WAL-MART ACCUSED OF STEALING PRICE DATA

Jon Springer

SKIATOOK, Okla. -- Greg McNeil, general manager of the Super H supermarket here, said he expects competitors to occasionally check prices on items at his store. But he said Wal-Mart has gone too far.

McNeil earlier this month said he seized an electronic bar code scanner from a Wal-Mart employee who was in the Super H scanning shelf bar codes. Saying the scans may include proprietary information such as inventory and the retailer's costs, Super H turned the device over to local police and filed a lawsuit against the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer.

At a hearing scheduled this week, Super H will ask a District Court judge to allow it to see what information the scanner may have taken from Super H, Steve Peters, an attorney representing Super H, told SN.

Wal-Mart Stores in a statement said it "did not violate the law, and will vigorously defend this lawsuit."

Super H, a 25,000-square-foot independent store, shares a parking lot with a Wal-Mart discount store in Skiatook, a suburb of Tulsa. But McNeil said he believes Wal-Mart employees were checking his store's prices in anticipation of a Wal-Mart Supercenter set to open nearby in August. McNeil said Wal-Mart employees have been coming to the store to check prices for "around six months," and had repeatedly been asked to leave.

"They were coming in here using electronic scanning machines to scan in everything to do with my tags. They were getting my mix, size assortment, category management, prices -- everything," McNeil told SN. "I put them on notice several times. I said, 'I don't mind you coming in here buying one of everything, I don't mind you coming in here with your eyes and looking -- because that's normal, public information. But you cannot come in here with machines and try to steal my stuff.' That's basically what they were doing, coming in here in a Wal-Mart smock and a name tag, with an electronic device, taking my information.

"To me it's corporate espionage," he added. "It's no different than somebody getting on my computer and stealing my payroll."

In an e-mail, Christi Davis Gallagher, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, told SN it is common practice for retailers to check one another's prices and added that on the same day McNeil seized Wal-Mart's scanner, Super H employees were in Wal-Mart checking its prices, albeit without a scanning device. Asked if Wal-Mart permitted competitors to use such equipment in its stores, Gallagher said, "Nationwide, many competitors do use electronic devices when performing price comparisons in Wal-Mart stores."

Peters said Super H filed the suit to prevent Wal-Mart from reclaiming the scanner. Wal-Mart has been involved in similar cases before, he added, including a dispute with Midland City, Okla.-based Crest Foods in 2000 that he said appeared to have been settled out of court. Crest could not be reached for comment.