Friend tried shoplifting in Asda via scan and go

[bunnyhops90]

My friend who I was due to meet this evening rang me in tears and really panicked this afternoon following doing her weekly shop in asda this morning via the scan and go thing. She is a newly single mum to a toddler and twin 14 month old and I didn't realise until we spoke today just quite how much she is struggling with everything, she has been left with a lot of debt from her abusive ex-partner and is very much struggling to get by.

Anyway she said always uses the scan and go but today she said she doesn't know what made her do this but with Christmas coming up she is getting increasingly stressed about finances and making it through, she knows this is no excuse and accepts her unwise decision, she deliberately didn't scan a few things including baby food, fruit and pizza. When she went to go and pay it said she had been chosen for a staff member to go through some of her shopping and check for accuracy or something along those lines. Staff member scanned quite a few which were all fine then came to one of the items that she hadn't scanned and was told her full shopping would need to be checked. She panicked at this point, pretended she was taking an important phone call and swiftly walked away and left the shop with all the shopping behind before they realised there was a few I scanned and she drove home. She is terrified the police are going to show up on her doorstep and arrest her and is kicking herself for her stupid choice and worried she's got herself into even more difficulty now, I said I thought was unlikely the police would be contacted but apparently they will have her details since she used scan and go so thinks they will easily be able to find her. Does anyone agree with friend and think the police will come looking for her? I want to try and re-assure her but I really have no knowledge around this kind of thing!

It all depends on the policy of that store. So nobody can outright say.

in the first instance I would help your friend with signposting where she can get support for the debts/ food bank referral etc.

I think that the thing is to be honest and say how sorry she is and then it will be okay.

Well despite intending to, she didn't actually steal anything and I'd assume the police have better things to do. Hopefully there's someone in the police here who can confirm this.

Is the debt she's in due to financial abuse by her ex-partner?

I mean obviously not ideal but I don’t think it’s theft till you leave the store. Pretty sure most they would do is ban her or take away her scan and go privileges. I don’t places prosecute until a certain limit is reached. It is cumulative though so will be fine if this time but if it’s an ongoing issue they may have cctv evidence.

I innocently got caught at tesco like this last week. I had a trolley check of 38 items, the check out person got to number 36 when it said I hadn't scanned an 89p ready meal. I was devastated. I had to take my whole trolley round to a normal till and have it all scanned. I now will never use scan and shop in tesco as I know I'll be trolley checked every single time. Either the scanner didn't work or I accidentally missed it. Gutted.

Your friend will be fine, just tell her not to use scan and shop again in asda! Is it shoplifting if you haven't actually left the shop?? I can imagine she's devastated but I'm sure she'll be fine.

I'd be astonished if at a store the size of Asda, this hasn't happened before. I'd be fairly surprised if they called the police seeing as a crime whilst intended, wasn't actually committed, but I wonder if they might be able to put some sort of flag on her account so that she gets a 'quality check' every time moving forward.

How would the police know where she lives?

I work in a big supermarket and I do not think the store will make any effort to find out who she is or track her down. However, it is best she doesn't go there anymore, as staff generally have very good memories for this sort of thing and they are very likely to spot her if she goes in there again. Obviously she knows it was a bad idea, but there are plain clothed store detectives in many stores that will notice someone not scanning an item and then will watch them, or get someone else to watch them as they check out, and confront them. Hopefully this will be a wake up call - I have seen a parent with a child in a pushchair caught for shoplifting just one item and paying for the rest. They didn't call the police but she was banned and it was quite sad to be honest.

Linked to scan and go account

Checks are pretty standard, they would have just put it through the till and charged the full amount, police will not be looking for her, but the shop staff who had to put all her stuff back might be a tad annoyed

Correct me if I'm wrong, but i think the Asda scan and go is only linked to your mobile number. It's not like tesco or nectar who have your home address.

Happened to me with one item (although it was £18)
Someone started talking to me as I was getting it off the shelf and I just got distracted
Got a random check and realised what had happened... I was mortified but has been fine since had a couple of whole basket checks in the 2 weeks after but just the regular 3/5 item checks since

Is the scan and go linked to an account? Do you have to sign in to use it?

As she did not take the items out of the store then she did not steal them in the legal sense. She could always say that her scanner was malfunctioning and did not scan all the items.

However most likely the staff will flag her and she will be checked each and everytime she goes to the store. If I were her I would always use a basket or trolley, use a staffed checkout if possible or the self service one if needs be and always keep her receipt.

I was in retail, our security regularly stopped people with £500+ trolleys trying to walk out the door and the police wouldn't even come out then.

The police wouldn't entertain the idea of chasing up with someone who didn't actually steal anything. What's more likely is your friends photo from CCTV will be memorised by store security and she'll be asked to leave if she goes back. Tell her to avoid that shop, and not try it again! Signpost to Foodbanks etc.

I doubt the police will show up at her door, they barely even turn up when there’s been an actual crime these days.

I used to do the rescans for another supermarket and it was remarkably common that it wouldn’t match. I wouldn’t even look at why tbh, and I’d just say oh it’s easy to do you probably scanned the wrong baguette label isn’t it confusing we have a flute, a stonebaked, the organic, the demi etc. to spare any scene and they’d pay the correct total and I’d tell them be extra careful next time because they’d automatically get another rescan and that it would need to match if they wanted to continue using it.

This wasn’t asda and it was a fair few years ago so can’t say for certain but I doubt they’d refer her onto the police, or that they would be interested in a theft that didn’t actually happen. But your friend was bloody stupid. Tell her to avoid that shop as her disappearing act and all the fresh food that would have had to be written off will have caused attention. And signpost her to a foodbank if she’s struggling. She’ll have a health visitor with kids that small and they can refer I think.

I unintentionally did this once (although I'm pretty sure the staff didn't believe me that it was accidental.) I'd got a trolley full of shopping, had picked up two tops in Tesco and DD1 was sat in the trolley and suddenly started having a tantrum. Without thinking I hung the tops on the front of the trolley and went to sort out DD then promptly forgot about scanning them. Until the alarms went off when I tried to leave.

It was mortifying. I was so embarrassed and it sounds like your friend was too which is actually a good thing, hopefully this is a wake up call for her. The police aren't going to be contacted for this. Nobody came knocking on my door either.

But she will be picked up by store staff. In my case I definitely had some extra checks in place on my account for a while afterwards.

I only had to put my mobile number in so they would need to trace her through her through that which I think is unlikely.

I used to work in a shop and we weren't allowed to stop a shop lifter until they had exited as they could technically say they intended to pay even though they were clearly hiding an item - not sure if this is legally correct though. Shop staff seem to get a instinct for theft so I agree with PP that they probably knew what she was doing before they checked her.

They will definitely remember her though so she'll need to shop somewhere else.

Walking out looks very suspicious. I’d never show my face in there again.

we’ve had it before where the kids were scanning and obviously missed one item too many and had to have the entire shop done. Nobody ever accused us of stealing or anything like that.

your friend overreacted and made it look way worse.

The only thing your friend did wrong was running away after. I didn’t scan a whole aisle once and they just said “it’s all part of the same aisle so you must have been distracted” and we all moved on…

So she left without the shopping she actually paid for? The shop are quids in then so why would they follow up? If I were here I would go back and explain I was in the middle of a crisis (which was why I had to leave) and ask for my shopping. If they flag any unpaid items I would just apologise for my absentmindedness due to the crisis, and pay the difference.

She’s learnt her lesson now anyway!