Covina--Tim Duffy is a grocery
store manager's worst nightmare.

Over the last three years, the 52-year-old salesman estimates that because of cash register scanner
overcharges, he has walked out of supermarkets and other stores with more than $17,000 in bread, cheese, chips and other goods--all of it free.

Taking advantage of policies at many store that waive charges when scanned and marked prices differ, the Covina man's take this year alone is more than
$4,000 all of which he said he donated to charity.

"Republican or Democrat, if you live in Beverly Hills or sleep in your car, whether you pay your bills with food
stamps or an American Express card, the cancer on the retail industry in the state of California affects everybody," says Duffy a self fashioned warrior of scanner overcharges.

A grandfather who wears a ponytail Duffy casually began noticing scanner overcharges three years ago, often when stores advertised sales but neglected to reprogram prices in the checkout scanners.

He limited his take to two or three items a trip. That was until he felt he was insulted by a supermarket manager while trying to get some mis-marked doughnuts and chocolate chip cookies.

"He made a snide remark. "enjoy those cookies and doughnuts because you are never going to get them again" Duffy recalled. "I took that as a challenge, and learned everything about the pricing system. I started getting more and more things."

Employing a near-photographic memory, Duffy comparison shops at various grocery stores, checking for different prices on identical items, a sure sign of a mis-marked product.

The take can sometimes be large--a total 0f $406.69 worth of groceries at three separate supermarkets on Jan. 1. Duffy says he could have but got too tuckered out at the end.

It can be comical. Earlier this month he scooped up some $230 worth of pantyhose--"every size, style and color"--After finding an entire display mis-marked.

Duffy refined and practiced his art in obscurity over the past three years, but that is changing with his scheduled testimony before a state Senate committee considering a scanning inspection bill.

Last year the state Department of Food and Agriculture completed a survey of 300 supermarkets and other retail stores that concluded there were pricing errors on 3.7 percent of the items.

With more overcharges than undercharges--often due to sales prices not scanned at the checkout counter--the department estimates the errors cost consumers $480 million annually.

Sen. Quentin Kopp I San Francisco, has introduced legislation that would require retail markets to pay a registration fee that would help fund regular, local scanner inspections.

The California Retailers Association has opposed the bill, contending that overcharges and undercharges even out and that retail stores in the state are more accurate than other parts of the nation.

"The fact of the matter is that there is no screaming public demand for this," says Bill Dombrowski, president of the trade association, composed of some 9,000 large retail stores. "We are already being inspected. The are already in our stores."

But Duffy says if there is no demand, it's because consumers don't know they are being ripped off. After hearing about the bill, he called Kopp's office and the senator decided he would be just the person to testify to counter the industry contentions.

Duffy is now writing a wide ranging guide tentatively entitled "Winning at the Checkout Counter: A Consumer Survival Guide." He says he decided to write the book after spotting scanner errors lost its challenge.

*The above story appeared in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune and is reprinted with permission.

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