Scales Of Truth Expose Walmart
I’ll admit, when I heard about this, I was surprised. Not because I can’t imagine it happening, but because I just took it for granted that it wouldn’t. I was blissfully naïve, but now that the bubble has burst, I will be more cynical going forward.
I do most of the cooking in our household, and we shop at several different stores. In our area, we often visit Costco, Aldi, Publix, and occasionally Walmart. Each of these stores has its advantages and disadvantages, but going forward, I will evaluate them more carefully.
Let’s face it, prices are higher everywhere, and I’m no different from anyone else. I love it when I get a good deal on something, but if what has been discovered at Walmart is a universal issue, then the only people getting a deal are the corporate executives who work there.
Recently, it was discovered that the store has been mislabeling items, and the listed weights are higher than they actually are.
A TikTok regular, Jimmy Wrigg, lives in Georgia, and when he recently visited his local Walmart, he discovered something that had the hairs standing up on the back of my neck.
During his visit, he grabbed a “Kentucky Legend Ham” labeled 4.93 pounds, but when he took it to the checkout scale, it only weighed 1.83 pounds. In that case, if you had purchased that ham, you would have paid around $15 more than necessary, paying for weight that didn’t exist.
To make sure the scale was accurate, he placed a two-pound weight on the scale, and it was only .02 pounds off, proving that the scale was accurate, but the labeling wasn’t.
To verify that it wasn’t just a fluke, Wrigg weighed several more hams, and all of them were at least half the weight less than the label claimed. In one case, a package was labeled 5.28 pounds but weighed only 2.89 pounds, meaning customers were paying $4.98/pound for nothing.
The deception extended beyond ham. A chicken package labeled as 4.66 pounds actually weighed 2.37 pounds on the scale. Another package marked at 6.39 pounds weighed just over four pounds.
Here’s the thing: Walmart just went through this. In 2024, the company settled a class action lawsuit for $45 million regarding inaccurate weights on meat, poultry, pork, seafood, and bagged citrus. The lawsuit claimed that Walmart’s point-of-sale system “deceptively, systemically, and artificially increases the weight of the product at checkout,” causing customers to pay inflated prices. Although Walmart denied any wrongdoing, it chose to settle the case.
The settlement covered purchases made from October 2018 to January 2024 and allowed eligible customers to receive up to $500 upon providing receipts.
In June 2024, New Jersey’s Attorney General fined Walmart $1.64 million for unit pricing violations at 64 stores statewide, marking the largest penalty ever imposed by New Jersey’s Office of Weights and Measures. Inspections revealed over 2,000 measurement errors.
Then, in August 2025, California required Walmart to pay $5.5 million in civil penalties for similar violations.
These three significant settlements occurred within a span of less than two years, highlighting a pattern of systematic fraud. The settlement covered purchases made from October 2018 to January 2024 and allowed eligible customers to receive up to $500 upon providing receipts.
This reeks of corporate deception, and it may be much larger than Walmart. This may extend well past our local grocery stores.
I, for one, am going to check the weight of everything at all the places we shop. I am also going to take it a step further: if a bag of chips is labeled 16 oz, it should weigh 16 oz on the scale.
I suggest everyone do the same. This is too easy to be limited to just Walmart.
We deserve the truth.
