TRI-COUNTY — Lowe’s Markets, a supermarket chain operating stores in Marfa, Alpine, Fort Davis and Presidio, came under fire recently when several citizens took to local social media pages to express outrage over what they said were repeated instances of overcharging at the stores.
Similar complaints have been circulating for some time but seemed to spike after a few residents went public with their concerns. A post in a Facebook group for Alpine citizens July 3 included an image of a receipt where the purchaser outlined several items for which they believed they’d been overcharged totaling nearly $25. They claimed there were even a couple of items on the receipt they did not even purchase. The post garnered around 150 comments, with many sharing similar experiences.
Those with complaints claim that there are regular instances where prices advertised on the shelves do not match what gets rung up at the checkout counter. The allegations led Lowe’s to conduct an audit to assess pricing accuracy at the Marfa location on Tuesday.
Marfa resident Stela Fuentez posted to a local Marfa Facebook page July 6 to explain she’d been overcharged for a box of cereal — not her first time noticing she’d be overcharged, she told The Big Bend Sentinel — and that store management was not apologetic about the error when she’d asked them to correct it.
She said grocery prices are already high considering the often low quality of the products, “but then to go to the register and get charged a couple more bucks for this and a couple more bucks for that, it’s a slap in the face,” Fuentez said.
It’s no surprise that supposed overcharges are met with exasperation considering food prices are already at record highs — U.S. food prices rose 25% from 2019 to 2023, according to the United States Department of Agriculture — and rural residents are often paying even more for their groceries compared to city dwellers.
Fuentez said when Lowe’s took over what was previously run as Porter’s this past December she was optimistic the store might improve. She said she took cue from the newly-paved parking lot that, ideally, fresher produce and better products were coming. But that has not been the case, she said, and the repeated instances of overcharging she’s experienced have led her to want to boycott the store, but she knows her options are limited. “It’s a food desert, and these corporations know that,” Fuentez said. “We don’t have a choice.”
She said many people have reached out to her to share their concerns with the store in the wake of her social media post. Fuentez said, at this point, she would like to know exactly what is causing the price discrepancies and what she can expect from Lowe’s moving forward.
She said her attempts to talk to Lowe’s employees about the issue have left her further disenchanted with her local grocery store. “The customer service is horrific. They’re not apologizing, they’re not acknowledging. They’re annoyed that you’re calling them out,” Fuentez said. “There’s no sense of, ‘I’m sorry, we can do better.’ That’s where I point at Lowe’s Corporation saying, ‘We need to train our management better. We need to come in and see what’s going on.’”
For its part, when Lowe’s was made aware of the citizen complaints via an interview request with The Sentinel, Chief Operating Officer Alan Buxkemper called for the Marfa store to be audited the very next day. “They will scan every item in the store, and if there’s a price discrepancy, they will fix it,” Buxkemper said.
Buxkemper did not admit fault on behalf of the Marfa Lowe’s, but pointed to his swiftness of action to demonstrate the company’s responsiveness. “We’re new to the community, and are we perfect? Absolutely not. But we sure work hard trying to be perfect,” Buxkemper said. “If I get a complaint today, and I am taking action to handle it tomorrow, I bet there are very few businesses in town that would be that immediate.”
He declined to go into specifics about what might be causing incorrect pricing while the results of the store audit are pending. “If there’s a specific reason, my auditors will know, ‘Okay, this is what happened.’ And then we can put a plan together to fix whatever happened.”
He said before being contacted by The Sentinel the company had not been made aware of “a single complaint” about the issue, but Lowe’s takes the accusations of incorrect pricing “very seriously.”
“We work super hard to make sure that we have fair, adequate and accurate pricing,” Buxkemper said. “This isn’t something that we get complaints on … about our pricing not being right.”
He denied allegations from concerned citizens that the overcharges were intentional and constituted theft. “We definitely don’t intentionally have wrong pricing on our shelves, that’s not the way we operate,” Buxkemper said.
Buxkemper said the company was only planning on auditing the Marfa store at the moment because he was unaware of any other stores in the tri-county area that may also have price discrepancies. When asked to comment on citizens’ complaints that local management has supposedly been rude to customers and was not taking the issue seriously, he said he was unaware of their behavior.
“I would sure hope that my management team there would respond appropriately to people, but I can’t say that … I just don’t know how they would react,” Buxkemper said.
Lawyer and Presidio County Attorney-elect Blair Park was quick to comment on local social media posts to offer helpful tips about how citizens can contact Lowe’s directly with their complaints and even take their concerns to the next level, reporting a misrepresentation of price to the Texas Department of Agriculture and filing a consumer complaint with the Texas attorney general’s office.
Park wrote it was a “major (and illegal) problem” that had landed major stores, including Whole Foods, in hot water in the past. In 2014, the Austin-based chain entered into a settlement agreement to pay $800,000 in civil penalties to multiple cities in California after a statewide investigation found widespread pricing violations at their stores.
She told The Sentinel it is important for citizens to provide copies of receipts and go through the formal channels to report the issue, that way complaints stack up, increasing the likelihood Lowe’s will take local concerns seriously.
“You can’t expect the Texas Department of Agriculture or the attorney general to know about these problems unless you tell them,” Park said. “So if everyone here is just complaining on Marfa Group [on Facebook], but not complaining to the right people, then we’re all just gonna be complaining to each other and nothing will happen.”
If the Texas Department of Agriculture finds a store in violation of incorrect pricing, they can levy fines up to $500 per violation per day.
Park said even $1-3 dollar overcharges could be significant increases in terms of percentage, depending on the price of the item, and small overcharges could stack up overtime. “It’s a big problem. One dollar here and there, but if it happens five times on a receipt and you’re doing this all year long that’s a lot of money,” Park said.
When she can, Fuentez uses the self check-out, she said, to double check prices on items she’s purchasing. But for many who utilize the traditional checkout counter, incorrect prices may only be discovered after the bill has been paid, and even then finding out if you overpaid requires a knowledge of the advertised price.
Park said she doesn’t think the onus of ensuring you are paying the right price for your grocery items should be on the customers. She said she’d prefer to shop locally, but the quality of produce and meat at Lowe’s and a feeling she’s being “duped” on prices has led her to pursue food delivery services like Hello Fresh and Imperfect Foods.
“It’d be one thing if we had horrible quality and it was a cheap price like, ‘Well, we’re a small town, you do what you can,’ but to give horrible quality and then charge outrageous prices for it. It’s just not cool,” Park said.