Speed rip-off zone?

At 8 a.m., Pick n Save does not have any baggers on duty; in fact, only one manned checkout lane was open. The "Speed Zones" - scan yourself out automated tellers - were deserted. If I had to bag my own groceries anyway, there was no sense waiting in a line, so I moseyed over to the scanner.

Mistake #1: I scanned my saver card first.
Mistake #2: I had several produce items which, for some reason known only to the erstwhile employees of the store, had no plu stickers affixed.
Mistake #3: I had more than three bags' worth of stuff.

Stupid machine. The "find your items" function is not terribly user friendly - by the time I got to the checkout, all I could remember about the potatoes was that the sign said "Baking potatoes" - so which of the three kinds of white potatoes listed were they? Ditto on the 3 for $1.98 oranges. Not listed that way on the inventory.

By the time I was done, I had identified five separate items which rang up at the wrong price. Usually, there is a clerk assigned to the Speed Zone, but it was too early, apparently, for the store to think people might need help. I was not happy, to say the least. Grabbing a couple of extra bags (see #3 above - I needed to rebag some stuff after I took it off the scales that guard against theft) I went over to the service desk.

"Oh, you scanned your card first; you have to scan it at the end. I thought they had that fixed. See at the bottom of the receipt it says how much you could have saved. I can do an adjustment for you."

Excuse me? There were no signs at the checkout stating you had to wait to scan the saver's card. In the past, you could scan it at any time to have the discounts apply. From the clerk's attitude, this had been going on for quite a while. How many people had not noticed that the little note on the bottom of the receipt said "You could have saved..." instead of " You saved..."?

My refund ended up at 16.5% of the gross bill. That's a lot of overcharging of unwitting customers.

I've half a mind to contact one of the local television station consumer watchdog units.