The Expired Promotional Ticket
You are setting up a promotional end in a Certificate III retail context. The planogram shows a "2 for $12" deal on 500 mL bottled iced tea, normally $6.95 each. The promotion ended yesterday, but the shelf ticket and the end-cap signage were not pulled. A customer brings two bottles to the register and says, "The sign says 2 for $12." The POS scans them at $6.95 each, total $13.90. Your supervisor is on a break. The store's pricing policy says staff must honour a displayed price if the ticket is wrong, then correct the ticket immediately. Two other customers are within earshot.
1. What is the correct price to charge, and why?
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Charge $12.00 for the two bottles.
Reasoning: the displayed ticket is the price the store has held out to the customer. The store's own pricing policy says to honour a displayed price where the ticket is wrong, then fix the ticket. Honouring it protects the customer and the store's reputation, and avoids a dispute at the register.
What you must not do is argue that the promotion has ended and charge $13.90. The customer relied on the sign; the error is the store's, not hers.
After the transaction, remove or correct the end-cap signage and the shelf ticket immediately so no further customers are misled.
2. How would you handle the two overheard customers and the ticket correction?
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The overheard customers now know the sign is wrong, so silence is not an option.
- Correct the signage immediately - pull the end-cap and shelf ticket, or overstamp them with the correct price. Do this before serving anyone else at that end.
- Be transparent with the waiting customers: "That promotion finished yesterday and the sign was left up. I've honoured it for that customer and I'm fixing the sign now." Do not offer the expired price to everyone as a blanket rule unless your supervisor authorises it.
- Record the incident - time, product, price charged, signage removed - so the supervisor can review why the ticket was missed.
- Escalate on return: report the pricing error and the good-will charge so it can be logged and the planogram reset checked.
This balances fairness to the first customer with consistency for the rest and prevents repeat errors.