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Four years ago, a video from Kaufland appeared on social media that was filmed by one of its customers.
This video was supposed to clearly prove that Kaufland (and perhaps other retail chains) are blatantly stealing from their customers. And now, four years later, the same video has resurfaced on social media.
This resurrected scandal thus leads us to the question – could chains really be stealing from us like this?
How did it all start?
It started with a yellow pepper, a scale and a plastic protective pad. One of the shopping customers simply wanted to prove Kaufland guilty of cheating its customers and decided to use a yellow pepper to do so. He weighed this pepper on the scale together with the plastic pad that is usually on the scale and then again without it.
Result
With the pad the pepper weighed 262 grams, while without the pad just 154 grams.
At that time peppers were sold at 129 CZK per kilo, which would be a serious theft and customers would rightly be angry at the retailer. That is, if the chain were actually cheating.
Customers
Many were indeed angry.
After all, the post was seen, shared and outraged hundreds of thousands of customers.
Some Kaufland customers even admitted in the comments that they now weigh produce only without the plastic tray. They won’t let themselves be cheated!
Who is actually stealing from whom?
But now the question hangs – was Kaufland really stealing from its customers?
Could a chain of this kind possibly do that? That Kaufland would issue a widespread directive commanding customers to be cheated in this way?
This video and many others (yes, the Czech Colombo isn’t the only one who figured out the “tray on the scale” trick — Romanian customers, for example, also filmed similar attempts) can thus actually be understood as a guide on how to cheat Kaufland, and by extension other chains that still let customers do the weighing themselves.
And the fact that some actually follow this how-to in practice only confirms that suspicion.
And why are plastic trays even on the scales?
They’re simply practical. A Kaufland spokesman, Michael Šperl, explained at the time that the pads serve primarily to protect customers (hygiene — they are easier to wash and can be changed frequently) and the scales themselves (degree of wear and potential damage).
He also stated that their scales are correctly calibrated by the Czech Metrology Institute. However, it is of course impossible to say whether every single scale in retail chains weighs correctly. Maybe you or your acquaintances have negative experiences when it comes to scales in stores. It is not uncommon for scales in the same store to register different values.
In such a case it may make sense to raise a fuss and, naturally, to turn to the competent person or authorities. The consumer is not always the victim. In this particular case, however, Kaufland was innocent.
Based on that video with the pepper, several other videos were made in which customers, on the contrary, defended Kaufland and clearly showed that the weight of the tray is subtracted from the scale and therefore customers were indeed not being cheated in this case.
If we push things to the extreme, Kaufland comes out of this affair as the victim, which could theoretically have filed a lawsuit against the originator of the video, especially after customers began to deliberately and unlawfully remove the plastic tray from the scale. At that point they were actually stealing from Kaufland.
A yellow pepper weighing 154 grams? Really?
If you buy vegetables often, or weigh your food at home as part of your diet, you surely know that this particular type of pepper is quite heavy, and for one pepper to weigh only 154 grams is sheer nonsense (except for tiny exceptions).
All chains would have to be cheating for that to be true.
For this very reason, the vast majority of retail chains in the Czech Republic do not trust their customers and often have the scale at the checkout, where the customer has no opportunity to manipulate the weight of the goods to their advantage.
On the other hand, wary customers do not trust stores to weigh goods correctly. Thus we are in a vicious circle that is not easy to escape.
As a customer you can check the correctness of the weighing at checkout by weighing the goods in the store on an indicative scale.
But be careful, since this scale is only indicative, the weight of the specific goods will also be approximate and may not match the weight measured at the checkout.
Weigh in the bag or without?
If we’re talking about the standard thin plastic bag you can tear off in the store and then put goods into, it weighs almost nothing — only about 2 grams. So you won’t save much on this.
What if I bring my own container?
A different and somewhat more complicated situation arises with your own containers, into which in some stores you can also put goods, whether practical nets or jars.
Some shop assistants will welcome such a solution, others (a very small minority) will look at you annoyed.
What is very positive, however, is that most retailers welcome this pro-ecological solution and are willing to weigh your goods without the brought container, which is often much heavier than a standard thin plastic bag or plastic dish.
Instead of a plastic bag or plastic dish, you can indeed have the goods put into your own container.
According to the State Health Institute’s opinion, disposable plastic dishes and utensils for food or drinks can be replaced by containers that the consumer brings themselves.
The final decision, however, depends on the operator themselves, who must have conditions set up so that there is no cross-contamination of the surface on which the container brought by the consumer will be placed.
