Walmart changing barcode on clearance items!

[brennen7]

I went to the Walmart in Bracebridge earlier to find the Green Glade Wax Melt Warmer that was on clearance for $1.87 well I thought I hit the jackpot when I came across a whole display of them so I grabbed one and scanned it and it came up as $15.26 But as I was putting it away I noticed that the barcode on it was a sticker so I peeled it back a bit and I saw there was another barcode under there, I hunted through the whole display and came across 2 that didn't have the sticker over the barcode so I went and scanned it and guess what? It came up as $1.87! So obviously some walmarts are sticking new barcodes to avoid selling it for the clearance price and taking the loss. I went on the hunt for other clearance items and found the same thing on many items. I don't know if it's a fluke or not but I was by the electronics section and the guy there was looking at me the whole time and he ended up calling a manager over the loudspeaker when I left so I think they know what I discovered

Edit: I checked on walmart.ca and the UPC on the sticker matches the UPC of the White Glade Pot: http://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/glade-wa.../6000119380197

[cinpow]

I saw the green ones that was suppose to be on clearance but scanned at reg price, so I put them back, I didn't notice about the stickers thing.

[Purdee]

the green ones at my walmart had a shelf label with the clearance price but i didn't get any nor scan one since i didn't need any warmer

[Poirot]

Could have been SC Johnson putting on the stickers.

[annedougherty]

Could have been SC Johnson putting on the stickers.

You get a gold star

Sent from my MotoG3 using Tapatalk

[brennen7]

Could have been SC Johnson putting on the stickers.

I thought that too at first but it's weird that the UPC matches that of the White one and I can't see how a manufacturer would benefit from changing the barcode.

[all about saving]

I find Bracebridge is terrible for that sort of thing...not just Walmart. The Independent store has terrible sales compared to Huntsville - same with Walmart. I don't like the layout of Huntsville Walmart and I am in Bracebridge more but they have better sales. Before Christmas Walmart in Huntsville had two whole aisles of toys that were on clearance for 50% off (give or take 10%) but the same toys in Brcaebridge were not on clearance.

[tjthemanto]

I think new products with new expiry dates and new bar codes must have come in from the Manufacturer. They must have asked WM to get rid of the old ones by pricing them at clearance price and WM is getting compensated for that by the MFR.

But maybe WM might be pulling a fast one, by not selling the old ones at clearance price and adding the new UPC stickers on the old ones, and pocketing the difference.

I once went to a small mom & pop store. They had a big item on sale & attached to it was a smaller sized bonus travel size item for FREE, when you bought the bigger item. This was FREE from the MFR. The retailer had separated the FREE item and was selling it on his own by putting a bar code on it ! The unsuspecting customers had no clue, they were supposed to get the smaller bonus item for free, when they bought the bigger one.

[coupondiva]

I took a friend on my shopping adventure last week & she was buying 6 of those green wax burners. Some were scanning for $15-something but the cashier just said, "That's weird" and adjusted the price to $1.87. Thank goodness! But that is some tricky business.

denise

[Spock]

I used to work for a distributor that stores like this would buy product from. We would actually create our own barcode labels to place over any original product barcodes to differentiate our product from anything else in the store. It's possible that the same product could have come to the store from two different vendors, and one vendor was allowing the store to clear out their old product, and another vendor that was now getting that product to distribute now, and would need a different code on it to make sure they got the money from that sale. Typically a store shouldn't have the same product from 2 different vendors at 2 price points at the same time (say during a vendor changeover) but it's possible, as it had happened to the company I worked for a few times, typically it was just a fluke.

However, if a customer were to remove our barcode sticker and the store would scan the original sticker then our company wouldn't receive a penny of that sale. The few times this happened in the past (we were the only vendor for that specific product at that time, and the previous vendor for it was already finished) the store itself would usually just end up with whatever money they got for the product and the distributor would get nothing because their barcode was never scanned.

Hopefully I didn't make this too confusing sounding. Basically I just wanted to let people know to please not remove those barcode stickers as it would probably cost the distributor and not the big box store itself.