One Out Of Two NYC Supermarkets Fail Inspection by NYC Department of Consumer Affairs

Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) Commissioner Jonathan Mintz announced that DCA's investigations of supermarkets throughout New York City resulted in a compliance rate of only 48 percent. In the five New York City neighborhoods with the highest poverty levels, all of which are in the Bronx, the compliance rate was only 36 percent.

"It is a supermarket's responsibility to ensure that its products are accurately priced and its customers are correctly charged, but with half the supermarkets in the City receiving violations, it is clear that they are failing their customers," said Commissioner Mintz. "We've conducted extensive education, met repeatedly with representatives of the supermarket industry, and issued hundreds of thousands of dollars in violations and there has been no improvement. Because thousands of New Yorkers continue to be overcharged, I've directed our inspectors to double the number of inspections in the coming year."

These results come at the end of a yearlong, comprehensive enforcement sweep of supermarkets in all five boroughs, in which DCA conducted 983 inspections and issued 516 violations. Supermarkets had the second lowest compliance rate of all industries that DCA inspected in 2010. DCA also inspects bodegas, which have a compliance rate of 82 percent Citywide and 94 percent in the five poorest neighborhoods.

The charged supermarkets could face more than $380,000 in fines to the City. DCA inspectors checked for a variety of potential violations, including inaccurate check-out scanners, lack of prices on individual items, taxation of items that are not taxable, improperly weighed food, and unavailability of scales for customers.

The most common violation was for lack of item pricing, which occurs when individual items do not have price tags. Additionally, nearly one in three scanners inspected for accuracy failed, making the lack of item pricing even more harmful to consumers' pocketbooks. Citywide, 48 percent of the supermarkets inspected charged incorrect taxes or incorrectly collected taxes on bottle deposits. In the five neighborhoods with the highest poverty levels, 58 percent of supermarkets were charged with these violations.