Phantom item “jajket” appearing on Walmart receipts? Fact check

A rumour online is claiming that Walmart shoppers should check their till receipts for an item called “jajket” since this is a “phantom” item that regularly appears on shoppers receipts incurring them additional charges.

The rumour claims that this phantom item “jajket” has been regularly (yet randomly) appearing on shoppers receipts for 10 years at a cost of $10 without any apparent reason and that Walmart are aware of the issue but have refused to tell anyone about it.

The warning can be seen below.

I shopped at Walmart in Clinton today. I was charged $10 for absolutely nothing. The item is JAJKET 000000000001K. I called them when I got home and was told that this is a phantom item. It randomly comes up even though it is not scanned. When I asked how long it has been happening, I was told almost 10 years. They know about this. It randomly gets added to your ticket and unless you are checking or paying attention then you pay for it without getting anything for it. Going tomorrow to get a refund. This is rediculous! They know it happens, but haven’t told anyone. Told me they can’t purge it from their system. When I wondered how many times this has happened to me before they seemed to not care. How many times has it happened to others? I sent an email to corperate office. Hope somebody fixes this! If I took $10 merchandise and said it was a phantom, I bet I would be seeing the inside of a jail cell! Watch your receipts! It supposedly comes up same letters and numbers every time

While errors do sometimes inevitably occur when it comes to that time when we pay for our goods at the Walmart checkout (and the above story may indeed be an example of such an error) there is no evidence to support the claim that there is a known phantom item being regularly added to receipts called “jajket”, nor that Walmart are aware of the problem and are actively trying to cover it up.

Any Internet search for the phantom item “jajket” draws zero results. This is literally the only complaint on the Internet that matches this description. If this has been a problem that has been going on for 10 years that – as the message claims – results in the same name and code (‘jajket’ & ‘0000000001K’) appearing on a receipt then one would expect a number of complaints and even photos from other shoppers that have encountered the same issue. However, no such complaints exist.

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It also seems rather far-fetched that Walmart would be refusing to address such an issue, especially one that is blatantly overcharging customers $10. It is extremely unlikely that the supermarket brand could have kept such a blatant error quiet for a decade, especially since the advent of social media where it only takes 1 complaint like this to go viral.

As for the item on the receipt in question, there is little reason to doubt it is real. However many commentators have pointed out that the “phantom” item is either a jacket on clearance that needed to be keyed in manually by the checkout clerk, thus the spelling mistake, or 10 was accidentally keyed in as the item price when it was really 10 in quantity, for an item that is likely to be a jacket potato.

We have reached out to Walmart for a response.