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Inspection Reveals Major Price Violations At NYC Supermakets

NEW YORK (1010 WINS/AP) -- The city's consumer affairs department says hundreds of supermarkets were found to have violated tax and pricing rules.

Inspectors surveyed more than 700 grocery stores across the city and discovered that many weren't abiding by a rule requiring a price tag for every item on the shelf.

LISTEN: WCBS880's Rich Lamb reports

"When New Yorkers go into a supermarket they don't expect to get taken to the cleaners," Consumer Affairs Commissioner Jonathan Mintz said at a press conference Wednesday.

Others rang up items at the wrong price. Nearly half didn't calculate taxes properly, including wrongly adding bottle deposits in an item's taxable price.

1010 WINS' senior correspondent Stan Brooks reports the compliance rate was worst at stores in the poorest neighborhoods, where 2 out of 3 inspections showed failure.

Mintz says the department will double the number of inspectors next year.

"Supermarkets have got to get the message that they must do right by their customers," Mintz said, "consumers need to know that we are protecting them at the check out counter."

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