Amazon's Whole Foods App: Check Your Receipts

The app page on the WF site.

The member of our household who shops at Whole Foods eagerly downloaded the new Whole Foods app onto her iPhone. She would be eligible for special deals and 10% off yellow-tagged items.

Sure enough, the Whole Foods meat counter, whose prices are typically 20%-50% higher than Safeway, Lucky, or Costco, had a promotion on beef kabobs. The $10.99/pound would be reduced to $7.99/pound when she used the app at the register.

Below are the costs before the discount:

But here's what happened at the register:

The total cost of the two items ($17.47 and $18.13) was left the same, the price per pound was reduced to $7.99, and additional weight of about half a pound each was added to make the multiplication work out.

Fortunately, our household shopper checked the ticket and spoke to the manager (your humble blogger often does not audit because he trusts computers and is lazy). The manager apologized and reversed the erroneous charges completely; so we got the kabobs for free (aside--note the peculiarity of American English: "the kabobs for free" sounds a little better though "the kabobs free" means the same thing and is a more efficient wording). The corrected price would have been $25.89.

We were happy with the result, but think of all the (thousands?) of Whole Foods app users who don't catch these mistakes.

It pays to check your receipts.