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.

I think at one point Asda was working on age recognition software like this.

@PandoraSox

Do you realise that people are leaving retail because of rudeness from customers. I heard of one store delaying their date of opening a new store due to struggling to get staff. People don’t want to work in jobs where they get abused

Thanks! Wonder how it's going? Not that there's an ASDA near me...

(I was charitably assuming there was some English UK legal requirement that an akshal human had to do the age check.) Any lawyers know?

It's not random, and who do you think programmes the computer? This has to be the stupidest comment today 😂

I have a feeling the 20 mins may be somewhat exaggerated for greater story telling. We got the check on our shopping on Friday and had to have the whole lot rescanned because we’d missed something - accidents happen, and if we’d been planning to steal (we weren’t) it wouldn’t have been a single £1 item in a £100 trolley of shopping - but of course, they have to check. It took her probably 3 mins to unpack, scan and then repack the shopping neater than we’d packed it in the first place. She apologised profusely despite it being our error that caused it in the first place, so I’m sure she must get grief from folk.

Given how much time and hassle I save 99% of the time I use self scan, the very minor delay on Friday was nothing.

Our big Sainsbos has gates where you scan your receipt before leaving.

It’s the scan n pack, not self scans that get checks. Either from using the handheld scanners or Sainsburys have a SmartShop app so can use in stores which doesn’t have the handheld scanners or the stores with them usually have no spares. At least your phone is a guaranteed handset

Self scan does not have checks but staff need to check that customers are not putting through beef joints as loose onions etc

I suspect that nobody was made to feel like a criminal. This all sounds a bit melodramatic. It doesn't take twenty minutes to scan a shop, it just doesn't. Unless maybe someone was being obstructive and difficult.

If you don't like self service tills and self scanning, don't use them. If your local 'name of store' only has self scanning, go somewhere else. Nobody cares. Nobody that's working in a supermarket is on commission. They aren't doing this just to make your son's day worse - they are doing it because it's their job. They aren't looking to make someone's day worse. They are just doing what they need to do to get money in the bank at the end of the month. That's all.

So make it into a big deal if you want, but it's normal, it happens all the time, it's not a big deal and making a fuss about it honestly says more about you than it does about the supermarket.

This is why I won’t use the self scanning machines. In fact I usually see that area empty so perhaps they’ve pissed off so many people it’s not worth it in time nor blood pressure. I was SO SICK of being treated like a criminal and having my time wasted that I haven’t used those machines in around four years now. Maybe longer. Off to fuck with it as a concept.

I totally and utterly get that, but that is something the stores should be managing better too. Abuse staff, get banned.

The best ones are when you get the check, the DC are playing up, the shop contains various items for a party that you're buying last minute in a rush and the person doing the check checks the cake first, sticks it back sideways so it all tips to one side, then checks the potatoes and shoves them back on top of the cake to really finish the job.

Also the fact that make up has those bloody stickers on it and none of the checkout people remove the stickers on purchase. So have to be stopped at the bleeping machine, when I’m usually in a mad rush, try and find the receipt that’s in a bag at the bottom of the trolley. My old make up in my make up bag was even setting off the bloody alarms and I was having to deal with really pissed off security men who were shouting ‘steak’ at me. It’s such a massive ball ache for the people not nicking stuff because there are so many people nicking stuff.

You aren't wrong OP.

A lot of shops in North America are getting rid of self-scanning because of shoplifting. So maybe it will go that way in the UK too eventually.

I'm not unsympathetic to groceries being stolen, it really is over the top now, and I'm not against some of the measures they've put in. But if they want better security in their scanning process - this is not the way.

The whole - this is the agreement you make when you use the self-scanners - is bs. They go out of their way to make people use them by not having enough staff on the tills. I'd always use a till if possible and I don't mind a reasonable wait. But if there is one and the line is backed up as far as it can go,, there isn't much choice.

use manned check outs. Try not to go shopping with 3 tiny kids?

What are shops supposed to do? "oh that's Nenen's son - for sure we don't need to check him"

And why on earth do you think shop staff should help him look after his own children?

If you have a few things, no booze or pharmacy items, go for it with the self check out. Otherwise you're better off waiting for a till operated by a person.

conversation with someone.
It's not random, and who do you think programmes the computer? This has to be the stupidest comment today 😂

So who does programme the computer then. And in what way is it not random.

@Hoglet70

"I love self service. On the whole it is quicker and I don't have to engage in conversation with someone."

I love your positivity! Three questions:

• do you buy alcohol? (see my moan upthread)
• are you single and disobligingly buy things like tiny pieces of ginger root or birthday cards that don't register on the scanned-side scales, requiring human intervention?
• are you old enough to remember the introduction of ATMs (AKA Money Robots)? People were appalled that they would be preferred to a nice bit of queuing and a chat with a Mr-Mannering-lookalike. Yet they were …

And please don't get me started on robotic humans at checkouts asking "How are you today?" 😬

When Waitrose first introduced it, it was a part of the information given when you signed up. Its what made me decide not to bother, although I do understand why they need to do it

I'd probably return my shopping on the spot but I'm a mardy bitch.

People steal on self-scan all the time, so if you agree to do it, you’re agreeing to spot checks. Being randomly selected is fine. It’s nothing for them to apologise for. The kids with him is irrelevant - this is a well-known tactic of shoplifters

To be honest, you're opening posts makes this sound like it was much more traumatic than it ever possibly could have been; it was just a rescan in Sainsbury's.

They don't normally do a full trolley check, it's usually 7 items or 20 items etc, then if something is found unscanned then the whole lot has to be rescanned and checked. Your son was just very unlucky that the whole trolley had to be checked!

I like self scanning because it means I can check that the offers/discounts have come off. When I used to go through a manned checkout they'd scan everything so quick I barely had time to pack let alone check the prices. Yes I could have checked once through but it's not always easy if you're in a rush or have kids with you. You go home thinking you've been charged correctly, then when you get home and have a chance to look at the receipt you realise you've been over charged as xyz discounts didn't come off.

Random as its check every 59th customer so the person it lands on is random or check each person if they only buy 60% of their normal shop so you don't know when it's going to happen

Rather than the computer has AI and picks on people it doesn't like the look of

If they ever do that to me I shall say “I’m sorry I have a train to catch” and leave them with the shopping.

Yes to this.

Yes!!