Depending on who you talk to in Louisiana, shopping at Walmart is either a necessary evil or the greatest retail adventure on the planet. With about 138 Walmart locations in the state, we’re pretty sure people from Shreveport to New Orleans and from Lake Charles to Lafayette to Monroe have visited the mega-retailer at some point in the past few weeks.
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And while you were shopping at Walmart over the past few weeks, I feel pretty confident suggesting that you paid for your purchases at a self-checkout kiosk. You’ve probably heard rumors that self-checkouts are going away. Walmart says it’s to help with loss prevention, but perhaps it’s to avoid embarrassing technical glitches like the one the retail giant admits to.
Bloomberg was the first to report that about 1,600 Walmart locations in the country were not charging correct prices for items customers purchased. In many cases, the price charged was too high. It should be noted that there were also cases where self-checkout also charged the customer less.
This “glitch” was first reported on March 19, 2024. It reportedly continued for “at least several days.” Walmart confirmed the problem in a statement sent to KeynoteUSA. The retailer cannot say for sure how many shoppers were affected. Walmart also cannot confirm which stores were affected.
But since the “issue” was reported to have been caused by an internal system glitch that blocked or delayed the flow of pricing data to self-checkout kiosks, it’s pretty safe to assume that many of you reading this story were charged during your shopping trip to Walmart. .
What do I do if a Walmart self-checkout kiosk overcharged me?
There is a good news and bad news answer to this question. The good news is that Walmart says 80% of customers who were overcharged have received a full refund. Those customers likely used a credit card and the refund was made directly to the card you used. Check your return to see if that happened.
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The only other recourse you might have would be if you had saved your receipts. Then you may be able to show what you were charged and the date you were charged that amount. This would be one of those scenarios where you really have to decide if it’s worth going through the trouble.
You may spend hours proving that you were overcharged by just a few cents, but you may also have been overcharged by a lot, so make the call and good luck with Walmart customer service. They are always so lovely when you ask for your money back.
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