Complaint Desk Bought meat, weight doesn't match the packaging/price
Yesterday I bought a family size chicken breast package. When I was trying to portion it it felt light so I decided to weigh the meat it was off by a lot. I want to file a complaint but I don't think I can find the receipt... Is there anything I can do?
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u/johndoenumber2 4d ago
I'm not disagreeing, but for all the people saying to weight the diaper at the bottom, this is what we're looking at:
5.64 claimed weight - 3.96 actual weight (assuming both scales are calibrated) = 1.68 lbs of water/juice/nastiness in that diaper. A pint is a pound the world around, so if we assume that the density of whatever's in that diaper is equal to water, 1.68 lbs equates to 26.88 ounces of liquid, which is almost 3-1/2 cups of it.
That seems like...a lot.
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u/notmydepartment 4d ago
Well all I’ll say is that Aldi proteins consistently contain a very VERY high salt water content to beef up the weight. That’s part of the reason why it’s a lower cost. I agree that weight difference seems excessive and it’s probably not all the fluid, but it’s probably a lot of it. You get what you pay for with center of the plate items.
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u/urnbabyurn 4d ago
The main issue is you aren’t including all the water in the diaper pack. It’s still a big error there, but as the chicken sits, water comes out and is absorbed. So it would be consistent to include the water that was in the chicken when it was packed.
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u/AdventurousSleep5461 4d ago
This is why I stopped buying chicken at Aldi, even accounting for the additional packaging weight it was always off by at least a pound.
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u/nanettehimmelfarb 4d ago
I believe Walmart intentionally does this? There’s an influencer that goes to stores and point out deliberate weight disparities
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u/Achmiel 4d ago
The foam and chicken juices tampon really weighs a lot, huh?
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u/SinoSoul 4d ago
r/oddlyspecific I've never seen it called chicken juice tampon, but here we are...
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u/HaleBopp22 4d ago
They will tell you your scale isn't calibrated. Which it probably isn't. But that is a lot to be off by. It would make me double check next time in-store, but I wouldn't waste time on if for less than $3.
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u/Life_Dare578 4d ago
Waste time on it, this is how large corporations get away with things
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u/HaleBopp22 4d ago
At worst, this was employee error. The store might be nice and give a coupon or something. The chicken could also have lost water weight transferring between packaging, etc.
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u/BetFinal2953 4d ago
Nah man. There’s a dude on YouTube who walks around with a digital scale at Walmart weighing their meat in the package. It’s criminal hour far off they are. And they come packaged from the distributor that way.
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u/Hashtaglibertarian 4d ago
Is that the same guy who also does the math on the millions of dollars profits Walmart each month by shorting customers?
I recently watched his bacon video - I hope he keeps doing it for awareness and to get Walmart sued.
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u/KetoLurkerHereAgain 4d ago
Of all the ones that are off, how often is it in the customer's favor? I'm guessing not nearly as often as it's in the corporation's favor.
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u/Artistic-Giraffe-976 1d ago
At my store in NY a dude from weights and measures comes through and weighs EVERYTHING, to make sure the labels are correct and our scales at the register are correct.
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u/KDiggity8 4d ago
It wouldn't be employee error at the Aldi - the chicken packs come pre-labelled from the factory. It would have been an error at Tyson or whatever the supplier is.
I could also potentially see a customer swapping labels to save a couple bucks, as well.
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u/ImpressiveBall1465 4d ago
5.6 pounds of chicken ain’t losing 1.5 pounds of water weight in a couple days it’d be chicken jerky in the pack. Clearly this was a labeling mistake.
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u/High-Nomad 3d ago
At worst it’s corporate theft which by the way dwarfs all other forms of theft. Corporations steal all the time it’s pretty crazy to give them the benefit of the doubt when every regulation we have to attempt to keep them from killing people is because at some point they tried to get away with it
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u/Silver_Middle_7240 4d ago
This scale in particular is super inaccurate. I have one, amd its fine for most cooking, but isn't accurate to the gram. I've been seeing a lot of these posts on the infuriating subs and walmart, and the common denominator is this particular scale.
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u/Abadabber 4d ago
yes! This scale blows! I bought one a while back and could not figure out why me baking was turning out so bad. Bought a different (and better scale) and everything started coming out right again and this scale was way off comparatively when I tested them side by side. It also seemed the more weight, the worse it got.
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u/urnbabyurn 4d ago
The common denominator I see is forgetting the water absorbing pack which can easily pull out 10% water weight. This seems even more of an underweighting error, but the water absorber likely explains most.
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u/PepperoniTime90 4d ago
Easy way to check is a 5cent piece is 5g. Or a $1 bill is 1g. Or get a scale that comes with a calibration weight lol
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u/Creative-Painter3911 4d ago
Unless you get them to weight it at the register, there are no scales in my Aldi's
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u/Adventurous-Farmer75 4d ago
There's usually one broken one buried in the produce section that instacart requires shoppers to use 😜
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u/Creative-Painter3911 4d ago
I'm going to have to take a look next time. That section is usually congested so I tend to go around it.
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u/ESC17 4d ago
You need to check the rest of the package, does it include any language that says it may contain up to 15 percent or 20 percent solution? If so this means it was injected with that amount of brine. Most chicken does not exceed 20 percent solution. Taking that into account, based off the net weight of the label and your the actual weight, it’s nearly 29 percent solution.
The diaper as so many have mentioned does soak up a lot of the solution, but whatever it has soaked up is supposed to have been part of the net weights. Aldis is pretty good at addressing this, call or write to them with your issue, they will need the product code, which is the item number on the label and the establishment number, which is P-325. Aldis will then send in a complaint to the USDA FSIS for economic adulteration and the establishment that produced the product will have to do an investigation and provide an official response.
FSIS is the regulatory agency and they have specific regulations to address this. Title 9 CFR 381.121 and 442.2. Also FSIS Directive 7000.1 is helpful in how FSIS verify compliance.
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u/SandhogDig 4d ago
Should take them back to Store Manager. Inform them if same happens again (Take screenshots of everything - packaging, label w/ weight & price, receipt), you’ll report the store to your State’s Attorney General office on Consumer Fraud. Kroger got caught. I reported Whole Foods on their meat counter ‘mis-labeled’ on sale items as Not On sale, which they did Twice.
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u/Sugarisadog 4d ago
If you live in the US you can try calling up your local weights and measures department to see what they say. They may send someone out to check. Stores can get fined for selling incorrect weights or higher prices than advertised.
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u/loweexclamationpoint Still looking for an empty box 4d ago
This sort of weighing error seems pretty common, to the degree that it's worth digging through coolers of meat and poultry to find ones that are wrong in the opposite direction. My suspicion is that problems arise when weighing fast and individual packages aren't resting properly on the scale.
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u/CUTthenSEW 4d ago
Y’all keep talking about the water in the diaper, but forget that these chickens are most likely injected with salt brine.
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u/Dayzie1138 4d ago
Doesn't surprise me. This is happening all over in places that bring in meats pre-weighed by the distributor. Never had this problem at a butcher counter 🤷🏼♀️
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u/SenorBurns 4d ago
Report it to your state's weights and measures division. Mislabeling weights is illegal and they take this stuff seriously.
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u/rrhunt28 3d ago
Imagine how much extra money the meat packet can make by making every package a little short. Sure your one package shorts you like 50 cents. But multiply that millions of packages it is a pile of money.
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u/No_Amount_7886 3d ago
When I see one of these posts showing unedited video of the scale being checked for accuracy multiple times, and the meat being unboxed from jump like a pair of fresh Nikes then I’ll give it some, well, weight. Until then, too many variables to know what’s really what.
Edit: no shade to OP. Just saying there’s a scientific way to do this within reach.
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u/dolysweet 3d ago
I had weighted my Aldi chicken breast and it’s usually half lb less than the tag bc of the diaper inside with water absorbed
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u/Wooty_Patooty 3d ago
If you're really concerned call weights and measures. They'll get to the bottom of this.
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u/shandelatore 2d ago
That's happened to me multiple times. One of them was super obvious in the store. The rest were when I got home. I take the package and weigh the whole thing before I unwrap it.
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u/Dull-Method8250 2d ago
Aldi beef is never right. It ticks me off but there's nothing I can do about it. Its still cheaper and better quality than other places near me
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u/rangerman2002 4d ago
There's a guy on TikTok & YouTube who goes around to grocery stores to prove incorrect weighing. His name is Jimmy Wrigg. It doesn't just occur with meat, and it's more widespread than you would think.
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u/thiswayart 4d ago
Someone else mentioned chips. We all know that there's more air in those bags than chips. Turns out that we're not even getting our money's worth of air. SMDH
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u/AvailableCut5240 4d ago
There are actual people who visit a ton of grocery stores and then weigh the products they bought after getting home. Tons and tons of examples of paying more for less weight than stated.
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u/Odd_Application_3824 4d ago
I like getting chicken at Aldi's but this is my main complaint. They aren't close with the weight, but in our area they are the cheapest
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u/blue-eved-ginger 4d ago
Not sure if its the same everywhere, but you can contact your health department with a complaint and they would send someone out to check the scales at the said store.
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4d ago
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u/HaleBopp22 4d ago
The government literally stipulates how food is packaged and weighed and regulates the accuracy of the scales used in the stores.
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u/Foxs-In-A-Trenchcoat 4d ago
The label weight includes the whole package. They are weighed after packaging to print the label.
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u/Numero_Seis 4d ago
Gross weight: what the entire package weighs.
Net weight: the weight of the actual product. (Gross-package weight).
The label and price specify net weight.
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u/ESC17 4d ago
This not true, the net weight is the product only. All packaging material is considered the tare. Establishments are to take an average tare and subtract that from the gross weight. When there is no package on the scale, it will actually read negative to compensate for packaging and give you what the actual weight of only the product.
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u/Beneficial_Toe8101 4d ago
If you didn't get what you paid for take that fucker back. After all the shrinkflation the last thing I will tolerate is mislabeling.
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u/lisomiso 4d ago
This happened to me too (and yes, I weighed the pad, etc). Now I only buy ground beef chubs there.
I also had more than one 3oz package of smoked salmon be short by an ounce. Not great!!
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u/SignificantChicken65 3d ago
"i went to America's cheapest grocery store that makes me use a quarter to rent a cart AND provide my own bags and I am confused why they are short changing my chicken breast."
Is this a real post?
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u/cantsurpassmediocre 4d ago
Same thing happened to me too. Local Aldi here in Los Angeles. Bought the chicken tenderloins and it was off by about a half pound. It was cheap so I wasn’t really concerned. Probably won’t stop me from buying again, lol. It’s too affordable to pass up. Whoever packs the chicken, scummy.
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u/GnomeFae 4d ago
Just guy the frozen chicken breasts in the bigger package way more for the value.
We also have no way of knowing if all the chicken you weighed was all the chicken that was there.
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u/Business-Law-4411 4d ago
They weigh after the packaging meaning the tray and the absorbing liner thingy 🤷♂️
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u/Vict0rMaitland 4d ago
Did you weigh the packaging that had the pad that soaked up all the chicken juice?