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 enjoy my food and not think further about it. Why would you go out of your way fr their shitty IT?

I think they’re allowed up to 6 months to take the card payments so I’d just wait a bit and see. You have a receipt, keep that safe.

If the self scanner breaks down in my big store they just send you to a manned till to go through there. Happened a few times , no offer of a free shop in that store :(

I had this with asda and tesco..nothing just went out my account a few days later.

I would wait at least a week, maybe longer. They will almost certainly have spotted the error (probably not just yours) when they reconciled the receipts and the payments, and some people at head office are working late going through both of those and working out where it didn't go through. In fact if you contact them now and offer to pay you might end up paying double if they are sufficiently untogether.

What you do after that is up to your conscience (or, as the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman liked to say, "between you and your rabbi"). There are PP saying "The supermarket can afford it", but that's the logic of the shoplifter(*). I'm honestly not sure how I would feel about this. Certainly there is zero prospect of any sort of consequences for you, since they absolutely cannot prove that you saw any kind of error message, and they gave you a receipt.

(*) FWIW, in the last couple of months I have been not charged for after-meal coffees in two places. One was a large corporate chain and the other was a small local café. I pointed out the error in the second case but not the first. This is actually pretty hypocritical of me, I think, but a lot comes down to how you're feeling on the day.

If Google pay wasn’t working then it is likely that their wifi was down. The payment will have been taken but the card machine/system may not activate the payment until the wifi is working again. In the old days if the card machine connection went down we had to revert to the old paper and slider machine.
The error message probably refers to the fact the machine failed to connect to your bank to authorise the payment but they will be able to send the payments through when the connection is running again. It’s probably possible to take the payment and override the authorisation. On the old machines authorisation was only possible if they were connected via internet. Most were connected via a phone line and payments went through at the end of the day. If someone didn’t have the funds to cover the payment only then would it be refused. Authorisation has stopped payments being refused after the customer has left.

I've had this happen at our local shop. I had topped up my gas and electric. Back in the days before we could just do it on the app. I got a normal receipt but the shop copy one said cancelled. NDN was working there at the time so she was nattering away to me and hadn't noticed😂😂😂 They noticed it when they cashed up that night and she called around next day loland let me know next day to sort it.

I wouldn't do anything. Even if you don't end up paying, it's their fault. I am so so tired of these companies nickel and diming the public. Why don't they pass on the saving of the wage bill on to the consumer!? It annoys me no end.

When I was a broke student I had a ~£20 shop that didn't appear on my statement or pending transaction for ages despite no technical issues apparent in the store. I still had a receipt that said paid but no money or hold appeared. It appeared randomly about 4 weeks later, but the info I got at the time from the bank was they can take it up to 6 months after the date which did stop me double spending it!

Leave it a couple of days to catch up.

Worked at Barclays bank, if you have a receipt thatsays paid,then it's paid. It could be pending. I'd leave it and it will come out. Otherwise you may pay twice!

Yah fuck it op. It sounds like you were majorly inconvenienced by their inept systems so I’d write it off as compensation for my troubles 🤣. 20 years ago I accidentally shoplifted some nappies that I’d put in the bottom of my trolley and I phoned the Tesco store (back when you could get straight through to somebody there) to explain and they told me to just forget it and keep them! I read something the other day about how much the supermarkets are creaming from profits thanks to their hard working customers and I have to say that these days I’d probably take it as one point to me and nil to the greedy profiteering bastards.

Besides, you may get charged anyway so I’d definitely leave it.

Something similar happened to me. I was buying a tv just before Christmas and some bits from Tesco. When cashier scanned all in she gave me machine to pay and I put in my card and till kept malfunctioning so supervisor came over and took payment on another machine. As I was leaving she was awful to cashier telling her she had to be faster. As I got to car, checked receipt and tv had scanner through as 0 so I’d only paid for the other goods. I went back too honest and supervisor took payment, told me I was an idiot then said she was going to sack who served me for incompetence When I pointed out it was herself she then said young cashier was to blame so she would fire her up and calling me an idiot again for going back. I reported her and Tesco refunded me partially for their fault and assured me the young cashier wouldn’t be fired

Sounds to me like the payment went through. I really wouldn't worry, OP.

You followed direction when in store, the screen said approved and your receipt says paid- I wouldn't do anything except for keep hold of your receipt :)

Lidl charged me twice for my shop. The first £60 on tapping the card apparently don't go through so had to do chip and pin. Which obviously I did. It took both amounts out of my account and took almost 10 working days to put the amount back. I was fucking touching cloth with bills. Was the very wrong time of the month to be charged twice for my shopping. So for that I'd wait at least 2 weeks before raising anything is you decide to do so.

Sounds as though the payment went through but it might take a few days to show in your account I've had similar happen before in other shops.

Log it with 101, immediately.

Then go and hand yourself in to your local police station.

Make sure your family lock all doors and windows, and that they don’t answer the door to anyone in your absence.

Hopefully your big shop included whole chickens and some massive salads to keep your family going until your release.

They won’t accuse you of shoplifting. They will be pleased you’ve come in and are being honest. Go to the shop and speak to the person on customer services, I suspect they will tell you to go home as you have the receipt.

I would do the square root of fuck all about this.

Meh. This is on them, not you. You have proof - just forget it.

Although part of me does think that if they do follow up, it will be hard to reconcile having proof of receipt with being unaware of your credit card transactions 🤣

I work in a supermarket, if you got a receipt you paid. Sometimes when contactless goes down we can still accept chip and pin payments because the tills ‘hold on’ to those transactions as it were, and process them when the system is up and running. This isn’t an option with contactless payments.

Don’t panic, no one will be chasing you for payment. It just may take a while to go through

See if it eventually gets billed to the account. If it doesn’t then let them get in touch with you for payment.

If it was the customer services at my local big store , they would take the money off me with a Paddington stare as if this was all my fault. Those staff there are jobs worth’s and a scary bunch! I’ve heard full on rows with each other in there , they all seem to dislike each other as well as the customers! Lol