Whole Foods Overcharging Customers

Whole Foods — "Whole Paycheck," as the joke goes. People pay a premium to shop there, believing the price buys healthier groceries and produce. In June 2015, New York City's Department of Consumer Affairs gave shoppers a reason to check their receipts: the agency announced an ongoing investigation after finding that the chain's eight New York City stores routinely overstated the weights of pre-packaged foods — and overcharged customers as a result.

DCA inspectors tested 80 different pre-packaged products — meats, dairy, baked goods, snacks — and found that all of them had packages with mislabeled weights. Worse, 89 percent of the packages tested failed the federal standard for how much an individual package may deviate from its actual weight. The overcharges ranged from $0.80 for a package of pecan panko to $14.84 for a package of coconut shrimp. Inspectors also found packages labeled with suspiciously identical weights — practically impossible for natural food products — including flavored almonds, berries, vegetables, and seafood, sometimes for the same product at multiple stores.

"It is unacceptable that New Yorkers shopping for a summer BBQ... have a good chance of being overcharged," said DCA Commissioner Julie Menin. "Our inspectors tell me this is the worst case of mislabeling they have seen in their careers."

Whole Foods disputed the findings. The company called the allegations "overreaching," said it had cooperated fully with the investigation, and objected to what it called the agency's "grossly excessive monetary demands."

New York was not the first jurisdiction to flag Whole Foods' pricing: the company had paid nearly $800,000 the previous year to settle a California case over similar pricing-accuracy allegations.