Constable: Watchdog takes bite out of grocery mislabeling

About this time last year, Don Miller Sr. of Palatine started growing a very odd beard as part of his pledge not to shave half his face until the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.

That turned out pretty well for him and the Cubs.

So when Miller calls to talk about his latest crusade - “It's me again and causing trouble” - I listen.

The 74-year-old yoga enthusiast and runner now sports a full Fu Manchu mustache (on both sides of his face this time). But in place of his familiar Cubs hat is a tattered cap that reads “C.O.W.,” his acronym for Consumer On Watch. Just as he picked up the Cubs mantle after rooting for that team in vain for decades, Miller has decided to rekindle his interest in another passion that hasn't changed in decades - grocery stores that advertise items at one price and registers that ring them up at another.

“I once had a website called C.O.W. and a business card with the same name,” Miller says, explaining how he was known as “the cow man” in all the suburban grocery stores. “I would do audits of their stores and buy everything that had expired tags. As per store policy, they would have to give me the items free.”

Stores don't legally have to give away mismarked items, but some do. While shopping for my family's holiday groceries, I bought a large tub of oysters at Whole Foods. When the clerk scanned the item, it ran up at nearly twice the cost posted on the shelf tag. Turns out the large tub had been wrongly placed under the sign for a smaller container. I was hoping the manager would sell me the oysters for the lower price on the tag. Instead, she apologized and insisted I take the oysters without paying because it was a store mistake.

“How many times does that happen?” wonders Miller. Retired and with plenty of time to devote to this enterprise, Miller cruises suburban grocery stores looking for mismarked items.

“I just got more than $500 worth of free stuff,” Miller says in one of his frequent voicemails. A vegetarian, Miller says he donates most of his booty to area food pantries.

“I just went to Lake Zurich and found 75 items,” Miller calls with an update. “Oh, and this is good exercise, by the way.”

When I tagged along with Miller on a run through a grocery in Hoffman Estates, we found dozens of items with sale prices that expired yesterday, last week and even last year.

“Most people don't notice,” Miller says, explaining how busy shoppers might grab this can of La Choy Chop Suey marked at $2 when it will ring up as $2.59 at the register. “It hurts me to know somebody bought this item thinking they bought it on sale, and it's not.”

“Grocers take pricing issues very serious and work very hard to ensure shelf prices match the price charged at checkout,” emails Laura Strange, senior director of industry relations, communications and marketing for the Arlington, Virginia-based National Grocers Association. “Most larger stores have an employee at each store who is responsible for coordinating item pricing and shelf signage, but with 20,000-30,000 items in a typical supermarket, mistakes inevitably happen.”

There is no law about mismarked prices, so stores decide how to handle the issue.

“Stores have their own individual policies,” Strange says, “but it's fair to say all would favor the consumer if a mistake is made.”

Miller tells all the store managers, regional managers and others he pesters that color-coded labels could solve their problems. Instead of having to read the fine print that says when a sale is over, a store employee could just know that blue tags expire on the 7th of a month, red tags on the 14th, and so on. Miller says some grocery stores have patiently heard his suggestion and offered to consider a change. But one question he hears often is, “Why are you doing this?”

“I just want consumers to be aware,” Miller says, noting that his first job as a teenager was bagging groceries at Jewel-Osco, until he worked his way up to working the produce department. “I am doing them a service.”

He has faith that he can alert consumers and change the grocery business. After all, he went with a half-beard for one season and the Cubs ended a World Series drought that had been going on since 1908.