CHICAGO - Lt. Governor Pat Quinn proposed the Retail Consumer Protection Act of 2006 today to prevent retailers from overcharging customers with inaccurate price scanners at the checkout line. 

 The Retail Consumer Protection Act will include stiff fines and store-by-store accountability policies to ensure that large retail chains like Wal-Mart and drugstore chains like Walgreens, Osco, and CVS eliminate scanner pricing errors and stop charging customers more at the checkout counter than the price advertised in the aisles or in circulars.

A recent study by the University of Illinois at Chicago of 78 Wal-Mart stores in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan found that 85% of Wal-Mart stores tested demonstrated errors in pricing that exceeded federally accepted standards for large retail establishments, and checkout scanners rang up the wrong price 6.4% of the time.

Last year, a study by the Chicago Department of Consumer Services found 78% of the city drugstores, including Walgreens, Osco, and CVS, were overcharging customers with price scanner errors.  The overcharge uncovered in the probe ranged from nickels to $35.

            The Federal Trade Commission estimates as much as $40 billion may be involved in transactions with price errors every year. 

            Incorrect shelf price, confusing signs, and computer errors are the most common reasons for price scanner overcharges. 

            "The nickel-and-diming of Illinois consumers by inaccurate retail price scanners must end immediately," said Quinn.  "No Illinois shopper should have to go through a checkout line wondering if the store's price scanners are on the square."

            Modeled on a California law and court settlement, the Retail Consumer Protection Act will propose state fines of up to $5,000 per price scanner overcharge incident.  The consumer law would boost public awareness of a toll-free hotline, would require each store to name one employee to verify that shelf prices and checkout prices are the same, and would also require retailers to print the toll-free hotline on each receipt and post it by each checkout.  Further, if a customer alerts a store to an overcharge, the store would give the customer up to $3 per item.

            "A toll-free hotline would enable any Illinois consumer victimized by this shell game to report it and gain satisfaction," Quinn said.  "And any retail employee could anonymously blow the whistle on such rip-offs and be rewarded.  Illinois consumers must be protected from these predatory practices."