Here’s a little tale of shopping at the local Safeway store along with a bit of advice if you find you’ve been overcharged on an item.

We were there at the Kapahulu Safeway a couple of days ago to pick up some items (like cat litter) that are better priced at Safeway than they are elsewhere. And we also wanted to check out the $5 Friday specials.

One thing we bought was an 8-roll package of Bounty paper towels. It was a posted special, but didn’t appear on the Safeway app’s list of specials. That worried me, so I took a picture of the price as posted, just in case there was some dispute.

After checking out, we reviewed the store receipt and realized we had been charged the full regular price. So we walked over a rang the buzzer at the customer service counter. After a few minutes, a Safeway clerk emerged from a back office and I explained what had happened. I showed her the receipt, and the photo of the price.

She quickly moved to refund the extra charge. But then I brought up the store’s price guarantee. You have probably never heard of this guarantee. It’s posted somewhere at the store’s customer service counter, but usually it’s hard to find. I did spot it posted on a wall behind the customer service counter, among lots of other notices. It was hard to read from where we were standing, but I took a picture of it for the record.

The “guarantee” is simple. If you are overcharged on an item costing less than $5, then you will get your money back and receive the item for free. If the overcharge is on an item costing more than $5, you’ll get a $5 gift card and get a refund of the amount overcharged. Your refund should also include the tax you were charged on the overcharged amount. More on that in a minute.

So we received a refund of $6 overcharge, and also a $5 gift card that we can use on a future Safeway shopping trip. That made it well worth the effort to wait and get it settled before leaving the store.

The clerk was very nice, but our clear impression was that she was not going to follow the guarantee unless we brought it up.

When I mentioned it, she immediately offered the $5 gift card without hesitation. But if this happens to you, I would certainly recommend that you mention the price guarantee and request that it be followed.

Now, back to that issue of refunding the tax. In Honolulu, we pay a 4.5% general excise tax on all purchases.

The tax on the extra $6 we were charged for the paper towels would have been $6 x .045, or 27 cents. But the refund processed through our charge card was just $6.02.

By my figuring, that means Safeway pocketed an undeserved 25 cents on the deal. That’s not worth worrying about in our case, but multiply it by the number of overcharges in a week or a month, and consumers could be leaving a lot of money on the table.

At this point, I’m probably not going to go into fight mode over that 25¢. But it’s definitely something to watch out for in the future. And maybe someone at Safeway will read this and decide to check it out.

Also see these earlier blog posts:

Missed discounts continue to cause Safeway systematic overcharges, December 12, 2012.

Safeway update: Little-known policy makes it worth asking for refunds, April 11, 2013

Safeway’s Price Guarantee: Hidden in plain sight, April 12, 2013