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Whole Foods, Half Lies
Submitted by Salil Mehta via Statistical Ideas blog,
Whole Foods has just been caught ripping-off customers, above and beyond their typical rip-off prices. Whenever I shop at Whole Foods, up and down the Northeast, I observe that more than 2/3 of customers pay with bank cards. Part of the issue with this payment method is that few customers then do what they should be doing. Being a math guy for example, I always add up the prices of anything I am about to buy, before I get to the payment cashier. It's not that hard!
And every couple of weeks, at all sorts of global merchants (from stores, to restaurants, to service companies), I come across price discrepancies. I always feel obligated on behalf of all fellow consumers to notify the business staff (whose only incentive at the counter is to pump you for a loyalty discount card in exchange for your valuable personal data), and most of the time the "mistake" is in their favor. Certainly not in anyone else's. The "mistake" comes down to corporate heedlessness at best, and an obvious lack of respect for their customer's finances. Many times I actually get a dirty look (like I am the jerk for catching their own error!), and only some of the time do I notice businesses promptly take the corrective actions so that no one else would be impacted. If one mindlessly just throws over their bank card and personal data with every purchase, then (as we'll see below) they will often be overcharged.
This particular news is happening with a company that already has a high-profile and checkered track record of doing good. Just before the global financial crisis, CEO Mackey thought it was better to ignore his customers and mask his online identity with the alias "Rahodeb". Squandering his time instead by falsely denigrating Wild Oats, and simultaneously falsely promoting Whole Foods. In a similar playbook as they have today, this insulting set of affairs only came to an abrupt end when Whole Foods was busted.
Also this news is happening with a company that is now suffering intense competition from better-priced competitors. The organic marketplace is well-overdue for price reform. As even billionaire investor Warren Buffett quipped recently "I don't see smiles on the faces of people at Whole Foods." Though on a tangent, we don't see smiles on the faces of his Berkshire stockholders in recent years either (here, here). Particularly if they then shop at Whole Foods afterwards, only to get served a second beat down.
So what does Whole Foods' leadership finally do about the recent pricing scandal? Create a feel-good advertisement! No staff changes nor any attempt at financial regress for the systematic and ongoing misconduct. They've already double bagged and taken home those ill-gains. Here we see Walter Robb, and Rahodeb confusingly justify the "rigorous science" surrounding pricing a fruit in the 21th century:
Straight up, uhhh, we made some mistakes. We want to own that, and tell you what we are going to do about it ... We know they are unintentional because the mistakes are both in the customer's favor and sometimes not in the customer's favor. It's understandable that sometimes mistakes are made. They are inadvertent. They do happen.
They also fictitiously blurt out to anyone mathematically illiterate, that in a "very, very small percentage" of times that errors occurred. What's missing is that really in a "very, very, very small percentage" did this ever work in their customer's favor. That's three "very's" using the thumbed-on Whole Foods scale. Which is why eventually they were busted.
This brings us to statistics on our blog, because it would be informative to show people the number of different ways Whole Foods -or similar merchants- can systematically cheat consumers, and still later hole up behind the lawyered company comments above. We'll go through examples, each time merely using two hypothetical products for illustration. We expose in each variation, how even the most fair mis-pricing will generally be "straight up" not fair.
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Well, in Charlotte they just ran Earth Fare out of biz in the lucrative SouthPark area. EF, out of Asheville NC, has a hard core focusing on "NO GMOs, NO HFCS, etc. They're still in Boone, NC and saw one off I-459 in ther Galleria Arera in BHM. For those of you, Boone/Blowing Rock/Linville is a damn wealthy enclave
So, there's hope.
They call it "Aspen, East".
Grow it or buy it.
You get what you pay for.
Sometime is Boris find produce from neighbor apartment on own balcony. Is bad to eat what is find?
If Visa decided to screw each of its 200+ million customers out of 10 cents it would net them an easy $20M/mo.
Are you going to go throught all the BS necessary to complain about $0.10 mistake?
Whole Paycheck is awesome in Sarasota!
You can overspend for fresh fish which is half spoiled at purchase and then you get the pleasure of being harassed by the homeless drug addicts and bums on the way to your car. It's the ultimate liberal experience!
Whole foods Sarasota is nice.
One if the best in Florida.
People who hate whole foods seem to be retarded, in many ways, but one key that is missing from haters minds seems to be understanding of how food is grown and the price of organic versus commercial subsidized farms....
You must enjoy the 3 day unshowered French scent with the urine smell accent in your household.
Whole Foods does not sell "Whole Foods", period.
Little beknownst to the Birkenstock purity crowd, much of what they get a Whole Foods regardless of labeling is not really and truly "organic" (Crude Oil is Or-fucking-ganic, folks) does get treated with artificial, GMO, etc's., and is not the heaven sent "pure" they think it is. Moreover, most of the "Organic, etc.", type labelled food is done/owned by Big Ag businesses.
I know because you can see the fields, etc., near where I live, with the brand name signage. I'm pretty aware of CA ag practices and policies with family in the biz.
Jeeesh!
Lies.
Zero evidence of theories.
Right wing/oil industry large scale factory farming propaganda.
Emotionalism and blowing things out of proportion.
Zerohedge in a nutshell.
Categorized, Labeled, and filed , all in a nutshell.
Profiled yourself in your first post citizen?
Full disclosure: I hate polar (white) bears and hope they all die. :)
I hope I can get a polar bear rug before they go extinct
How cute a born and bred dope just discovered the internet..
Nine weeks on zerohedge.
Even the paper packaging comes from recycled soy news print that seems to contain estrogen, a female hormone of some sort .
Beer of the mass produced kind seems to have the same properties.
Thinking 4th of July to you girls.
There's a Sprouts and a Natural Grocers/Vitamin Cottage and a Whole foods about all equidistant from my house. Natural Grocers won't sell anything GMO. Sprouts tries not to, and WF sells the same chemical laden stuff WalMart and Kroger sell for double the price. Some of their produce may be really organic, but $6 for a bunch of kale?
But the WF parking lot is full of Priuses and Subarus and the female customers are a lot better looking than in the WMT across the street.
Maybe we should start calling the place "AssWhole Foods" because most of the people I've met that shop there seem to be...
I signed in just to crap in your pie hole, and ask how you've been able to avoid euthanasia? "haters" What a fcking turd.
Never thought Id see Boone, NC come up on ZH. Cheap rent if you arent making a living in Boone and beautiful weather as long as you dont mind the winters. Town is >50% college students; mountains keep the girls in shape and some of the best weed in the nation is easily available. The worst part about the town is when the elderly Floridiots start rolling in during the summer. Good thing the weather makes up for them.
"has just been caught ripping-off customers, above and beyond their typica"
Yup. Salil Mehta wants everyone to know that only he gets to rip off his walstreet customers, as this projection shows.
Whats with zerohedge lately?
You post the same nonsense weekly about whole foods.
Its like walstreet loons will only push gmo nonsense here.
This article is a crock of shit.
Weekend tyler should be taken out back and shot for posting this nonsense.
IMO, organic is the crock. I once watched a woman ask a clerk if their bananas were organic. He said no and she walked on in a snit. If you can brainwash the women, Bingo! The suppliers are typically the same, no matter what the phony label says. This old scam has been around for decades. I used to watch a butcher put the 'prime' stickers on steaks he just cut from slabs of lesser grades. The grocers are always scamming you, one way or another. Last week my local store ran tea, buy one get one free. They then raised the price by 18% w/o changing it at the shelf. So, as it rang up wrong, I told the clerk just to keep half of them. It was still a fairly good deal. They've been doing this sort of thing since scanners(scammers) went in around here 20+ years ago. The one and only organically oriented store here came and went out within a few years, around 2000.
Watch the Penn & Teller Bulls*it episode on organic food. They cut a banana in half, put it on two different plates and tell people that one is organic and the other isn't. The reactions are amazing.
Edit: Here is the clip, skip to 4:00
http://www.trilulilu.ro/video-vedete/penn-and-teller-bullshit-organic-fo...
Lol like that is scientific.
How semitic of penn and teller.
Yet their magic show is back on the air.
http://www.tv.com/shows/penn-and-teller-fool-us/
I would Trust them before you there, second post eva.
i wonder if I am getting ripped off every time i grocery shop, since I buy organic with everything I can. It may well be a ripoff, I just want to eat REAL food, not frankenfood thats been doused with pesticides, etc. And I don't want my beef to be from cows that are injected with a disgusting cocktail of who knows what, nor my chickens raised in absolute squalor.
Plus, it may sound a little gay, but I want the animals killed so I can eat them to have a decent life out in a field where they belong, not crammed into a feed pin with thousands of other animals so tight that they can't even turn around. Not only for the animals sake, but for my sake due to sanitation issues.
I know a guy that used to work for tyson chicken who absulutely will not eat any chicken that comes from tyson, only eats free range chicken and eggs
Try this instead: Grow an heirloom tomato and compare it to ANYTHING you can buy at ANY store, period.
It's like comparing real food to flavored floral foam.
We can debate the .gov definition of "organic," but real food speaks for itself.
Any home grown tomato tastes better than any storebought.
I have 50 plants this year.
About half came up on their own in my compost heap.
Talk about a crap shoot.
I don't know if I'm getting beefsteak, plum, or brandywine. I just hope they're not all cherry tomatoes.
google GMO rat and check out the pic of the rats forced to eat GMO food and then tell me that shit. you have got to be some punk ass government troll to support GMO food when they are made by the same company that made agent organe.....................
IF it is true that Fukushima radiation is drifting to our shores, being areosolized by breaking waves and then spread inland (not to mention by the jet stream) then nothing grown on the West coast is organic-or anything from the mid-north Pacific
Try the ketchup, cherry pie. Lousy vanilla ice cream. Wife likes it. End of discussion.
WF is an "acquired" taste, similar in expression to "May you live in interesting times."
They should have a Whole Foods at the airport.
I remember spending almost 5 bucks on a banana and a bottle of water at JFK. Some bananas were OK if you were the size of a spider monkey....I ripped off the Gorilla size one as they were all the same price.
Whole Foods takes your whole wallet when you shop there.
Yeah yeah....it's fresh and good fer ya....but fuck me naked.
Spent $11 for a Wendy's single meal at the Mo Bay Airport recently. Asked the bumbaclod behind the counter if it came with anal lube....blank look...she went back to her zombie phone...
OT: That's funny, all these years I thought you guys were saying Bumbaclot, due to the nature of the word. I had never seen it written down. My crew always found it a most amusing term walking around going "Buuuuumbbbbaaaaaclot' like a Mexican soccer announcer would say 'GOOOOAAl. It was one of those things that always got a laugh and never seemed to get old no matter how many times you heard it. That, and Wacgwan or something like that. Thanks for the memories Mon.
Hard to believe people complain about spending $5 for a carrot.
gafaw...gafaw...gafaw....
I don't. In Green Hills, it takes at least a half-hour to get a parking spot within four blocks of the place on weekends.
http://smilejamaicakrcl.com/2015/06/25/smile-jamaica-ark-ives-june-20-20...
Peter Tosh's favorite swear word
CLARIFICATION
"Bumbaclod" - catch-all swear word used by mi kountrymen (i.e. fuck me, fuck, fucker, sonofbitch, etc.)
Kind of the "Handi-wipe" of Caribbean harsh.
"Tell mi your bumbaclod bitch is with pikni again? Shaaaaa!"
"Bloodclot!!!" Used to express shock, fright, etc.
"Mi tink mi have a BLOODCLOT when mi find out mi toof is broke!!"
Your crew was melding the two.
"WaGwan" (phonetic)....ombudsman for greetings down 'ere.
Whole Paycheck
A friend's kid got a job there. Sounded nice at the start but they overstaffed for the launch then used all these BS lies and excuses to fire people. I doubt anyone over 40 would ever be hired.
The good news is Germany's (Aldi) Trader Joe's kicks the sh*t out of Whole Foods. TJ was started in Calif but was bought by Aldi. Trader Joe's prices are so much better and they treat their employees a lot better.
wtf is the "overprice now" syndrome? similarly, wtf is the countervailing "underprice later" one? maybe the dumb liberals in boath coastal states deserve to be fleeced! Good for HOLE foods - LMAO!
Truly. It's the triumph of marketing over the consumer's common sense. The most impressive grocer I know is Aldi's. I don't shop there much because they're on the bad side of town and draw a lot of bad customers, but they have a lot of high quality products. They know how to run a market. Never get cheated at their check out, either.
Basically it's place "to be seen." When I was living in Austin, Tx the WF place was packed with recently migrated LA people; you could tell by their Botox face, huge fake tits, knee-high boots and their wearing fur vests in the middle of the 110 degree Texas summer.
It was such a turn off going there I only went once or twice for something I could not find anywhere else.
Aldi (aka the Albrecht family who are Christians) also own Trader Joe's and TJ beats the hell out of Whole Frauds.
Aldi and Trader Joe's pay their people well and the employees generally like working there. The people work pretty hard but the pay is good.
A lot of these people that do the bulk of their grocery shopping at Whole [paycheck] Foods {otherwise known as WF, and you can put whatever meaning you care to on those initials) go thru the checkout with carts brimming full, and the price tag is several hundreds of dollars. I've watched them carefully as I go thru the checkout with the carefully selected 3 or 4 items I buy there due to sales, quality, and/or can't get it elsewhere.
These hippie-yuppie regulars stick out their chests and want everyone to know they can pay these exhorbitant prices. And in the process they imagine they are 'doing good to the mother planet, earth'. Yeah, as if WF is not just a corporate scam to get your money!
Greed - it's organic!
While accruately categorizing a lot of the crowd, Titus shops there, though loathe to admit it. Their produce and meats sections are managed better than anywhere else in town, and I don't eat factory food (including their hot bar which is for the most part shitty). I do buy at small farms and organic markets when I can.
Yes, I pay more for the produce and meats, but it beats being sick/fat all the time from factory food. Anything else that's carried elsewhere of equal quality I buy at other stores out of principle. And I return food that's bad, again out of principle.
One other benefit of shopping there, they tend not to carry products with HFCS.
The cocksuckers are stealthily replacing independent brands with house brands though, which are bargian basement shit relabled at independent brand prices.
Going to Whole Foods is painful and if it weren't for Mr begging me to get his favorite coffee there after work, I'd never go. First of all, it is in a gay part of San Diego and invariably I will be confronted by some wild gesticulating, spittle producing gay individual over some perceived infraction ( no, I do not want to donate money for the Pride Parade. Doesn't " Tolerance" include acceptance of my Molon Labe bumper sticker?)
Every employee seems to want to out do each other in the number of tattoos and piercings. Funny how their perceptions of individual unique expression take on the view of mass conformity when viewed as a whole.
They even quit carrying raw milk which our tiny local health food store carries. I asked the manager why. " oh, we couldn't afford the liability!"
Goddam balless fucking losers.
Miffed
If this was written by a gal, it's good to see not all think gays are some group of "can't do wrong" people.
They are just as shitty & annoying as the majority of straight people. They are starting to become like some jews who think U can't criticize Israel or U're anti-semitic.
No 1 should be above criticism.
Reposted elsewhere
Me thinks your butt plug has a yeast infection. Take care of it, the off gassing seems to be effecting your BrainStem.
Last November I made a painful visit to Whole Foods for an item I can't buy elsewhere. My checkout total was about $6, and I was asked to donate $10 to provide a Thanksgiving dinner to a "family in need." I decided not to point out that if I had money to spare I wouldn't be spending $6 at Whole Foods. It would have been totally lost on the guy.
Miffed,
IIRC, we hay have mentioned Trader Joe's before. Have you checked out Henry's and Mother's Stores as well?
Funny thing to hear you rant on the tattoo/piercing contest Hippie crews at WF. At a Henry's in SD, I recall relying on a knowledgable Store Clerk (who I thought was Gay) for selecting personal care products there (When possible, I tend to get hypo allergenic, toxin-carcinogen free products). He was polite and professional(never ever mentioned anything about his lifestyle or some straight-bashing political agenda) - I wish all Store Clerks(regardless of their gender/orientation) would conduct themselves in that manner.
Save the empty coffee can, and fill it with the mild roast from Aldi.
Less than $4/lb, and Mr will be none the wiser.
The only time I like seeing piercings in wackos noses, ears, lips, eyebrows, and cheeks is when I am looking for an advantage in a potential physical altercation. When I was a bouncer, stuff like that came in handy. Just one mention of " I will rip that shit right out of your face ", and that ended the nonsense instantaneously.
Maverick
Shit Foods. Have shopped there 3 times to see what the fuss was. You pay a lot more for flavorless shitty food. Fuck it (and I say that living in the HQ town).
True dat .... "flavorless" even compared to local fresh off the farm stuff and most of what WF sells is not the "Implied" level of purity that many take it for.
I stay away muchly except for convenience sake as it seesm WF is a libtard scam machine.
Ditto. They do have a fine selection of organic vagina wash.
Fembots already have organic v jj wash; spooge and spit
Maybe we should start calling the place "AssWhole Foods" because most of the people I've met that shop there seem to be...
Not fond of the place. Whole Foods comes to mond when I thonknof the refrain "The goal of most people in business and government is to separate you from your money." In this respect WF is just WalMart with lipstick.
One of, if not the the highest grossing WF in the country is the one in Aventura, FL. Before their brand exploded, there was a fine independent store there called Unicorn. At the time, I was spending the winters in the area, and none too happy when they bought out Unicorn.
Little did I know just how predatory, and in many ways despicable the mega-chain would become.
One of my last major irritations before essentially avoiding them completely occured in Manhasset, a ritzy location on Long Island. I called the regional manager (having gone through the store managers, etc.) to complain about their fresh bread offerings. Things had gotten so bad, that (I'm working from memory, but you'll get the gist) of the 24 shelves dedicated to fresh bread loaves, 19 (or so) were taken up by the house brand.
I mean, do you have any idea how many good bakeries there are in the metro NYC area?
sheesh.
I keep telling everyone don't be one of the "Dupes of Hazard" and yeah I should that one in a blog post soon as it is true. I had a great day today talking to an Apply employee as I was in there looking at all the devices that connect to phones relative to healthcare data being the privacy advocate I am. Well conversation drifted a bit and he ended up asking me about his Optum (United Healthcare) HSA (heatlh savings account) MasterCard. Well needless to say he will do a cash withdrawal on funds he may not need and use for healthcare. Why?
Get the cash and give United Healthcare (a huge data seller as well as an insurer) and MasterCard less data to sell about you. Your data goes to a company like Argus who runs analytics and scores you and does other behavioral analytics about you, and half of the stuff is flawed, the methods are proprietary where nobody can verify what spurious correlations some quant dreamed up to help the company profit stature. Don't think so..read this..here's one and even the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is buying your credit card data. They say they are learning, but if you believe that I can sell you a few bridges. You're getting code hosed folks and corporations benefit selling your data.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/08/argus-analytics-produces-share-of.html
You haven't seen nothing yet on spurious correlations until you see what pharmacy benefit managers do to "score" you again on medication adherence, i.e. will you take your meds. This is NOT medication monitoring, but rather some bull shit number crunching that some high paid quant working for an insurer dreamed up. Keep in mind there are former high frequency Trading firm quants that have left that business and work for insurers and other types of healthcare analytic firms. I love the one metric to where you get dinged if you do not use mail order prescription services...that is marketing and bunk and very spurious in nature and most of the 300 metrics have NOTHING to do with you taking your prescription medications.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2015/06/medication-adherence-predictions-enter.html
I can't wait until this score hits some rich politician or some VC or PE guy and they get brought down to their knees with this superficial "scoring" routine that keeps inequality growing in the US. It's the perfect example of quantitated justifications for things that are not true, so yeah, Whole Food, yup let's the "Operation Perception-Deception" train and rake in some money. This is happening everywhere folks and time to wake up and not be one of the "Dupes of Hazard". Corporations are just not responsible for their code at all when they can compile it and even get some patents on some of the garbage out there so nobody can see it or use their money making formulas.
Again if you a man seeing a female doctor, you are dinged on that frigging score, take heed.
We have a real problem with "excess scoring" with consumers in the US and it serves to accelerate inequality on every corner. Here's a game made to exploit all of that...video is smashing...pretty eye catching with the visuals and the music...the direct correlation to data selling and inequality in the US and Whole Foods just got busted playing the game it appears.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/06/data-selling-and-direct-correlation-to.html
Pay cash when you can and keep the amount of data available to the blood sucking data sellers to a minimum.
The Apple guy thinks you waste his time as well.
Fascinating stuff MQ. I knew they crave data about us but did not know that.
Or buy stuff you don't need to sabotage their data, making it worthless, and then return the stuff.
I bet returns really red flag an item or brand name.
The Whole Purpose behind shopping at Whole Foods is to be around Yuppie Larvae & Hippies, pretend Hippies who actually have money. The goal is to avoid the Riff-Raff & feel good about "eating healthy".
I would be surprised if their business is hurt too much. This makes them even more Elite.
Haven't been in a while, but I was surprised when the girls, who work the register, were actually shaving. THIS was a sign that something was up. Turns out it was the prices.
they're grocers... if they can put a thumb on the scale they will... caveat emptor...
I like it!
You should start a website called cynicalsummary.com
Let the market handle it. If Whole Foods can cheat and swindle and still have customers flowing in their doors, more power to them. The coming economic correction, if it hits the upper class as it may, might clean their clocks.
.
.
BLESS YOU Lookout Mountain, for saying
in a most polite manner what I want to most rudely:
this author can go suck eggs for his whiny, hypocritical, "oh, the world isn't - but must be FAAAAAAIR!" crapola.
Isn't it bad enough the Totalitarians
(for expediency, I usually say "the Left", though the GOP has its share of treasonous elites)
are making these decisions FOR YOU before you even know it?!?
But NO, noooooooooooo...mister whine-away has to pee all over these pages.
LOOK, DIMWIT (the author, not you LM):
Whole Foods was created for a specific, limited market.
They do their schtick.
I used to buy some of their stuff (when I lived near one) only when it made sense.
BUT: for those for whom it doesn't matter a whit about the cost,
WHO THE F*CK ARE YOU TO B!TCH ABOUT THEIR BUSINESS?!?
Every time *I* saw an error on my bill (RARELY),
I went to their "customer service" counter and got 100% satisfaction (i.e. refund).
Are you just shilling today for one of their competitors?
Whine, whine, whine.
AS LM SAID: LET THE FREE MARKET SHAKE IT OUT, you LOSER.
Am I missing something? This article makes no sense to me.
What is the WF scandal? Yhe article doesn't say.
OK - check the math on your bill; good idea, though I personally have never found a mistake on mine at any supermarket.
Finally, what is the deal with the WF Math and Honest math. The numbers are different and the math is the same. Is milk $10 or $11?
Enlighten me.
I find "mistakes" all the time on my Safeway receipts; maybe you aren't looking carefully enough.
Wall Street will inflate expected EPS for the year.
CEO will suck WS cock.
That's how the Restricted Stock plan works, right?
I hate Whole Foods. You go in there for onions, and the organic ones are some obscene price, so you buy the reasonably-priced conventionally-grown ones. So you might as well buy those somewhere else. I buy lipstick there because regular lipstick makes the skin peel off my lips (some weird ingredient); the "natural" stuff is okay. Can't order it online since it will often melt in the heat of shipping. Their deli section of their Palo Alto store is funny; it is all pregnant women who are frantic to get something tasty that won't hurt their infant. I bought their deli food once and it was not especially good and it was grotesquely expensive.
Prole Foods is unfortunately the only place I know that carries many things that would be hard for me to procure elsewhere, especially all in one trip. I have time for one grocery store trip a week, so it's all gotta get done in one go.
Dave's Killer bread, Griffin Remedy lotion (pretty much the only one that isn't totally gay), St. Benoit farms milk (jersey cows) and anything dairy-related, Equal Exchange's chocolates, Greenbank cheese... damn where else do I get good things that don't totally suck, all in one place? Most everywhere there is plastic food and toxic potions that pass off as things you apply to your skin/body - you gotta make a good effort to get the real stuff.
+100
I love ZH for the ladies who are sarcastic, funny and are as pissed off as most of us guys. ;-)
The fact that a grocery store for the wealthier has to resort to such means is telling of what's coming.
Wow.
I have written it before, and probably will again:
The easiest marks are people who think they are so much smarter than the average person. That is exactly the description of Whole Foods customers.
I worked there for 13 years. There are several sub-groups of customers. You could do a PhD thesis in several areas of study on the many different types and cliques that inhabit the stores. One of my favorite sub-groups are the highly-sensitive to anything and everything that bothers them sub-group. I've seen these freaks carry their money in aluminum foil, only handling their money with gloves. I've seen a guy stand over the cheese and swing a type of crystal over each piece of cheese to find out if it had energy or if it was dead. These losers come in trying to solve whatever fucked up plight they imagine they have. Bat-shit crazy. Snobs. Trendies. Rich fucks. Health freaks. Soccer moms. Guys come in to scam on the young girls. At least it was interesting. Lots of incestuous fucking going on between the team members.
Whole Foods was better before they became the corporate whores they are today.
Dude or dudette - you should right a book. I would love to hear more about these subgroup freaks.
Ditto. Instant best seller!
I don't always add up my entire bill before check out, but I do know the cost of each item in my cart or basket, and I check the prices as each item is scanned.
The problem with Whole Foods is that they are not big into logistics and distribution, that is one reason their prices suck.
In a previous life I had product in their frozen category. WF uses natural food distributors that charge "their" clienrts a 40% margin. WF then charges 35% to 40% margin on top of that already collected by ineficient distiribution. Most suppliers, or manufacturers have to offer WF a "different" price than normal channels because of WF's llack of logistics.
Not sure about cheating people. Watch the scanner, it's not that difficult.
I prefer Trader Joe's.
SH
No wonder the cashier comes up with a total of $200 for 2 small paper bags.
Whole lot of rip-off.
Rename:
Whole Rip-Off.
ive HEARD that WHOLE FOODS sneaks in and sells GMO foods with out any warning or lableing at all!
Never been to a Whore Foods store, but I grow my own tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, etc. and know mine is better (all non-GMO from heirloom seeds in my own mulch beds).
I just wanted to share this story about prices in casual restaurants and diners. Went for lunch Friday with GF. I try to be frugal; she's very not. Anyhow, up here in upstate NY we have a chian of burger joints called Bill Gray's. Great burgers, hots, etc., but my, oh, my, Mr. Gray is rich.
Cheeseburger, curly fries, chili dog, onion rings, small drink, $26 and change. Outrageous.
So, Saturday, after we discussed the prices (even she was not amused), decided to do breakfast at Lakeside Diner on rt. 104 in Ontario. Eggs florentine with home fries, coffee, eggs benedict, home fires, $18.46 + $4 tip. Eggs were OK, home fries were just shit.
I hate eating out. Rather blow muy money at the race track. At least there I get a cheap thrill and the chance to break even or win something, without puking over the price or the bad food.
Reminds me of that movie, "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off. Pretty much sums up how I feel after 61 1/2 years here.
Yeah, it pays to check your receipt. I bought Costco prime ribeyes. Label says $70. Checkout scanned it at $80. How can a barcode not equal the price on the same label? The haughty manager gave me my $10 after I drove back to the store then says, "Yeah, happened yesterday, too." I called the state weights and measures dept. They sent out an investigator and emailed me back: "the store is in compliance." Oh, that's good. At least at Whole Foods if you catch the error, the item is free. However, you might want to handle the receipt carefully -- there's BPA in the thernal printer coating. Never handle with wet hands.
If you are stupid enough to shop at one of those overpriced, tree hugging, tofu farting, gay stores...then you should be ripped off. You are too stupid to survive in the real world anyways.
Well, if you don't want to eat Monsatan gmo frankenfood, there's not a whole lot of great choice out there.
What is wrong with people with this obsession regarding Whole Foods' prices? Just purchase your groceries elsewhere if you feel the prices are too high.
Regarding this nonsense about some 'conspiracy to defraud', I'm confident that it is little more than some negative PR that a competitor is paying for. The 'scandal' was 'discovered' in the uber commie enclave of Manhattan where allegedly there were weight discrepancies. Fine, let's investigate.
But when you actually read the meat of the story, the auditor found that there were locally packed items that were over the indicated lable as well. So it sounded like an issue with the human use of the scales.
Of course, I'm sure that NYC is altruistic and only cares about compliance... It would have nothing to do with shaking down a cash rich operation for money...
With that said, I agree with another poster that there are structural pricing issues. Farmers markets are a better route in my view. Additionally, if you get a particular thing frequently, look into buying it directly. Doing so is a lot more purposeful than whining about WF.
Were people consistant, the government would demanding investigations into price grouging in the sphere of Apple products. Or, consumers would be up in arms over the slave factories that Apple runs.
If you're in Texas, or visiting SanAnton, Awsting, Dallas, or Huestown, look for and check out the best of high intentioned grocery marketing: Central Market, by HEB (and that's Butts to you, outstaters).
If people really cared about the food they eat (and the planet) they'd grow their own.
People who shop at Whole Foods don't pay attention. All grocers miss-price... I would guess 1 out of 20 products minimum on average at Safeway and Whole Foods, less at Giant. But when I call Whole Foods out on their pricing discrepancies, they give you the product for free! Yep, miss-priced at register discovered at the register means you get it free. So maybe it's just plain typical ignorant consumer who pays no attention to what they are paying letting corporate entity rip them off... I mean Americans let everybody rip them off, health care rip off, Quality of life rip off, cardboard housing rip off, poor fuel efficiency in automobiles rip off, political rip off, war expenditures rip off, nearly every product sold at the oligopoly retail sector rip off... Just about every entity that ever operated in the US has ripped off the American Public, and they just keep eating hamburgers and waiving their flags...
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