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.

Staff have been told that if the customer has a check on scan n go, do scan an item in each bag plus the larger items too big for bags - loo roll, beer, big multipacks of crisps

I'll be trying that! Thanks.

The partial rescan of say 10 items will flag up if one of the items hasn't been scanned triggering a full re-scan .
Removing items & abnormal scanning rates or patterns can also trigger full rescans.

These gripes are going to seem so small compared to how you’re going to feel OP when those staff are replaced by A.I robots, probably within the next five years.

I've been using our local market for veg and fish and they don't do rescans, neither does our local bakery where i get my bread, or savers drug store where i get my cleaning and toiletry products 🤦‍♀️

A lady behind me in Aldi checkout really kicked off when asked to show her empty bags. I’d also been asked and just did it.
she asked for the manager and he came over - she swore a couple of times saying she wasn’t a “fucking criminal” - manager said “this is the policy and if you don’t like it, shop somewhere else” 😂

all cashiers were doing it to all customers so it wasn’t like she was singled out

I thought they only do full rescans (all items) it’s because they’ve found an unscanned item on a previous, smaller check.

happened to me twice when I had a toddler and he’d managed to add something to the trolley without me realising

I agree, just another power trip and embarrassing. They either trust us or they don't. There's the odd busy body member of staff that loves it where I shop too and I've recently found out they can purposely trigger a full check.

It sets the alarm off and then the shifty looks from staff

The times I have to get my alcohol approved, the scales doesn't register etc are more than cancelled out by the other advantages of it when I whizz through without having to talk to anyone!

Don’t use self scanners then as these spot checks are part of that

Well done for having 300 hours a week to drive around different shops.

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.
thank goodness they’re doing stuff to reduce shoplifting. Our check outs at Lidl are narrow so it’s hard to walk out with stuff. Not so the huge Tesco - I’ve seen people walk out with bagfuls. Which I presume I pay for with higher prices.

Couldn’t agree more with the final paragraph, especially for walking up to a self service till. There are no signs saying you’re agreeing to any sort of random checks near them. When scanning as you shop, I have no recollection of agreeing to any terms but accept it could have been buried in some update along the way. MNers are brilliant at being superior to other people and reading every small detail, expecting the rest of the country have done the same.

Our local supermarkets often have no staffed tills open for anyone with a trolley full of shopping. At the same time, they also have half the self checkouts closed because of inadequate staffing numbers and do not have a separate till section for self-scanned (as you go) shopping like make others do. I have encountered random checks on self scanned shopping, 10-20 items and if something is wrong, they rescan the whole shop. I accept this and while would be annoying, I can see their point. If they picked a random check of the entire shop, I agree with OP that would be asking they refund the money, keep the shopping and I leave. It’s absolutely unacceptable when they’re forcing us to scan as we go.

I absolutely agree stores have to prevent shoplifting but there is something annoying about having bags checked etc. when leaving a store as there is an implicit suggestion you are committing a crime and no one likes that feeling.

If a self scan machine runs out of receipts you are a bit screwed proving you bought goods for example.

Surely humans will run past the AI robots?
Or they will have some other way of stopping us from leaving without the checks being done !

i used self scanning for the first time the other week and a lady had to check one of my bags when I was at the checkout. She was very nice and I wasn’t made to feel like a criminal but it just felt like it was a waste of time. I was reassured they wouldn’t check the next time. I thought you just weighed the bags when you were paying but no that’s the only way they can check you’ve scanned everything is spot checks.

And sometimes it's really hard to scan the receipt don't know why and you got a line of selfscanners waiting to get out.
So they don't do random checks in the US? I don't think it's because the brits are more likely to steal. I think it's because they don't dare doing it because so many Americans are armed..

YANBU, I've yet to find a till that works properly and it's beyond annoying. I too would rather use a staffed till and try to whenever I can.

I was stopped with young children last year. It was VERY disruptive. I think they target young families, presumably we're the demographics of those who steal things the most? Still highly inconvenient though.

I'm now online shop predominantly, it's a much nicer experience.

Nothing random about it.

My shoes are huge due to me having a large family.
As in, shopping trolley looking like a game of Jenga huge.

I am selected for a 'random' check every bloody time because of the amount I've spent.
It's massively inconvenient, but if I queue for a manned til then I have idiots in the queue behind me trying to load their shopping into the conveyer whilst I still have half a trolley of my own shopping to get on there, then eyerolled at when I ask them to please wait until I've got all my stuff on.

I’ve actually started using Sainsbury’s over Lidl for one shop a week because of the scan and shop option. I have my 3 yr old with me and she loves holding the scanner and beeping the shopping as we go round. In our store there are still plenty of manned checkouts but I chose to use the scan and shop as it’s quicker and I can be really efficient in packing my bags. I know chances are I’ll get spot checked at some point but for me the benefits outweigh the risk and I don’t think a single check will put me off continuing to shop there.

I know at Tesco, if you keep voiding off scanned stuff then later, you decide to buy those items, you are very likely to get a check.

Same here, a smaller Sainsbury’s that I use fairly often.

Talking of being treated like a criminal,,though, when using a self checkout, please always take your receipt!

I failed to do so once in Asda (never again!) - had only bought a few items, one of which was a pack of steak - that had a small security tag on the underside. I hadn’t notice it (naturally enough) and there was no alert at the time - so it set the alarm off at the exit and I was marched back between two security staff to the self checkout, where they checked the bin for my receipt - and thank God soon found it!

Why on earth there was no alert while it was scanned I don’t know - when almost every time I use the self checkout there’s some reason for ‘A colleague is coming to help’…

I despise self check out but love self-scan, even with the risk of being pulled for a check (only happened once incidentally, and it must have been a 'light' version as she checked about half a dozen random items from my bags and I was on my way in 2 minutes).

The time I've saved in dozens of self-scan shops vs the time taken by being stopped even for a full rescan is well worth it IMO. As for being embarrassed, why?!? If he thinks anyone else busy doing their shopping that day gave him so much as a moments thought then he's mistaken.

I queue for a manned til then I have idiots in the queue behind me trying to load their shopping into the conveyer whilst I still have half a trolley of my own shopping to get on there, then eyerolled at when I ask them to please wait until I've got all my stuff on.

These customers got on my wick when I did my shopping for myself and my parents, when DM had major surgery and needed DF's help to get herself ready.

I put my shopping on the belt first, put a divider then put as much of my parents' shopping as I could until the belt was full. Usually room when my shopping was scanned.

Customers saw the empty belt, not the trolley with shopping. Decided to put their shopping on the belt. I always let the cashier know that I haven't finished unloading so they could alert customers unloading. If a customer has finished unloading their shopping to the belt, they would move the trolley to the bottom of the till, not leaving it at the top?

Lost count on how many customers thought its disgusting that I had two shops in one trolley. Lets hope that they weren't still alive during the peak times of the pandemic when it was the norm for many supermarkets for customers doing two or more shops - themselves, elderly parent, elderly neighbour, friend who was self isolating etc. It was 2017 when I did parents shopping.