Public outcry heightened Wednesday as complaints on the alleged variances in shelf and till prices at the Quickmart went fever-pitch.
Different consumers have in the past 3 months inundated Cofek with complaints on the retail chain.
Top of the complaint list is the prices variances whose margins is huge and unsuspecting shopppers hardly notice.
According to Section 12 and 13 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2012 such a ‘deceptive’ act is punishable. It also amounts to fraud, hence attracts a criminal charge.
Quickmart customers have also complained of system interference which results in shutting up and refreshing – hence the need for ‘delaying’ fingerprint ‘passwords’ at the teller computers.
The third complaint has been about lack of clarity on the ‘discounts’ on the receipts. With massive complaints on the variance between shelf and till prices – doubtful shoppers tend not to trust such discounts indicated on official receipts.
Writing to Cofek a Kitui customer complained thus ‘Quick Mart Supermarket are just shameless thieves. If you go shopping there, be sure to lose in almost every item you buy.
‘This is done openly through variation in shelf pricing and actual system pricing. In my case in Kitui branch, I bought items whose prices were clearly indicated on the shelves, but when I paid the system charges more by adding certain amounts ranging from Sh23 to Sh100’, said the unhappy customer who has asked Cofek to demand for answers.
‘When I complained, the manager tries to calm me promising some reward to buy my silence. These corporate crooks are worse than the gun totting thugs committing violent robbery. Quickmart are thieves’, he wrote.
Quickmart has 55 branches spread across 13 of Kenya’s 47 counties. It has over 5,000 employees.
The retail giant recently absorbed its’ rival Tumaini. It is wholly owned by a Mauritius private equity fund called Adena Partners.
Before its’ collapse, Nakumatt supermarket founded in 1987 and wound up in 2019, had similar complaints of variance in shelf and till prices before it came tumbling down.
In July 2015, a police officer Ezekiel Momanyi Onsongo, the supermarket’s account manager Philip Manyura Maroko, and Dennison Mose Maroko a motorcycle rider denied killing James Karanja who was a senior auditor at the supermarket chain at Nakumatt Supermarket, along Mombasa road at 6.30 pm.
Cofek later sued Nakumatt on shelf and till price variance. Competition Authority of Kenya was also named as a respondent.
