up against it by Oreinstein on behalf of 7,000 clients in the Quebec Court of Appeal.

Amazon was found to be charging the GST on a variety of GST-exempt products.

The overages resulted in the company mistakenly collecting millions of dollars.

Despite the accidental charges, the biggest component to the case was that the company didn’t tell customers clearly on their receipts what was being taxed.

"[Amazon's] bill didn't tell you anything," Oreinstein said.

"It didn't tell you which items were taxable which were not taxable — it was all global GST and global PST and you need a calculator and trial and error to figure it out. And we won on that."

Orienstein suspects the same issue is true of Walmart.

“I think [the Walmart receipt] would fall under the same type of idea as Amazon, where the bill itself is so confusing that it is a misrepresentation.”

The Canada Revenue Agency advises anyone who think they got accidentally charged to bring the issue up with the store first.

How to check whether stores are overcharging

• Shoppers should always double-check the label of the item they are holding with the label on a store's shelves
• If the product was placed in the wrong spot, you could be looking at an inaccurate price
• At self-checkout make sure to compare the price that is ringed up with the price you saw on the salesfloor
• For weighted items, it's important to check whether the scale is set to zero before weighing produce
• Stores are required to show the weight on the display, so managers should be notified if it's hidden
• Scales also shouldn't be touching any other part of the self-checkout
• After paying, shoppers should compare what they paid with the salesfloor price of the items