Whole Foods Markets has publicly apologized to all of its shoppers for some pricing issues that have been brought to our attention recently.
Last week, New York City's Department of Consumer Affairs took part in an investigation and found out that the Whole Foods natural food store chain was overcharging for its pre-packaged food items, the New York Daily News exclusively learned. Eighty different prepackaged items were tested and all of them turned out to have mislabeled weights.
"New York City stores routinely overstated the weights of its pre-packaged products - including meats, dairy and baked goods - resulting in customers being overcharged," the official statement said.
On Wednesday, Whole Foods co-CEOs Walter Robb and John Mackey released a YouTube video apologizing to their customers.
"Straight up, we made some mistakes. We want to own that." Robb said. "It's understandable sometimes that mistakes are made. They are inadvertent. They do happen because it's a hands-on approach bringing you fresh food."
The pricing mistakes were apparently unintentional and all stores across the country will be increasing their training, according to ABC News. Some items will even be given away for free to customers who believe and can prove they were overcharged.
"We apologize to our customers for any discrepancies that may have occurred," the company said in a blog post.
The company not only plans to increase training, but it will also start a "third-party auditing system" to monitor any progress to make sure this issue does not happen again, according to the Washington Post. The results of the auditing will be released to the public in 45 days.
