Woman Discovers Walmart Is Charging More For Their Meat By Saying It Weighs More Than It Does — And She's Not Alone
Her discovery comes just months after a $45 million class-action settlement against Walmart for erroneously weighing meat and produce.
Prostock-Studio / Getty Images / Canva Pro Grocery shopping has become downright infuriating in the past few years, as runaway inflation has left prices staggeringly high.
Even worse, much of the "inflation" we've seen has been revealed to be nothing more than price gouging by food companies. But foods sold by weight are at least somewhat exempt from that scam, right? Think again, especially if you shop at Walmart.
A shopper discovered Walmart is overcharging for meat by weighing and labeling it incorrectly.
Multiple studies have revealed that as much as 50% of the inflation we've seen in recent years is caused by manufacturers and suppliers continually jacking up prices simply because they can, a process known as greedflation. This is why corporate profits have soared to unprecedented levels despite inflation.
However, when it comes to things sold by weight, prices can only go up so much, right? If a pound of chicken that used to be $4 is now $10, everyone will cry ... foul.
Well, it seems some distributors and retailers have found a way around this — by simply artificially inflating the weight on the label instead of the price itself.
Case in point: Walmart. TikToker Virginia Madison, who regularly visits Walmart as an online shopper for grocery apps, was left shocked by the bizarrely disparate prices she found on seemingly identical packages of chicken on a recent shopping trip.
She found that several packages that looked to contain about the same amount of meat in the same size package all had wildly different weights — and hence wildly different prices.
She showed one package weighing 2.8 lbs at $4.97 per pound, priced at a total of $10.83. But the packages next to it, which appeared to be the same amount of meat, were weighed at 4.09 and 4.78 lbs, for a total of $20.33 and $23.76, respectively.
Madison then weighed the chicken to make sure she wasn't mistaken. Both were more than double the price they should have been.
"To prove I'm not full of [expletive]," Madison said in a follow-up video, "here we go." She then weighed the package of chicken labeled at 4.78 pounds using one of the scales in the produce department.
It weighed 2.22 pounds, and she got similar results for the other package — 4.09 pounds was actually two pounds on the dot, meaning both were more than double the price they should have been. "Walmart is getting us," Madison said. "They're screwing us."
Madison then took the packages to a cashier and explained the situation, who passed the packages on to a manager. But Madison said the store staff didn't seem to care much about the issue or the fact that one of the packages was puffed up with air, which can sometimes indicate the meat inside has gone bad.
Sure enough, when she returned to the store the following day, she found more packages of mislabeled chicken at double the price, including one of the very packages she'd turned in to management the day before.
This time, she took the chicken to the deli counter and explained that she was "trying to save you guys from a lawsuit." What makes this story even more insane is that it is already too late for that.
Walmart just settled a $45 million class action lawsuit for mislabeling the weight of meat and produce in September 2023.
As Madison and several commenters noted, it is the distributor, in this case, Foster Farms, that typically labels meat packaging, not the stores themselves. Still, Walmart's staff should have caught meat packages weighing in at twice what they're supposed to, especially since Walmart was just sued for this practice.
In 2022, the retailer was the defendant in a class-action lawsuit for misrepresenting weights on labels for meat, pork, poultry, seafood, oranges, grapefruit, and tangerines.
And from the sounds of it, Walmart had been doing this for many years, long before the runaway inflation of 2022. Customers who purchased any of these items at Walmart beginning all the way back in 2018 are eligible for a payout for the lawsuit.
The deadline to claim your portion of the $45 million settlement is approaching in June, and you can file your claim here.
Despite the settlement, Walmart has continually denied wrongdoing. In a statement to USA Today, the retailer said, "We still deny the allegations. However, we believe a settlement is in the best interest of both parties."
They might want to lawyer up again, though, and then have a very candid chat with their chicken suppliers.
They also have an opportunity to handle this case differently, starting with giving Madison a huge "thank you" for identifying what seems to be an ongoing problem, even if it is an inadvertent one. And then maybe they can make sure it never happens again.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.