A shopper at Walmart thought she was buying $3 shoes — until dynamic pricing increased the price by more than six times by the time she checked out.
Kat, a content creator on TikTok, shared in a five-part series that she went to Walmart to get her kids new shoes since they had outgrown theirs, “but everything is so wildly expensive.”
She saw a price tag that showed a pair of kids’ sneakers marked down from $18.98 to $3, showing the picture of the discounted display in the first video.
The shoes hanging below the price tag were a purple shoe, but when Kat scanned the QR code on the show for the Walmart location she was at, the price came up as $18.98, and when she scanned the QR code on the digital price tag, it brought her to a different shoe than the ones that were physically there in the store.
The QR code brought up a black shoe, and scanning it showed that the black shoe was $18.98 and marked down to $3 at the store location she was at. She finally finds the shoes that were supposed to be hanging below the marked down price tag elsewhere in the store on top of a shelf.
“I’m assuming a lot of people ran into this and just threw the shoes down because they were pissed,” she said in part two of the saga. She scanned the QR code on the shoe to double check, and it confirmed that the shoes were $18.98 marked down to $3.
Kat added that she had previously shared in a prior video that digital tags make her nervous because how is anyone supposed to know when exactly the tags are updated.
When they switched to digital tags, Kat claims that she had asked a Walmart employee what if the price changes while she’s shopping — and she was told that would never happen. But they told her if she was so concerned, she could take pictures of everything she’s buying and if it rings up at a different price she could show the photo and they’ll match the price.
After shopping, Kat and her son went to the register and as she was scanning things, her son was apologizing as things were coming up a different price than he thought they were, but he couldn’t remember — and Kat started to worry.
Then she went to ring up the sneakers and they ring up $18.98, and she “absolutely knew” it was supposed to be $3. She calls an employee over and scans it with her phone at the time she was at the register.
“Same exact shoe has ridden in the buggy from the back of the store to the front of the store, the same exact shoe. I scan it — only sold online, $18.98,” she said in the video. “That’s a lie. I’m holding the shoe.”
“This is the same exact shoe that when I scanned it in the back of the store 20 minutes ago it was $3,” she continued in part three.
When she told the man who came over to help that it was supposed to be $3, he asked if she could prove it. She showed photos of the price tag to the employee, he said, “Yeah, I guess I’ll just change it to $3.”
“This scares me because that means that it’s choosing the price based on where I’m standing in the store, and that’s unacceptable,” Kat said she told the employee. “I said, that’s something that needs to be reported to the Better Business Bureau, that is unacceptable.”
She claimed the employee said she would have to wait for a manager — and then proceeded to laugh at her the whole time and was “so flippant” about it.
The manager came over and told Kat that they were $18, and Kat said, “They’re not, though, they’re $3…I don’t really care. What I’m upset about is anybody who has any type of anything that could be considered a limitation would not be able to do this… There’s a million reasons why somebody would not understand what you’re doing right now.”
“This is not OK,” she added. “This feels like price gouging, this is a trap. This is what people are afraid of.”
The manager went to go check for herself and came back winded saying, “You’re right, they are $3, but I see what you mean.”
The manager apologized profusely and told Kat to buy what she needs and customer service will “price correct” her — but customer service assumed that the items just rang up wrong and they need to fix it.
“I’m like, no it’s bigger than just it rang up wrong. The price is changing actively while I’m in the store,” Kat emphasized.
The head manager tried to accuse Kat of not understanding the app and to just “let her have them for $3,” and Kat responded that it’s not an issue of not understanding the app, but a bigger issue as a whole.
When she scanned with her app in front of the manager, a whole new set of prices came up. “Where are these prices coming from? So now I’ve got new prices. Different price in the back, different price at the register, brand new prices at customer service.”
After an hour of dealing with just the shoes, the manager tells her that the shoes simply won’t ring up for $3 — but Kat wouldn’t back down.
“We’re not doing that again just because you’ve now decided to change the price while I’ve been here talking to you,” she said. “I’m not mad at any human here talking to me…This just is a glimpse, tangible, provable event that this is happening — because before it was all just hypothetical.”
Eventually, they “allowed” her to buy the shoes for $3.
The Post has reached out to Walmart for comment.
In March, Walmart landed the patent for the demand forecast tool that’s designed to predict what shoppers will buy and recommend a price based on that. Walmart also obtained a patent in January for a system that “dynamically and automatically” updates item prices online based on product popularity.
