Walgreens Shopper Challenges a Shocking Price Jump to Nearly Five Times the Marked Price. Then the Cashier Fires Back, ‘Record All You Want’
The math wasn’t mathing at Walgreens
A price at checkout should not be a guessing game. If an item shows one amount but an employee insists it costs much more, customers are going to question which number they are actually supposed to trust.
Price confusion has already frustrated shoppers at stores like Target, where customers have questioned sudden price changes at checkout. But things can get even more confusing when the store’s own scanner seems to be part of the disagreement.
That’s what TikTok creator @alejandrosanche987 claims happened at a Walgreens in Sedona, Arizona. In a video with 1.8 million views, the shopper questions an employee over an item he expected to cost around $7. The employee, however, tells him it costs $34.99.
The Price Dispute Gets Worse
The video begins with the shopper asking whether the employee plans to change the price even if the item scans for $7. “So you’re telling me even if it scans up seven dollars you’re gonna override it to $34.99?” he asks. The employee responds, “$34.99, right. They’re not on clearance at this location.”
The shopper then asks him to scan the item. After he does, another employee can be heard saying, “Oh my gosh,” before apparently confirming the lower price. “And so it’s coming up at seven. He will honor it for the seven dollars,” the person says.
But the employee continues to push back, telling the customer he had already been informed about the sign. “I understand, not a problem,” the shopper responds. The employee then tells him the items are not on clearance and adds, “So your misunderstanding is your problem, not ours.”
The shopper questions that response since he believes the system is showing the lower amount. The employee maintains that the price is $34.99. When the customer says he saw $7 and recorded it, the employee fires back, “You can record all you want. That’s fine.”
Other shoppers have run into similarly confusing situations when a price at the register did not match what they expected. One Walmart customer even challenged the price of sneakers after finding a much lower price attached to them.
What Walgreens’ Pricing Policy Says
Walgreens’ own published policy provides some useful context. Its “Pricing Promise” states that the retailer will honor the lowest price posted on the sales floor for an in-store purchase. However, internet-advertised prices are excluded because online prices can differ from those inside individual stores.
Walgreens also has separate rules for matching prices from its website. Stores can match the regular Walgreens.com price for an identical item upon request, but online sale and promotional prices are excluded. A Walgreens employee must also validate the price, and screenshots or printouts are not accepted as proof.
Some viewers believed Arizona law also required the employee to accept the lower price. “AZ law forbids him from raising the price on their error. Report this to the state ane Walgreens corporate,” one commenter wrote. Another argued, “No,sir. YOUR system messing up is YOUR problem. Not mine. You have to honor the price.”
That claim is not quite so simple. The Arizona Department of Agriculture’s Weights and Measures Services Division (WMSD) checks whether scanned and posted prices match and requires retailers to have a written pricing-error policy available to customers. However, Arizona law does not require a specific remedy for every pricing error.
Other commenters were more focused on the employee’s reaction. “Why do they act like it’s coming out of their paycheck or something,” one person asked. Another wrote, “but it rang up as $7… sounds like his problem not yours friemd.”
The clip does not show enough to independently establish whether the item qualified for the clearance price or why the employees appeared to give conflicting information about what it scanned for. But the disagreement over $7 versus $34.99 was enough to leave plenty of viewers questioning which price should have won.
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