When I was working at Leekes (last stint was ~3 years ago) the word was that if the price differed you could offer it to the customer at the price the system said, or you could refuse sale and take the stock off the shelves for 24 hours and relabel accordingly.

People generally don't mind if it's a lower price at the till (surprisingly ), but customers usually get fussy when the price is higher, we had to get a manager to check the price on the shelf then on the system, if the two differed it was up to the manager to decide whether to sell to the customer or take the items off the shop floor.

The funny thing is that Granada did a program some time ago about honesty, and they used two shops. One a small indian run corner shop type place and the other a WHSmith newsagent bookstore. They deliberately gave people the wrong change. Change for the note above. So if gave a £10 note they gave change for a £20 etc. Then they interviewed people some way down the road. People were more honest for small independent stores giving back the money than they would at a larger store. They even had a shot gun mic picked up what people said outside the store before the interviewer got up to them to ask about honesty and what they would do if they had been given too much change. One police man was on the mobile phone saying "what a result just got a free tenner from the store". When interviewed he said he was honest, in fact admitted he was a policeman and would give back the over payment. Yes seconds earlier he did the complete opposite. Even a clergyman was caught lying.

That's an interesting point. The seller is not under obligation to sell me the item at a lower price if a mistake has been identified, but if the person stands there and insists that the item is for sale and refuses to withdraw it from sale or correct the error, then I can't see that they can insist that I pay the higher price.

What it amounts to- as far as I understand it- is that they must either withdraw the item from sale and/or correct the price there and then. If I was forced to pay the higher price and the mistake was still not corrected, then this situation could go on all day. After waiting in the queue for half an hour, you would probably pay just to get the hell out of there.

I admit it's not an area that I fully understand, but I am beginning to see the pitfalls of having to sell an item at the shelf price e.g. someone accidentally labels a TV at £20.00 instead of £2,000

Bring it to their attention, and see what happens. Most of the time the difference isn't worth worrying about anyway.

I think you (and Forquare) are both right in that you have to remove the item from sale.

TBH though most of the time the seller will just sell it at the lower price.

I've said a couple of times at the local co-op that the item scanned is priced lower on the shelf and they gave it to me at the lower price.

Probably wouldn't have noticed until I got home.

From what I recall when the major chains stopped pricing individual items but relied on barcodes, the price on the shelf was the price you paid. If it was on the system at a higher price, one of the safeguards for the consumer was that you could insist on that lower price, to avoid unscrupulous vendors mispricing deliberately.

The store may be able to refuse, not sure on that, but I thought not. The publicity factor and trading standards sanctions could be bad for them.