19 July 2023 , 09:39
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Walmart self-checkout customers are being warned to check their final bill for a sneaky $49 surcharge - amid a number of complaints from furious shoppers.
The giant retailer ran a promotion for its members during Walmart Plus Week, when a number of customers started to notice an additional charge on their receipts at self-checkouts.
As shoppers finished scanning their items, a pop-up ad was reportedly offering a discounted membership for its members at $49 instead of the usual $98.
Customers were left confused and some mistakenly purchased the discounted membership without releasing what the service was.
The supermarket giant has now been forced to remove the prompt from the self-checkout screens after a number of complaints from customers who inadvertently added the membership to their bill.
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Self-checkout machines have been popping up with promo (LightRocket via Getty Images)"We are aware of some customer confusion with this process which is leading us to remove the prompt," Walmart told Insider.
"Any customers who inadvertently took advantage of this offer at a self-checkout and have not activated it can get a full refund with proof of purchase."
One employee believes the pop-up was designed to confuse customers who speak a different language.
"It seemed to me that this was designed that way to make it super easy to accidentally or unknowingly add a subscription to your cart," one employee told Insider.
"There must be people out there somewhere who are accidentally paying for this Walmart Plus subscription, going home and not even realising that they're out of $50, and they don't even know that they have a subscription."
Customers took to social media to reveal the additional charge also happened to them, a user wrote: "Today a woman was charged $49 for a Walmart+ membership and she had no idea.
Walmart has been trying to get more customers to sign up to the promotion (Getty Images)"She came to customer service after paying at self checkout. She was saying that she only received $22 in change on a $23 dollar transaction after paying with a $100 bill,"
"I looked at her receipt and it said that the transaction was actually $76 dollars and I told her that her change was correct,"
"She got mad and said that it wasn’t. I looked at the items she had purchased and right at the end it had a Walmart+ membership for $49."
The user revealed she immediately knew what happened after the elderly woman, who does not know English very well, accidentally agreed to the pop-up on the self-checkout screen.
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"Starting sometime within the past couple days the self checkout machines have been asking customers if they want to purchase an annual Walmart+ membership for half off," the Walmart staff stated.
"It doesn’t ask you to sign up, or for any other information from you. I live in a heavily Mexican/Hispanic city in Texas. This woman was an elderly Mexican woman who does not know English very well.
"She pressed the button to buy it unknowingly."