Walmart admitted on Wednesday that a technical issue that occurred in mid March resulted in the company charging customers excessively at some of its stores in the United States.

On March 19th of this year, Walmart experienced a technical malfunction that resulted in self-service checkout terminals being unable to receive price data streams in 1600 stores. The report stated that this malfunction lasted for several days, resulting in the company overcharging hundreds of products, covering multiple fields such as food, clothing, and home appliances.

A representative of Walmart, Mischa Dunton, stated in an email that after identifying the issue, the company focused on the affected customers: "We prioritize compensating for overcharged customers and have not followed up on overcharged customers."

Walmart did not disclose the number of affected products or the amount paid by customers, nor did it specify the number of affected stores.

In January of this year, Walmart agreed to pay $45 million to resolve a class action lawsuit in Florida, accusing it of overcharging orange bags and various meat, poultry, and seafood products sold by weight. The company denies any improper behavior.

Since the outbreak of the epidemic, Walmart has spent billions of dollars upgrading its stores and improving the basic technology of thousands of retail stores. Last October, the company announced an investment of $9 billion in US stores, including the addition of new self-service checkout options.

But upgrading infrastructure is not always smooth sailing. In February, there were reports that Walmart experienced a malfunction where thousands of cash registers were unable to process transactions, and there were also reports that the company had encountered issues with its image and visual center earlier this year.