Ripped off at Walmart - Money Saving lesson learned (2024)

By Karrie on October 10, 2013 | Updated July 2, 2019 | 446 Comments

For the past few years I have purchased my boneless skinless chicken breasts from places like Albertsons, Costco and every once in awhile even Walmart.

The last few times I have come home from Walmart with a package of chicken breasts I got this feeling like something just wasn’t right.

The styrofoam package and the little juice-soaker-upper thingy (I know… real technical) felt almost as heavy as the chicken breasts inside. I had this nagging feeling that I was getting ripped off.

So last week when I brought home another package of chicken from Walmart I decided to go with my gut and actually weigh the chicken and package.

In the store the price said $2.09 per lb. That’s an okay price – I usually get better deals at Zaycon.

Here is the package I brought home.

I paid $10.74 for the package. It says there is 5.14 lbs of chicken inside. At $2.09 per lb the price is correct.

So the first thing I did was to set the whole package on the scale to see if it was 5.14 lbs.

Ummm…nope! It weighs 4.938 lbs. So right there the price is off. I measured a few other items to make sure my scale was accurate first and it was.

I did read on the packaging it says “Contains up to 15% natural chicken broth.” I was assuming that it was injected into the chicken breasts or something, but I noticed a TON of chicken juices in this package. I think that is kind of weasly, don’t you?

Next I decided to take out all the chicken and see how much that weighed by itself.

This is all the chicken in the package. I tared the scale and then put the chicken on the scale.

3.97 lbs.

I knew it. Oh the humanity. I was irritated and annoyed at this point. I should have only paid $7.92 for this package at $2.09 per lb.

Still, I wanted to weigh just the package and juice-soaker-upper thingie.

This weighed almost exactly ONE pound.

So…that $2.09 per pound price is now $2.71 per pound.

Sneaky sneaky packaging.

I feel cheated. Duped. Bamboozled (yeah, I just went there. ) I wanted to run to my computer and share this all right away. But I was nervous. I mean posting online that I was ripped off at Walmart? What if I got the Oprah treatment? (sued)

Well, just in case, I will leave this little disclaimer…this problem may have only been at my local store and not chain wide.

One Week Later

I bought chicken again, this time I happened to be at Winco. The chicken was priced at $2.09 per lb again.

On the package it says it should be 4.04 lbs, but it was actually 4.15 lbs! Way to go Winco…you actually considered the weight of the packaging!

When I weighed the chicken it was spot on at 4.04 lbs. Their styrofoam package was not nearly as heavy as the Wally world one. Sheesh.

So anyways, I was going to say to always avoid these kinds of packages and just go for either the frozen bags at Costco or fresh from a deli. But Winco surprised me that they actually are honest in their policies of weighing the meat. (Big slow clap for Winco!)

As for Walmart – I didn’t call customer service or complain to them in store. We ate the $3.00 lb. chicken and it was tasty. No problems in the quality of the product, the problem I have is the jacking up of the price because of the packaging dishonesty.

I plan on going in again with my scale and see if it happens again. And if it does I will complain.

So watch out for chicken cheats and always try to get what you paid for because if you’re not careful you may end up paying over two dollars for a piece of slimy chicken juice packaging.

Oh and question everything my friends. If you feel something is wrong, it probably is.