If you are a regular customer to supermarkets then beware! These plush supermarkets have become centres of fleecing your hard-earned money by fraudulent means. This happens so swiftly, right under your nose that you as a customer would not even realise that you are losing your money.

It is learnt that these supermarkets calibrate the weighing scale to hike up weight and correspondingly fleece more towards the cost of a commodity.

When one becomes aware and checks the weight of the commodity in another weighing machine, the same commodity weighs much lesser than it is billed for.

In several other instances, the bar-coded label is conveniently scanned more than once by the person manning the billing counter.

Since the bills at these supermarkets are lengthy and the person collecting the payments at the counter insists on immediately clearing the bills, the customers get very little time to go through the bills and verify the purchase versus the cost.

According to a consumer, he had purchased vegetables on August 7 and a few other groceries at a plush supermarket run by a big Indian brand. There was a maddening rush at the counter as it was Sunday and this apart, the customer’s attention was diverted by the person manning the counter by asking for mobile phone number and then to rate the service on a rating scale.

While this customer did the needful, he had very little time to go through the bill. The customer was given time only to pay and push off.

The customer who had bought some fresh green peas and a piece of elephant yam had noted its weight before he got all the commodities weighed. After paying the bill in the counter, when the customer checked the weight of the green peas and the yam, he realised that the weight and the cost collected was way higher than what it should have been.

When the matter was brought to the notice of the manager, he readily confessed that the products were each 200 gms in excess and the customer had paid Rs 100 extra towards the same, which was however reimbursed to the customer.

There are such instances happening every day at the supermarket counters, which most customers fail to recognise.

When this customer brought the issue to the notice of Lingaraj, Inspector, department of legal Metrology, he said that he cannot act on the same as the department has withdrawn the powers of its officials to inspect or go for a surprise check.

According to the inspector, a notification has been passed, the powers to look into a complaint and take a suitable action, only lies with a committee formed among the present officials. The head of the committee at Madikeri will have to grant permission to each and every complaint made to the committee for the officials to act.

When, the Principal Secretary Harsh Gupta Secretary, Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, was contacted and his attention was drawn towards the problems faced by consumers, he said that the government has considered a lot of people-friendly initiatives. At times when such changes are on the cards, the hardship caused to consumers is very temporary. We have taken all steps for giving better services.

U.T.Khader, Minister for Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs said, “We will set it right.”