After a customer took Publix to court last year, saying she’d been overcharged during a trip to the Florida-native grocery giant, News4JAX sister station WKMG in Orlando decided to look into an important policy the grocer offers: the Publix Promise.
What was in the lawsuit
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According to the class-action lawsuit, which was ultimately dismissed, the customer was shopping at a Publix store in January 2025 when she noticed that pork tenderloin was on sale for $4.99 per pound.
She decided to purchase a package of the tenderloin, which was labeled as 2.83 pounds, but when she went to check out, the package rang up as 3.96 pounds, the lawsuit shows.
The woman was charged $19.78, instead of the expected $14.12, court records claim. That’s a roughly 40% overcharge.
“Most customers do not realize that the weight of the product has changed because Publix’ POS is programmed so that the total price of the product matches the total price on the customer’s receipt or the POS screen, so to avoid detection,” the lawsuit reads. “And the customer’s receipt does not list the weight of the product but only the alleged savings and the total price of the product.”
According to WKMG, the lawsuit goes on to accuse Publix and its workers of failing to fix the POS system or alert customers about the problem, as doing so could hurt the company’s revenues.
“Publix regularly displays a lower price per ounce on the stickers on the shelves when the customer never receives the lower price per unit as advertised,” the lawsuit continues.
That’s not where it ends, though.
The lawsuit included other examples of this issue at Publix stores, including with turkey, chicken, ham, apples and baby formula.
The lawsuit accused the company of deceptive trade practices and unjust enrichment, but earlier this year, a judge dismissed the case, citing the “Publix Promise.”
So what is the ‘Publix Promise’
The “Publix Promise” is a chain policy guaranteeing that if, during checkout, the scanned price of an item is higher than the advertised price, Publix will give the customer one of that item for free.
Meanwhile, Publix will charge the lower price for the remaining items if this happens, the policy states.
The court order states that the customer failed to establish that she had suffered enough to warrant the lawsuit.
“This is because she successfully obtained a refund for various purchases, negating any injury that she could have suffered due to (Publix’s) allegedly deceptive practices,” the order reads. “And as to the other purchases for which she did not receive a refund, (the customer) fails to explain why she could not avail herself of the Publix Refund Policy.”
Court records show that the customer has appealed the decision.
You can read through both the original complaint and the court order.
