Chicago officials cite pharmacies for overcharging
After a two-month undercover investigation, Chicago's Department of Consumer Services cited 71 pharmacies with overcharging on 145 total products.
The department's retail fraud unit investigated 190 Walgreens, CVS and Osco stores in August and September and concluded more than one-third of the stores had overcharged shoppers.
Investigators compared receipts against shelf prices and found numerous cases where items were scanned twice or where sale items were charged at original price.
"The cause is careless management," said the department's commissioner Norma Reyes. "These stores have resources ... to make sure they are charging correct prices ... What they need to do is check their items to make sure the price they're advertising is the price that's in the computer. It's that simple."
Among the errors were a $79.99 charge for a $9.99 blood glucose monitor at a Walgreens store, a $3.25 CVS bottle of cough syrup that rang up to $12.99 and razors on sale for $6.99 but cost $10.49 at an Osco store.
Officials cited 38 of 115 Walgreens stores, 26 of 48 CVS stores and seven of 27 Osco stores.
Carol Hively, a spokeswoman for Deerfield-based Walgreen Co., said the company is "working closely" with consumer services to fix the issue.
"Our goal is always to be 100 percent accurate in our pricing and we apologize for falling short of that goal," Hively said.
Miguel Alba, a spokesman for Jewel-Osco, operated by Minneapolis-based Supervalu Inc., said mistakes are bound to occur with 125,000 items in stock and hundreds on sale each week.
"Scanning errors are often due to expired advertising shelf tags that have not been pulled from the shelf," Alba said. "In some cases, the same product is in multiple locations in the store and one of those expired advertising tags will be missed. It's basic human error."
Messages left early Friday by the Associated Press for CVS/Caremark Corp., based in Woonsocket, R.I., were not immediately returned.
The companies face fines from $50 to $2,000 per offense.