What to do about the big shop I may have inadvertently shoplifted!

[ImGoingUpstairsToTakeOffMyHat]

Did my big shop yesterday using a scan and shop doo-dah.

Racked up £100+ worth of goods, and went to the tills to pay. I was told scan and shop wasn’t working so I’d have to put it through again on the other tills. They also said Google pay wasn’t working and made sure I had a physical card.

Went to self scan, and it was chaos. I could hear that other customers’s payments weren’t going through and a few people had to take themselves to the cash machine or go to sort it at customer services.

Anyway I scanned all my shopping then went to pay with via contactless with my card. It asked me to insert the card and enter my pin, which I did. It took a really long time but the screen on the card machine, and also the self scan machine, displayed a green tick and said “approved”/“transaction complete”. But then suddenly the self scan screen showed up a red exclamation mark and said “Error - call for help?” With a yes and no option. However, by this point the machine had spat out a receipt, and staff members were all busy helping others, so I assumed it was just the machine glitching. Also DD was in the car and didn’t want to leave her much longer, especially as scanning the shipping took so long. I pressed no, took my receipt and left.

However, no money has left my bank. I didn’t realise until I was making a transfer this morning and noticed I had no transactions for yesterday.

I was going to go back and tell them but DH said that they may make me pay, only to find that the payment is just taking a few days - so says I’d risk a double payment and may struggle to get a refund on one of them. I tried calling the customer services today but was on hold for ages and we had plans. I don’t want to go into the supermarket and ask for advice in case they accuse me of shoplifting, or force me to pay (see concern above about potential double payment )

The receipt says “Total paid £102.34”. Just for clarification. It’s not the kind of receipt you get when a transaction fails.

Should I worry about this? Is it shoplifting? Has anyone experienced this before? I don’t know much about banking, can transactions take a number of days?

I would let the supermarket and the bank sort it out between them. There is clearly a paper trail as you got a receipt and their computers will have a copy that you were issued a receipt. Just make sure you keep the money in reserve in your bank account so that when they come for it, you havent spent it on something else. If you try and help it may make things more confusing

Big Retail crying into their champagne at the thought of losing your weekly shop, I’m sure.

Keep hold of your receipt - and forget about it.

Just keep hold of that receipt. Keep it in your purse if you go back there, just incase you got collared by them.

Some big supermarkets make millions a year in profits ! 100 to them isn’t a huge deal.

Absolutely!

It sounds like they were having some wider payment issues in the store so this won’t be the first they’ve heard of it. PPs are right, you do have a receipt that says ‘paid’, so it may be that while they’re waiting for the system error to be resolved, that payment hasn’t gone through just yet. Give it 48h and if still doesn’t show up, call them up again. I wouldn’t go in to the physical store and the staff won’t be able to actually resolve it, they’ll have to escalate it so just save yourself the trip.

I wouldn’t do anything. You paid and got a receipt. If it doesn’t go through because of an issue with their systems that’s on them. If they really care then they can spend their time chasing you. The onus is absolutely not on you to waste your time trying to rectify this, you upheld your side of the transaction and have the receipt to prove it. If something went wrong at their end then they can spend time and effort trying to contact you, not the other way around.

I'm afraid, I'm in the keep hold of the receipt and say nothing camp.

You didn't shoplift because you paid. You have a receipt to say you paid. You paid.

If their system means they didn't take the money, that on them.

Don't chase them to pay. They're not going to pay you for your time to do that. If they are paying someone at their end to chase up lost payments, fair enough but don't do their job for them!

Maybe they'll have a rethink on self service checkouts too.

Don't worry, a similar thing has happened to me. I contacted customer service online and they just said to contact customer service when I was next there (ie not urgent). I did that and they were shocked to be honest that I'd owned up. They couldn't find the transaction on the tills but they did eventually go to the cash room and check for a shop roughly the same amount quoted that had been voided and found it. paid up and left and had no problem there since.

I like to think I’m a fairly good, honest person but I’d do nothing. It may still come out of your account yet but you tried to pay, multiple times, and you got a receipt. It’s fair to say you did the best you could!

Suspect they won’t have a mechanism for taking payment even if the transaction didn’t go through. I had this issue at sainsburies twice - where I’ve been late to pick up my click and collect order - and it’s been refunded as a failed collection even though I did get it. Spent flipping hours on the phone to customer services and got nowhere

It’s the breaks for the shops isn’t it! Years ago the person on the till would have sorted it out or got some help to see what’s going on. We are now at the mercy of machines and scanners and card readers which are not always correct and can break down and have glitches and all sorts. It’s probably rare, but only needs one to go wrong and it all goes to shit I suppose.

just leave it - it says paid - you have done all you can

does it not say pending on your bank? can take a while sometimes!

Let us know what the supermarket says! Curious to know the outcome. I’ve talked to people on Sainsbury’s Facebook page for ages about various things and I suspect you’ll be going round in circles with them. I would wait to speak to an actual person maybe next week to be sure it doesn’t come out.

This is when I could do with a laughing reaction 🤣

I’ve tried to ring supermarkets before now and you get redirected to ‘ online web sites ‘ even if you wanted to speak to someone I bet it would be almost impossible to find that person to talk to about it.

Thanks for all your replies. I’m gonna relax a bit. I’m such a bloody goody two shoes, and a bit of a drama llama, I’ve been envisaging a midnight raid of my kitchen as I stand in handcuffs 😂 (jk)

This is what I would call a win. You have a receipt saying you paid. Don't give it another thought and get the fizz open to celebrate!

You’re just honest op! Nothing wrong with that.
Id be worried to ( to be honest ) but you have proof that you paid for the goods. It may even appear out of your account in a few days or even weeks.
It is their problem to sort out

This ^ Supermarkets are ripping the piss out of us with the current prices.

You’ve got a receipt so there’s no reason why anyone would suspect the payment hadn’t gone through and lots of people don’t check their accounts enough to notice.

I’d do nothing and keep hold of the receipt in case there’s an issue later.

To not do anything?

I had a self scan crash while I was scanning my shopping . manager came over and told me just to take the shopping I offered to go to a till but they said it was fine £150 free shop

I wouldn’t bother my backside about this Op. You have a receipt saying you’ve paid. I bet they’ll take the dosh soon