BILL NUMBER:S5874

TITLE OF BILL:
An act
to amend the general business law, in relation to posting the cost of
products

PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:
To establish violations for venues that fail to properly charge
consumers at point of sale consistent with the price listed at the
product display in the venue.

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Subdivision 1: Defines venues that will be subject to this law and the
manner in which pricing must be displayed.

Subdivision 2: Establishes that charging a consumer in excess of the
marked price constitutes a violation.

Subdivision 3: Failure to properly display price as established in
section 1 will constitute a violation.

Subdivision 4: Defines consumers redress to a violation of
subdivision 2.

Subdivision 5: Establishes that failure to display pricing will result
              

in, at a minimum, a fine of five hundred for the first violation, one
thousand for a second violation and two thousand five hundred dollars
for subsequent violations.

Subdivision 6: Establishes that each day an applicable venue is in
breach of subdivision 1 or 2 will constitute a separate violation.

Subdivision 7: None of the following subdivisions will apply when a
violation is incurred by human error that is subsequently remedied at
the point of sale.

JUSTIFICATION:
The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) found that
compliance declined from last year's low of 48 percent down to only
41 percent. Last year, DCA announced that its inspection of 983
supermarkets throughout the five boroughs resulted in having to issue
violations in 516 of those inspections. DCA inspectors this year
conducted 1,980 supermarket inspections and had to issue violations
in 1,162 of those inspections, with total fines assessed of
close to a million dollars. Inspectors check for accurate pricing,
proper taxing of products, and accuracy of scales and scanners, all of
which affect New Yorkers' wallets at the check-out counter.

This year doubling the number of inspections and thus doubling that
'cost of doing business' still was not enough to get the City's
supermarkets to get it right at their check-out counters. Public
pressure hasn't worked, doubling enforcement activity hasn't worked,
and so there is an impetus for this bill, which would both give
overcharged consumers ten times the amount they were overcharged and
that item for free, and also triple current fines."


In the past year's inspections the most common violations were for
failure to mark proper quantities and provide required accountability
information on food packaged in the store, adding tax to items that
are not taxable, charging the wrong prices at check-out scanners,
failing to affix price tags on individual items, and maintaining
inaccurate scales or failing to make scales available to customers
for products sold by weight.

Under this Act, every time a consumer is overcharged, they would get
both ten times the amount of the overcharge and that item for free.
Both Connecticut and Michigan have similar, successful laws on their
books, and customer payback is a standard industry best practice.
Second, the Act would triple existing fines.

LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
No prior bill.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
None.

EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act shall take effect 90 days after it shall have become a law.