Social Media Reveals Record Cost Surge for Superstore Shopping Basket

Clear Facts

• Inflation reached a record 9.1% peak in 2022, leading to increased costs of goods and services.
• A shopper used TikTok to highlight the dramatic price increases at a well-known superstore over the past two years.
• The same order he placed two years ago for $126.67 would allegedly cost $414.39 today, nearly four times more.

The impact of the record inflation peak of 9.1 percent in 2022 is evident in the increasing prices of goods and services. Consumers are directly feeling these higher costs. A customer at a prominent retail store decided to demonstrate the extent of the price increase over the last two years.

A musician and TikTok creator, @sewerlidd, used his account to reveal the price inflation. Using his purchase history on the store’s app, he showed a delivery order he placed two years ago. The order, comprising 53 items, cost him $126.67, which lasted him roughly a month.

In his video, while reviewing his previous order, he noticed the “reorder all” feature on the app. “And I wanted to see how much it would cost now,” he told his viewers. The result was shocking. The exact same order now came to $414.39.

Expressing his disbelief, he said, “That is four times more. How? I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

This TikTok video quickly gained traction, with nearly two million views in only a few days. The steep price increase left many other viewers feeling the same level of shock.

One viewer commented, “Life isn’t affordable anymore. I’m not sure how my family of four is even eating these days!” while another added, “I knew it was going to be bad. I didn’t know it was going to be this bad.”

Some viewers accused the retailer of “price gouging,” a sentiment previously shared by Robert Reich, the former U.S. Secretary of Labor and current professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. In a recent post, Reich criticized a major retailer for hiking prices on its food brands, leading to a 93% spike in its net income to $10.5 billion towards the end of 2023.

However, some viewers questioned the authenticity of @sewerlidd’s claim, noting that he didn’t provide a detailed list of the ordered items, which led to suspicions that he may have unintentionally reordered the same order multiple times. One commenter noted, “Or did you accidentally ‘reorder all’ three times? If you divide $414 by three, it’s $138, which is about $12 more than 2 years ago. But if it’s legit, that’s insane.”

In response to these allegations, the retailer stated its ongoing efforts to reduce consumer costs. The CEO stated in May that the company had recently lowered prices on nearly 7,000 items in its stores. “Our combination of everyday low prices plus a large number of rollbacks is resonating [with consumers],” he said during an analyst call.

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