Between the summers of 2024 and 2025, the Marin County Department of Agriculture, Weights and Measures, with just 14 employees, visited 399 businesses and conducted 9,921 total inspections on price-accuracy items and commercial devices, including sale items, gas pumps, electric meters and countertop scales. On Wednesday, the department released its findings in a consumer protection report.

The inspections found 151 items that overcharged customers, about 2.0% of the total, and 187 items that undercharged customers, or 2.4%. About 78% of businesses passed their initial inspection, an improvement from previous years. In 2022, just 58% of business measures were compliant with price accuracy.

In a press release, the department said noncompliant businesses are provided educational resources and an opportunity for reinspection before facing fines or legal action. Serious or repeated violations are referred to the Marin County District Attorney’s Office Consumer Protection Division.

The report noted that it is against California law for a business to charge more than the store’s posted or advertised price, even when a promotion expires. Businesses must remove promotional signage immediately after a sale ends, or else continue to charge the sale price.

“By law, there’s no such thing as an expired sale sign,” said Agricultural Commissioner Joe Deviney in a statement.

FILE: A gas pump at a station in Novato, Calif., on Monday, March 9, 2026. A new consumer protection report from the Marin County Department of Agriculture, Weights and Measures found that 31 of 851 gas pumps tested at 36 service stations were inaccurate. (George Alfaro/Bay City News)

Out of the 851 gas pumps tested at 36 of the county’s 67 service stations, 31 were found to be inaccurate and tagged. Red tags mark a failed inspection, and the pump cannot be used until repaired. Blue tags mean the pump is delivering slightly too much or too little fuel and must be repaired within 30 days.

Ninety-two percent of the county’s countertop scales were accurate, but the scales must be adjusted to deduct the weight of packaging, like deli takeout containers.

The report’s main message to consumers is to check the posted price, watch the pump to make sure it does not start charging before or after the fuel flows, check receipts and pay only for the product, not its packaging.

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.