I'd like to see the DPCI (Item Number) on the bottom of the labels, to see if each label is actually for the same item. A Team Member may have just incorrectly stocked the shelf?

I'm the shopper who sent that photo in. I took it on my iPhone with the intent of using it at the register to argue with the cashier about the price if it rang wrong.

HOWEVER, by the time I actually got to the cashier, my husband I had been wrangling our autistic six year old daughter around the store for some time. This takes a lot of effort, understandably, and in the chaos at the register of checking out an overflowing cart of groceries and also trying to keep her calm through the checkout process, I was too busy and distracted to remember to check the scan price of the baby food as it went through.

As for my being lazy because I don't make my own baby food, I'd have to be a full-time chef to supply my own. Do you have any idea how much of that food a six year old consumes? That's right...that Gerber makes up the majority of my six year old's diet because she has severe oral textural aversions as a symptom of her autism and will not chew food that is wet. The food was FOR HER. She can't tolerate wet textured food, and she uses the portable plastic containers to carry it to school with her in her lunchbox every day.

So, instead of making assumptions and getting all superior and nasty, maybe next time consider that you don't know the whole story.

Thank you to those of you who considered that there was an actual person being discussed here and who gave me the benefit of the doubt.

For anyone interested in actually discussing the issue that I wrote to Consumerist about, instead of just trolling: I spotted the exact same problem again in another department of the store a few days later. I don't ever remember seeing something like this in this (or any other) Target before now, and I also don't remember ever seeing something like this at Publix, our other major grocery chain in town - having multiple shelf labels side-by-side for the same item. We all see occasionally where a label won't get switched for a sale or price change so the displayed price is wrong, but I've now seen two instances in a very short period of time at this Target where they were displaying, right next to each other, two different prices for the same item (not just a single, incorrect, price). It just seems to me to be ridiculous that people aren't noticing that when they are shelving, and that more consumers aren't noticing it!

I will confirm this. All you need to do is ask - they do it automatically.

It costs more money to stop the transaction, call a supervisor, and discuss the price difference than charging .20 less.

I doubt most customers do this, but I know this one crazy lady that comes into our store all the time - she's an obvious hoarder who spends her children's disability money on clearance and useless crap - who hides clearance (behind items in other departments, under basedecks, behind fixtures), harasses the price change team and changes or moves labels where possible to con our store out of a few dollars. She talks to herself, loudly, about what she is and isn't willing to pay for items and how they compare to prices at Wal-Mart and K-Mart and has the most shrill voice and awful personality. She would definitely move labels around, and she would complain so she got the lower price.

As a side note, I always feel, well not sorry for her because she's made her own hell, but sad that she's gone out of control to save a dollar at the expense of living a better life and that she's dragged her family down with her.

My original thought was that Gerber had repackaged with a new barcode (say after a grocery shrink-ray episode), but this looks more like a price change gone awry.

At least at my local Target, this happened to me.

@MaytagRepairman: My thought exactly. I always price check my items, especially if they're supposed to be on sale.

Also consider when an item is in 2 locations, say an endcap and an aisle its possible that the pricing team hasnt hit both locations yet.

Also any vendor product(food and drinks) has its price set by said vendor so if the prices are stupid and crazy blame them.

They other snafu always posted here is when companies do bonus packs. Labels dont distinguish that its a bonus and may very well have the same name, so say something is 100 count, and the bonus version is 120 count cause you get 20 free then the label on both will still read 100 count.

Targets pricing system is actually pretty good and I speak from experience. Im not one to defend any company and if they were pulling a fast one I'd be the first to shout it out but really 90% of the pricing stories on here about Target just arent 100% true.

What's funny is that when I saw the now-disemvoweled post, I kind of agreed because today is a slow day for consumer-related news. No big controversies so far, and I usually see at least one by 2 pm! No one's suing someone else, the Blockbuster death bell hasn't rung again yet, and we haven't brought up any women's issues or gotten into discussions on elitism...there wasn't even a Mac vs. PC war!

I usually see at least three things that people probably submitted before me, but this morning I didn't see anything. Yesterday, I saw about five consumer-related things, but today...nothing.

I'm eagerly awaiting the controversy.

@ovalseven: ^ Just to clarify, the price has to be stamped or affixed to the product. So, if the price is listed only on the shelf, that law doesn't apply.

@chocobo: In Michigan, if the item scans higher than the listed price, and you've already paid, you're entitled to 10x the price difference up to $5.

You would've made $3 on that deal.

I don't know if it applies in other states.

These things won't stop me from shopping there though. Until last month, there were 3 Target stores closer to my house than the nearest Wal-Mart.

If one person is being overcharged on one item, every other person who buys that item is being overcharged as well. It isn't a matter of 20 cents one time. It's 20 cents on this item, 50 cents on another, etc., and with the volume of business Target does, that's a lot of people being overcharged every day. It is a pricing mistake yes, but they have been caught doing it repeatedly and charging a customer more than the listed price is illegal. Does that help?

(Also, if you dislike articles about pricing mistakes, here's a tip: don't read them.)

Recently I saw that Target sold something at $4 and it was at least double that everywhere else. It rang up at $14 for me. Thankfully my child did not have a meltdown and after a longish wait, I was credited the difference. The shelf label was correct in that case, but the wrong product was on the shelf.

Another time I bought a slipcover that rang up twice as much. They tried to not give me the lower price, saying it applied to a different one, until I stormed back to the department and pointed out how there were a bunch of them in the lower priced's spot.

In both cases the employee immediately moved the items to the correct spots.

It sucked that it happened, but at least they made good by taking it seriously. :)

@johnfrombrooklyn: Years back, stores could get into HEAPS of trouble if their prices on the shelf tags were not correct on a majority of items. Don't know if that actually is enforced anymore.

I was actually the pricing person for a Kmart for a while. I went through the entire store, aisle by aisle, checked the shelf plans to see if any tags were missing, because stock would be missing and not ordered if there was no tag. I would also check every shelf item with a scanner, and if the tag wasn't correct, I'd print a new tag on the spot.

It was actually a fun job. HEY TARGET! I'm available!

@Nicole: If you click the Target tag, you'll see that this website could make a living off of just Target pricing issues as well. I don't think they know how to use that pricing system, even if they have it.

@psm321: Huh, go figure. They weren't willing to do it in my case, even though I knew the (high) price of the shoes, which I'd looked up online earlier.

What is next, The Consumerist has a story about how someone is breathing? It happens all the time.

Since the signage still had both prices, the store should have honored the old price... but of course since they said nothing (other then running to the internet to complain) the problem is still there not getting fixed.

@chocobo: I agree there should be a way to register complaints so cronic abusers can be fined. As far as going back and getting the money they stole from me, I will do it every time.

I shop a local chain (HEB) here in Texas because they have good prices and I like their store brands. I usually shop the sale items carefully so I can save a few dollars here and there. Unfortunately, I have to watch the cashiers like a hawk during checkout because I am overcharged about a third of the time for food that is supposed to be on sale but hasn't been changed in the computer. I wonder how often other people are also overcharged but don't bother to check their receipt? I'd be willing to bet it happens all the time.

There ought to be a serious penalty for doing this. They can just get away with doing it on purpose all the time, because no one's going to go back to get their 30 cents.

@Jbjohn942: *shrug* if you say so. The last price check I did at Target (missing tag, so slightly different issue, but still) took upwards of 10 minutes.

@4hotdog: Heh, thanks. I'm a little punchy this morning, I couldn't resist. :) <--this smiley face is ACTUALLY jolly, though.

@squinko: I don't think so, since khfurletti didn't specifically say that he or she makes X at home.

Or maybe people who don't like reading about pricing errors shouldn't click on stories about pricing errors?

@khfurletti: Maybe they were about to travel and couldn't bring jars of baby food with them. If you make your own baby food, you have to put it in your own jars - and throwing those out is just a waste of money.

There are reasons to buy baby food, you know. Maybe it wasn't even for her own child. You don't know how many children she has - it could have been a favor for a friend.

Hilarious

*my kids at six years old knew better than to "meltdown" in public... neither here nor there however*

@Skaperen: It will still come down to employees changing the tags properly, and ultimately human error. Sometimes things just get overlooked. I realize it is their jobs to make sure the prices are all right, but can you honestly tell me you've never made a mistake ever at your job?

Things happen, people miss changing a tag. The computers can print out all of the perfect and correct tags in the world, but its human error if a tag doesn't get changed.

@outlulz: Right, and it's kind of a tradition around here to post funny articles about Target's pricing mistakes. So that may have been the OP's intention more than anything else.

@pecan 3.14159265: True, but there may have been other things going on, is all I'm saying. She may not have wanted the line behind her to wait, etc.

@BB_User: I've never had an employee of any store take my word for a price match, I very much doubt that a picture is going to make a difference.

P.S. Very clever job there, going from calling someone dumb to throwing a smiley face my way. And arguments go two ways, my friend. :) <-- see that? It's a jolly smiley face.

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): Ooh! I really like peas and carrots together. I actually didn't even like carrots, but I liked how they're perfectly diced into cubes and I liked lining them up with the peas.

Now I feel as if I must incorporate peas and carrots into tonight's dinner.

@katstermonster: I think this is where a parent's ability to put the fear of the Lord into a child comes into play. I understand kids have meltdowns all on their own, but my mother never had a problem controlling me in a store. Whenever I have kids and I have to take them into public, I'd tie a ball to my kid's wrist so he or she could play with it, but couldn't throw it at anyone or drop it.

Yeah, the cashier would find an employee to go look, but I would have totally done it for that 22 cents because most parents buy a lot of baby food in large quantities. The savings add up.

The problem is basic computer procedure logistics. It's solvable if they just get the right computers and the right people to run them. But those C-level executives don't like paying people what they are worth.

@BB_User: TEN SECONDS? What are you smoking? Do you really think they'd take her word for it? No, they'd have to find a free employee to walk over to the shelf and check the prices, and check them in the system, etc. We're talking 2 minutes, minimum, NOT 10 seconds. And depending no how busy the Target was and how lazy the person they asked was, it could take upward of 5 or 10 minutes.

I have been price shopping as Mini McGee has just started on his "stage 1" solids. Peas! (I think tonight we add CARROTS. The excitement!)

@Method of Steepest Descent: I interpreted the comment that the actions on the part of the mother were dumb, not that the mother was dumb. We all make stupid choices. She had time to snap the photo, but she could have just as easily had it brought up on her phone as she got to the register. That's what I do when I anticipate having to ask for a price adjustment.

@cabjf: Target is bad at pricing in general...I sincerely doubt they have such a system.

@MostlyHarmless: haha. A little punchy this morning, are we?

@Method of Steepest Descent: But this is the internet! Heartless comments from behind an anonymous username is the name of the game!

@BB_User: Have you ever met a child under the sage of 10? The 6-year-old may very well have not been melting down until she got to the register.

ALSO pulling out your phone to snap a picture takes 10 seconds. Asking for a price check takes, oh upward of 10 minutes, depending on how busy/slow/lazy the manager is feeling.

@squinko: She wasn't online yesterday during the smarmy comment, and I totally forgot to email her. D'oh!

If you bother to look at both of them, you'll see that they are both the same.

@thisheregirafFe: There are those that have kids,,,and not much income.

Tags are for the same item/size and have the same code so this is more then likely simply a case of an employee missing a label when updating prices. No one is perfect.

@thisheregirafFe: Bingo!

If I needed 3 guesses for a question with 50/50 odds, there might be a job waiting for me at Target.

@BB_User: My first thought was, "that's 22 cents a pack!" Since it's a two-pack, if she bought about eight of these, she would have saved more than a dollar. I totally would have shown the cashier the photo.

It's up to you, but I'd say go for the freebies while they're there!

Knowing Target, I was expecting her to pay some price vastly different than either of the two listed.

@princesspineisempowered: They both say 7oz.

And, I like snickerdoodles the best.

@BB_User: I thought I was the only one who wondered about this =P.

If you look very closely, they both say "7oz 2-pack", so same exact product.

Oh, and O'Neill rules. I'm re-watching the series right now, and I'm starting to remember how disappointed I was when he was "replaced" and starting doing more Executive Producer stuff.