Woman says she ‘just got the feeling’ to look at her Walmart self-checkout screen, and then she says she saw a charge that doubled the price

A TikTok creator said she almost paid nearly twice as much for craft supplies after a charge she did not recognize appeared on a Walmart self-checkout screen. Saber, who posts as @sabercierraa, described the stop in a video that has gained 1.3 million views. 

Her caption read, “NOW I won’t be going back. That’s actually insane to me. Number one, how does that even happen? Number two, imagine if I hadn’t noticed! Free money for one of the largest corporations in America.” She said she “just got the feeling” to look at the screen before she paid.

Saber said she had told herself she would not shop at Walmart again after an earlier video in which she said an employee accused her of stealing. She said she went back anyway because she is making a Coraline doll walmartand the craft supplies were much cheaper there. In the video, she held a Coraline doll head up to the camera while she explained why she returned.

Saber said a store associate deleted the extra charge from a handheld device

She said she usually does not check the price or the listed items at self-checkout and just pays and leaves. This time, she said, she looked. At the top of the screen, she said, there was a line labeled “Site Merch.” 

She then displayed a photo of the checkout screen and said she was putting it up so viewers could see she was not lying. The screen in that photo showed a list of items with a “Site Merch” charge of $20.95 at the top. She said the added charge was over $20, while the supplies themselves came to about $20-some-odd dollars, so the total looked about double.

She said she called an associate over. She said the worker did not walk over to the register. Instead, Saber said, the associate handled it from a handheld device and deleted the site merch line. Saber said that response made her think the charge must come up often.

Saber also said she does not know whether the charge is intentional, but she said it feels weird that it keeps showing up. She said she had already seen other TikTok videos telling shoppers to check the screen and the receipt before they pay, in case a random charge had been added. She said she had assumed it would not happen to her.

In the video, she said, “It’s f–king Walmart. Of course they will.” She told viewers who also pay without looking that they should check before they finish the transaction. She closed by asking, “What is site merch?”

“Site merch” is a generic Walmart receipt label used when an item is entered into the register without a recognized description or barcode. So, customers should check their receipts before paying.

In the comments, one person wrote that self-checkout should come with a price break. They wrote, “I demand a discount at all stores with self checkout! if Im doing employee tasks I want a f–king discount!!!!!!”

Another commenter said they found a similar line on a receipt they already had. They wrote, “I just checked my most recent receipt from walmart and I have a 13.97 site merch charge. I’m probs gonna go back and ask them to give me a refund bc what the heck.”

A third commenter wrote about prices that are harder to see in stores. They wrote, “I’ve noticed shelf prices disappearing everywhere and it’s so irritating.” For Walmart shoppers, checking receipts has become common, as one customer found a charge for an item not in her bag.

One commenter also offered an explanation for why totals might differ from shopper to shopper. They wrote, “walmart is doing static pricing. you might pay more than someone else. its a facial recognition along with your search history.”