AIBU to think stores wanting us to use self-scanning devices and self-service tills should not make customers feel like criminals?

[Nenen]

I want to start by saying I understand shops need to prevent shoplifting and if any store had a legitimate reason to suspect me of doing so I would be happy to let them search me. However, AIBU to feel aggrieved that stores using self-service tills and scanning systems can dispense with the premise of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and insist on doing random checks on customers using the systems they do their best to get us to use in the first place?

My adult son (who had his 3 little daughters with him at the time) has just been stopped in a supermarket when he went to pay for a full trolley of goods he had used the store self-scanning device for. Security staff told him they had to do a ‘random spot check’. He and the girls (a baby, a 2-year old and a 4-year old) were led by security staff to a staffed till where all his goods were unloaded from the bags he had filled as he went round scanning. Staff then rescanned each item to check the total. This took the staff 20 minutes, during which time the baby started crying and the 2-year old got understandably fed up! At no time did the shop staff try to help my son pacify the children or apologise for the inconvenience. Suffice to say, his scanning had been absolutely accurate so he was allowed to pay and leave. However, the gross inconvenience and embarrassment factor of being publicly stopped and checked like this was enough to make him say he will never use self-service tills and scanners ever again.

If something like this ever happened to me, I think I’d refuse to cooperate and tell the manager they either trust me to scan my items or they don’t! If they don’t then I’m leaving and they can keep the whole trolley load! If they don’t trust customers who have not done anything suspicious then IMO they should not let them use the scanning devices in the first place. They can’t have it both ways, surely? These stores want it all their own way without any customer care at all.

I dislike using self-service tills for many other reasons too, not least because every time I’ve tried to use one, something has happened that resulted in me having to stand and wait for a member of staff to come and sort out an issue (often more than once for a single load of shopping). Therefore, I am prepared to queue for a little longer to pay at a staffed till.

My biggest gripe until now has been that several times I have waited in a queue for the staffed till at our local CoOp, only for the member of staff to leave their queue waiting to go and sort out a problem another customer was having at a (supposedly) self-service till! These customers had waltzed straight past the serviced queue and then got preferential service while we waited even longer!

To add insult to injury, self-service mechanisms obviously reduce the company spending on staff wages but I’ve yet to see any reduction in the prices I’m paying for their goods.

This happens to me a lot in my local asda op, buy what really annoys me is the staff unpack every single item re scan it all then walk away and leave me to re pack a big shop

I don't think this is real tbh!

I self scan all the time and hardly ever get checked, but occasionally I do because they do spot checks, it's random and decided by the computer system not the staff. It's not embarrassing and I've never been made to feel like a criminal. I've also never had to unpack my bags and checks take minutes, 20 minutes yeah right! It couldn't possibly have taken 20 minutes!

As we subside most of the staff wages through social welfare top ups and tax credit, because they don't pay them enough to house and feed their families despite working for a company distributing billions to shareholders, we should at least get some service in the shop.

Thank you for the additional info although I am feeling increasingly naive and incredibly disheartened to find that everything is purely profit driven with businesses taking less and less care or pride in providing excellent customer service. It’s increasingly clear we are all very expendable cogs in huge corporate machines and these big businesses couldn’t care less whether they keep my custom or not in their race to the bottom for human kindness or empathy - as long as their profits grow, that’s obviously all that matters.

The "random checks" would confuse my local Sainsbury's because, as a non-car user, I use more than one shop/supermarket for my weekly shop. So I go to Aldi for something, Pets at Home for something else (simply to shop around for best prices) then use the same bags in Sainsbury's. It's gonna take some time to figure out what I bought where.

Also, if they want people to stop pilfering then employ people to staff tills like they used to?

At my local Big Sainsbury's I have to scan your receipt to get out of the holding pen self-scan area and that really pisses me off. I feel like I have to pay bail before release.

Unreasonable.

I have never done self scan but even I know they do spot checks.

All this huffing and puffing is silly and as for expecting the assistant to apologise and sort out the children, honestly...

You save min10 minutes when you use the system as you don't need to go through the checkout and pack it all up after paying. Let's say you get picked for a check once in 3 months and you go shopping weekly. So that's a one off wait for 20 mins while they do a random spot check vs 120 mins saved on all the other visits where you didn't get a spot check.
If you think the spot check is such an imposition, use the normal till.

Essentially, what you are saying is because something hasn’t happened to you, it can’t possibly be real. This is despite several people posting similar experiences - see @bagheera92 for example.

I’ve heard of this but it’s not been introduced at my Sainsbury’s… do they have doors like at a train station where you have to scan the receipt for them to open?

I don’t get why they do that unless they think shoplifters are legging it through the self-checkouts

And the number of people on here saying they like it because it means no human interaction is a bit depressing to me too. The local supermarket, privately owned, in my small Irish town is a social hub where everyone chats to everyone. I get some find that hard and want to get in and out, but it seems to be increasingly common that people don't or can't interact with others.

Wait what the machine does the random check do they

not in my asda it’s the member of staff usually senior.

i avoid going after 7pm now because of it, I hate the fact they are all recording too. Yes I know it’s for shoplifters but I didn’t consent to being filmed thanks and I know the floor employees are not watching but someone is.

It’s bad enough we have more CCTV surveillance watching us as it is which is another topic.

I live in the US and use the self checkouts in every supermarket I go to.

None of them does random checks on customers. There are cameras at the tills and in the shops though.

Either US shoppers are far more honest than UK shoppers, or US supermarkets have figured out that the loss of good will of their customers isn't worth the value of stolen items.

I have no objection at all to security cameras, but f I were subjected to a random check in a supermarket I'd never go back.

Random checks are not the only way to do business.

I have never come across scanning receipts . Cannot believe the shit that people actually tolerate and accept these days .

I realise self service isn't the same as scan as you go, but surely if scan as you go is such an open invitation to thieves, it's time to move on to a better system.- more self service tills, more open checkout lanes?

Random checks just condition people to accept heavy handed scrutiny, and they make shoppers believe that people all around them could be thieves. It engenders suspicion of neighbour and a breakdown of trust in society.

Nothing embarrassing about it. Shops need checks in place or it would be a free for all. He definitely shouldn't use that service if he can't cope with what comes with it.

@vegandspice @AdviceNeeded2024 yes it's like using a qr code train ticket on your phone, but you use your actual receipt. The gates have been damaged repeatedly. So when they are they post a security guard there to ask for your receipt. Bloody annoying.

I don’t think any supermarket does checks on self scan at the till it’s just the scan and go that they randomly check

Ipswich is the worst place for the supermarket experience in Western Europe. No doubt about it. I'm extrapolating from my experience of visiting about 50 out of the 15,000 stores in UK and about another 50 of the other 200 000 stores in Western Europe, but I am confident I'm correct.

This is nothing. About a year ago I got randomly chosen for a check in Waitrose. They had to scan a certain number of items (or value - I can’t remember). Anyway, the lady who did it mistakenly scanned one of my items twice and there was no way to let the system know this was an error.

Firstly, I then had to go to a proper checkout and have the whole lot unpacked, loaded onto the belt and rescanned and packed again. This was inconvenient enough, as I was in a hurry.

To add insult to injury though, because the system thought I had been “caught” with an item I hadn’t scanned, I got checked every subsequent time I went there for the next two months.

All because the assistant made a mistake.

I totally agree OP. I don't mind self-serve, in fact I prefer it when I don't have loads to pay for, but I do mind the massive cameras and the barriers to stop you getting out in some shops. I don't use shops with barriers or which search your bags when you go in.

I find that a lot of people are very passive about this and seem to think it's all ok to stop shoplifting. It's not. The shops chose to do away with staff, they can't have it both ways.

Totally agree with this.

Completely ridiculous and insulting. If they are concerned about theft then manned tills are the solution, not searching customers shopping, delaying and embarrassing them and treating them like thieves.

Not the sort of check the OP is referring to, but quite a few stores now have barriers to stop you getting out of the self-scan area without scanning your receipt. I won't use the shops that have this, and really hope they don't all start doing it.

In our local small Tesco, if you self scan and want a receipt you have to ask the cashier on another till to print off the receipt!!!!

My local Lidl has just been remodelled and the biggest change is a new gate where you can't escape the self-checkout area without scanning your paper receipt to be allowed out.

My local Waitrose, OTOH, has those cameras/screens with your (unflattering) image on them. Given the (alleged) brilliance of AI, surely the clever computer can work out I'm over 18 and can buy a bottle of Cava without waiting for human intervention? (I'm 65.) 🙄

My local Sainsburys do it. I think ostensibly to stop people using contactless and walking away, but their bank has decided they want the PIN and the person didn't realise.

Maybe talk to the banks and work out a solution rather than wasting loads of paper and making life difficult for the people who contribute to your profits, ie the customers (and indeed the staff who must get so much grief from people).