Some people have really exciting lives. You moved half way around the world to SE Asia with its fantastic food, Buddhism and in general a very colorful everydaylife, and you spend your bleeding time here checking if you were cheated out of 5 baht in the supermarket. Make sure you have the consumer ombudsman's ph. number in your wallet (plenty of space for it !)

People move to Thailand for its fantastic food? They move here fir Buddhism? They move here for the colourful life? Did you come here for the wacky bakky?

Lucky you to not have to go shopping . . . oh, hang on . . . what does your IP say where you are posting from?

I don't think you can call it a scam; This happens in every supermarket worldwide.

I was in the retail business for 25 years, and sometimes its happens that the staff changes the price tags on the shelves not on time. Because the prices on the cash register are updated on-line, en sometimes its happens that the price-tags are not yet delivered or due to circumstances not yet changed. Normaly its the duty of the supervisor to check this, but sometimes they are just too negligent, lazy or incompetent. But this is not limited to Thailand.

You must always keep attention on it. So just check your receipt before you leave the chop, and let it correct it when wrong. No big deal.

And did you not notice that most of supermarkets have a scanning device for costumers in the shop where they can check the prices by themselves if they have doubts.

You must always keep attention on it. So just check your receipt before you leave the chop, and let it correct it when wrong. No big deal.

No big deal?

Maybe not for 1-2 items but for 10-20 items how are you supposed to remember each individual price versus listed price on the receipt?

You would not only need a brain as a calculator but a photographic memory as well.

I see the same item on different shelves with different prices! The shelf edge prices are often not linked with the mainframe price list, I think someone was tired and went home early therefore the alignment did not take place, never mind sweep under the carpet eh!

I had a flyer a few weeks ago which showed one item as "buy one get one free" lower down the page same product but now "buy 2 get one. free"

ITs part of life here, the standards of shop keeping are not western standards even though 2 of the largest organisations here are western owned!

Still a good way to deal with this is to check your prices as they go through and make your complaint before you leave the till, watch the queue grow, they still will not open another till, I dont know what the point is of having 28 tills when you only have 6 open!

The lessons will not be learnt though, where is the carpet now?

A scam in Thailand......I don't believe it. Quick call the police..........Ohhh yeah. Never mind.

And while we are on about the important things. Are those things on your avatar real?

Wifey checks all our bills like a mIne detector and we don't move far away from the till until she's satisfied. Only last week she caught Big C out charging 5 Baht more than an item was marked at, so they gave her the money back and we got the item free. She says our Tesco never make a mistake....yet.

I'll give you 100 Baht if you promise not to hold up the line for your next 20 visits.

yawn...

This practice of duel pricing in the big stores at the shelf labels and the tills has been going on since the introduction of the barcode system during the 1970s. It`s nothing new.

Time after time including the United States, UK and Europe, the media twigs onto these rackets, then the stores cease and desist from over changing for a while and later revert right back to conning the customers again.

They know that if customers purchase trolley loads of goods, the majority will not bother to check and calculate every item on the bill, so at most times they get away with it.

One way is to take a calculator with you during the shop, write down the details of every item placed in the trolley and total up the price before checking out at the till.

But taking into consideration all that`s involved, how many of us can actually be bothered doing that? And this is what the big stores are banking on.

Of course the big issue is: do you keep the 25 satang change or try to put it in the charity box with your hands full of shopping?

Of course you keep it. Next time you'll be 25 satang short and get 75 satang in change. During a year, it could be some serious money.

And consider you start going to the supermarket when you are 12 years old. And all the 25 Satang you invest and reinvest at the stock market. Once you are 89 years old it is a nice amount.

For what its worth the mundane shopping for food in Thai supermarkets is not a great why to spend an hour, having come from a country where items and price are clearly displayed trying to get use to clutter and poor price label set out leaves me bewildered.

Im not surprised to read someone finds price discrepancy from time to time, from looking around any thai work place seems the many workers are chatting to each other or yesterday about 5 of them working on the watch counter in Ladphrao central all playing with there smart phones....

5 of them working on the watch counter in Ladphrao central all playing with there smart phones....

A clear case of simple technology being 'smarter' than the human, in this instance