And the moral of the story is...Check your receipt!

I ventured out to Walmart for my weekly shopping trip. I decided this week to try just shopping for one week's worth of food. However, I was prepared that I was going to need to spend a bit more money because we were out of things that cost a bit of money...a couple of spices, olive oil, a few toiletry products that I couldn't work in at CVS, and filters for our humidifiers. However, I was also looking forward to scoring some deals by price-matching, namely on some beef- rump roast, reg. 3.50ish a pound; price-matched to 1.68/lb. It was going to cut the price in half. I also had some produce items to price-match.

Unfortunately, the cashier was new, had a little trouble but once someone explained it to her, she seemed to be doing okay. Then she hit the total button, and I almost choked. I know my eyes visibly bugged out of my head. It was 198 dollars! I was so discouraged, because I had really tried to be careful. I was sure that something wasn't right. I didn't want to make a scene, so I quietly paid my bill, took my receipt and pushed my cart out of the way to study it. Sure enough, as I was scanning down, I came to the realization that she had charged me full price for my reduced-price meat, not just once, but four times! That was $44! She had also double charged me for another item.

I remained calm as the manager at the customer service desk took FOREVER to figure out how the cashier had rung the meat up incorrectly. She was super-nice about it the whole time, though. In the end, I walked out with an additional $45! I still spent a lot of money, but $150 is much more acceptable considering all the extra items I had to buy this week. Plus, the chicken and beef that I bought will be used for 3-4 meals next week, so next week's bill should be much less!

Pay attention to your receipts!