There doesn’t seem to be a consensus among Safeway shoppers regarding reported overcharges. There’s anecdotal evidence of continuing problems, but some people say they haven’t noted pricing errors.

For example, one regular reader commented yesterday:

My wife and I have been carefully monitoring our purchases at Manoa Safeway. We have found no problems since this issue was first raised a couple of months ago.

But another emailed a description of her experience:

Safeway has a deal giving $5 off with a $20 purchase. I loaded that into my card and when my husband bought over $20, the discount did not come. The first time he made them take everything back but what he really needed. The second time he still did not get the $5 but chose not to fuss with them, even though I had printed out proof we had the discount.

So today I went to the Pali Safeway where he always shops and showed customer service the receipt and the printout. She pointed out that dairy is not included. I pointed out that taking out dairy still came to over $20. Only then did she credit our credit card. And she did give me the $5 card after I asked for it.

When I asked her why we twice were not given $5, she said their cash registers are programmed by headquarters and I should call the number on my receipt.

A third reader shared via email:

When the program first started I always had to go to customer service to get refunds for many deal match items that were not rung up correctly.

More recently I only have occasionally missed discounts, for which I only received the additional discounted amount.

April 27 just received a refund of the additional discount. On May 2, sherbet was not priced correctly and I was told to see the manager. The manager acknowledged the error and was just going to refund the additional amount.

When I inquired about the Safeway Promise, he went to the wall where the Promise was posted and said, “oh, yes” and gave me a gift card with the amount of my purchase and I was able to keep my sherbet.

They do not automatically honor the Promise.

I sympathize with the local Safeway folks. As the customer service rep told this reader, the cash register computers are programmed and administered on the mainland. The chain of errors seem to start there, and they are usually related to the complex system of “personalized” discounts that often conflict or overlap with other discount programs.