Key Foods Rip-Off

Key Foods is a supermarket here in the city, and a staple of crappy produce and plastic-tasting meats here in the poorer neighborhoods. They do have stores in nicer neighborhoods, which, I'd imagine, have nice food, but not out here in the Stuy.

One thing that bothers me about them here, in Brooklyn, is that the prices that are stated, either with the fancy machine printout on the shelf or the sticker-gun sticker, will be lower than what they actually charge at the checkout. Sometimes it's only a few cents, like a "2 for 89 cents" sticker on some kind of canned goods, then at checkout, you'll be charged 49 cents for each, which is only 4.5 cents too much...but dammit, your horrible food should be properly labeled.

It happens all the time in many forms. Once Corrie wanted to do some baking, and found a great deal on a large canister of walnuts. At checkout though, it was $8.99 instead of the marked $4.99, and because of the amount of the stuff we were getting, didn't notice until we made it home and looked over the receipt.

Either some joker is constantly messing with a pricing gun (at two separate locations a mile apart), or the computer is never being updated to the shown price. Either they don't care about the misrepresentation, or it's deliberate.

I've brought this up before to the managers at the bigger of the two (I've stopped shopping at either, save for a quick thing at the closer, smaller location), only to be looked at as a whiny white-guy, bitching about a few cents here and there.

Later today, I'll be taking my camera to the smaller location, documenting some things, probably making a scene, and talking with the management. Then I'll be writing a letter to the corporate office, and maybe the Daily News, one of our tabloid newspapers.

It's not about the few cents, it's about the principle.