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?

Not sure what your hourly rate has to do with any of this. I'd suggest nothing.

I wouldn’t do anything any further. If there is a computer error at the till, it is likely to cause a delay in showing up on your bank statement.

I presume none of the people on here who think it's fine to steal from supermarkets ever turn up on threads complaining about "benefit cheats".

I once got six months free gas and electric because there was a mess up over a change of supplier. However I told both parties involved what was happening in an attempt to pay up.

@Roobarbtwo OP got her receipt before the error message appeared.
I would hold on to my receipt and see if the payment comes out. I wouldn't be worrying about going back to chase up a error on their part

The self scanners are fine , but you get held up if you have tagged goods, meds, alcohol or a general shopping check needed.
Then you discover one person running around ragged trying to cover all of it. I feel sorry for the staff when it’s obvious they need extra help to man all the different areas. It’s good if you can get through without any of the above , but mostly you need someone before you can escape! It is a bug bear of mine, but the shops are cashing in on not having tills open , less staff and a lower wages bill.

I would just take this as a win tbh

I'd say there was quite a difference. The OP didn't deliberately deceive and doesn't want to double pay due to fault on the supermarket causing a lot of compensatable stress.

You have a receipt saying you paid. Leave it at that.

The OP paying at the supermarket and actually having a receipt to say she paid is not quite the same as someone deliberately defrauding the benefit system is it? Bizarre comparison to attempt!

With my bank you see anything pending straight away

You saying the OP is telling porkies? ;)

There are still a lot of differences between OP's actions and taking benefits when you shouldn't.

Wait for a few days because it did go through, so it will be there, just likely taking more ttime than normal if their system was not working.

Not necessarily. I went to a shop and similar happened. It was only for £6 though. Take it as a gift from God.

How old is DD?

The point was that supermarkets cannot expect customers to use their own time, free of charge, to rectify errors in the supermarket’s business. Should they wish customers to do the job of staff, they can pay them. As they won’t they can whistle for their money.

It’s a gift for all the sub par technology we have to deal with that takes twice the time and shortens our lives with unnecessary frustration. Thank the universe!

The same scenario happened to me in the range. Staff member then followed be out and got me in the car park and told me to come back and I hadn't actually paid but I have the receipt and I had the payment alert on my bank. I showed them the pending transaction etc

No, they asked me to pay again

I went back a week later with evidence that I had been charged twice

It took two for the weeks of boring Administration for them to admit. Yes they had been doing this all day on that hill and lots of people had paid twice and they would refund me but absolutely no one believe me in the first instance or for the first week until they had records of all the transactions going through from the bank.

Long story short , leave it at least a week to check it hasn't actually gone through, and even then chalk one up to karma and spread around a little bit of kindness to make up for it

Still irrelevant

I don't earn 120 quid an hour but when I realised that I had bought shopping that I hadn't been charged for I went back and told them -,because I have a conscience. Some people clearly don't

It's not straight forward though to pay back.

OP has a receipt to show she has paid for her shopping. I imagine the payment has been delayed due to the system being down. I wouldn't be offering to pay again until I was sure the original payment wasn't going to go through

I'd sit tight & wait for them to contact you - which they probably won't/can't do.
But do keep the receipt.

Why on earth do you want to tell them?
They're not going to think you're a hero for being honest.
If it was a small personal business then I would probably be honest though.

You'll probably find it eventually goes through. If it doesn't , nice. Their fault for having poor digital technology and lack of humans on till.

You have a receipt, I wouldn’t give it another thought. Plenty of people may not have even noticed that a payment hadn’t gone out. It’s their own fault for replacing people with machines - technology is often unreliable.

I once bought some stuff in B&Q, paid at the self scan till, got my receipt and walked out. About 3 weeks later, I was cleaning out my car, looked at the receipt and realised it had been declined 😱 I was so scared to go back after so long so I just avoided B&Q for over a year, and even now when I go in (3 years later) I still think I’m going to be arrested every time I go in.