Is your grocery store cheating you?

CLIP: Imagine picking up an item on sale only to be charged full price at checkout. That's exactly what Consumer Reports says is happening at Kroger-owned stores across the country.

Kroger got caught repeatedly overcharging shoppers for items that were advertised for less. 

Here’s an example: Allison, a mom in Ohio, bought pizzas for her family because they were supposedly on sale. She got some minced garlic that was also on sale too. But she ended up getting charged 25% extra for the pizzas and 60% extra for the garlic. Apparently the sale was over, but Kroger hadn’t updated the prices on the shelves.

This wasn’t a fluke. This happened so many times that Allison filed a complaint with Ohio’s attorney general. And she’s hardly alone. Hundreds of Kroger shoppers in at least half a dozen states have complained of deceptive pricing.

Consumer Reports, the Guardian, and the Food & Environment Reporting Network launched an undercover sting to find out how widespread the problem is. For three months, they sent secret shoppers to 26 Kroger stores in 14 states. 

On over 150 different items, they found big discounts advertised on the shelves, with only tiny print or store codes unclear to shoppers revealing that the sales had ended days or even months earlier.

And that’s not the only way Kroger has overcharged its shoppers in recent years. Last year, Kroger executives admitted to using nationwide post-pandemic inflation as an excuse to raise its prices more than its costs were going up.

Kroger reported record sales and profits in 2024, all while nickel-and-diming shoppers like YOU. Meanwhile, it paid its CEO more than $15 million while also enriching Kroger shareholders with $7.5 billion in stock buybacks.

If this makes you want to shop somewhere else, that might be harder than you think. Kroger is the second largest grocer in America and operates 2,700 stores under at least a dozen different brand names. If you’re shopping at Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, Fry’s, Mariano’s, or King Soopers — you’re really just shopping at Kroger. Investigators found the same pricing problem at all of them. 

Don’t shop at Kroger? Well, similar pricing shenanigans have recently been uncovered at other major grocery chains. Both Walmart and Albertsons had to shell out millions of dollars to settle lawsuits in which they were accused of unfairly overcharging customers. 

Now, Kroger, Walmart, and Albertsons all insist that these pricing snafus were an honest mistake. But the pattern resembles a bait and switch scam. And grocery prices are already high. Even small pricing discrepancies, over time, can put a strain on households that are barely scraping by.

Here’s the bigger problem. Together, these three corporations account for a whopping 57% of grocery sales in America. Their dominance of the grocery industry gives them an inordinate amount of pricing power. If shoppers are sneakily getting shafted at one store, it’s not so easy for them to just go shop at a competitor to get a fair deal…simply because there might not be any competitors.

It’s this near-monopolistic power that lets Kroger — and a handful of other grocery giants like Walmart and Albertsons — get away with these pricing scams. Minimal competition opens the door to maximal price-gouging — and maximal opportunity to rip off shoppers. 

This is why we need stronger antitrust enforcement to break up big corporations that dominate their industries.

We also need both state and federal regulators to crack down on these pricing abuses. 

You also have to be vigilant. The next time you head to the grocery store, be on the lookout for raw deals.