Would you object if Aldi staff checked your personal bag?

[vruskin]

Are you aware that ALDI has a policy of treating cuztomers like thieves.
I was at ALDI Caterham yesterday.
The cashier checked my empty plastic bag inside even though it was very obvious that there was nothing in it.
I then complained to a manager who didn’t even apologise and said that it is their policy to treat every customer like they were thieves.
Would you object to it? I felt disrespected and humiliated. How would you feel?

I have a family member who works at Aldi in management some of the stories I've heard of people who shoplift are astounding. What people try shoplifting and how is quite unbelievable.

If you have nothing to hide why are you bothered. From your title I thought they were rifling through your handbag. There are so many scummy thieves out there that shops need to protect themselves. Unless you are hiding something??

The staff are supposed to check and in an obvious way for the cameras. When I lived in France / Netherlands you were supposed to put your stuff in lockers on the way in ( then retrieve bags and go to packing shelf or security would staple bags from other stores closed, or zip tie your handbag shut. Arguably we have some of the least restrictive rules comparatively. Which is probably why shops are getting robbed so much and pushing up prices for the rest of us.

I was behind someone who had their Asda carrier bag contents searched and the receipt was demanded at the Lidl checkout. I would have absolutely refused. Shoplifting is a problem obviously but that was humiliating.

The day that they actually tackle and take down the people brazenly thieving on the shop floor - carrying out armfuls of meat, they can check my bag
it’s insane they want to check the bags of compliant souls at the checkout, but won’t go near the shoplifter blatantly grabbing goods.

Re Bag checks. I really get wound up by bag checks at the races. Realistically the majority of people carrying bags into racecourses are women so you have a queue of ladies showing the contents of their mainly tiny handbags and men walking through unhindered- my DH has only had to turn his pockets out once whilst entering a racecourse whilst my handbag is checked every time😡.

OP you are not currently sounding like a decent customer. They didn’t ask to look in your nicker drawer

But shops have always checked people’s bags if the alarm goes off or they are suspicious.
Thats why they have security staff by the door.

That isn’t a new thing.

If this is a blanket policy where they check everyone’s bags, then I’d much prefer that than getting singled out.

But even if I was singled out, it’s a policy that has been going on for years.

Do you mean a handbag?

Not sure what you mean by a 'personal bag'.

You say an empty plastic carrier so that suggests it's carrier bag you've taken along, rather than one of theirs.

It's normal now to take your own carrier bags anyway and not buy a carrier bag in a shop.

It's normal to have a handbag searched in museums, galleries etc in London but they are careful not to rummage too much and just give a cursory glance.

That’s really not the same thing at all. We all pay for shoplifters when the losses are passed on to the customer in the form of price rises. Do you want to live in a society where shops just pass on the costs to the customer without recourse to their own security procedures ? All shops have these policies, it just depends on how they enact them.

Making yourself look a complete twat in the process no doubt.
Cue front page sad daily fail face holding empty carrier bag outside Aldi.😄
Also Caterham used to a be naice place years ago more Waitrose than Aldi [I have lived near there] what happened? But then I'm a Lidl fan so biassed😋

Tell them to fuck off! If they don’t want customers who are thieves then they can go upmarket!

It’s the equivalent of setting up a shop selling chocolate and wondering why your customers aren’t fitness obsessed athletes.

It happened for the first time last week to me, cashier said it was a new policy.
Quite happy to do it, I've watched thieves get away with it.

Incredibly rude. I’d have left the shopping and walked out. You can’t treat customers like that if you want their business.

OK, so I work in retail (not a supermarket) and every day I get verbal abuse, have to deal with shoplifting, and have been physically threatened a few times.

On a retail level, they won't pay for security guards, and some sack staff for tackling shoplifters. They have let customers walk all over them as they were so desperate for money and profit.

So, when Aldi ask me to open my plastic bag, rather than go into a strop over it I just do it and have a bit of empathy for the poor store person who will get verbally abused 9/10 times when asking the question as part of his job.

The airport security could easily say "we have to treat everyone as a suspected terrorist" and the OP would also take offence.
The amount of theft from supermarkets at the moment suggests that almost everybody is a thief. I'm not and have no qualms proving that.
At our local Lidl, the exit gate only opens once a receipt has been scanned.

It's time to bring in barriers at the end of checkouts that I see in some countries. You get your receipt and you have to scan it to open the doors.

The lady doth…

But here’s the thing, when someone is in the shop blatantly stealing, the shop doesn’t actually do anything about it at all! They just let them walk out. Because they apparently aren’t allowed to touch people.

So these ‘measures’ are just customer unfriendly and don’t save any of us money. Those of us who are honest get these measures to deal with and also have to pay extra for the shoplifters because the real shoplifters know they can get away with it!

Its very standard in North London.

Seems your taking offense for the sake of it?

There's no obligation to shop at Aldi. If you don't like their policies don't go there. Theives do not go to Aldi wearing a striped jumper and eye mask like Burglar Bill, they look like ordinary respectable shoppers and if the security people didn't pay any attention to people who look ordinary they won't catch any thieves. People who loudly complain about having their bag checked are quite likely to have slipped a packet of beef steaks into their coat pocket so they were quite correct to be suspicious of you. If you aren't trying to nick anything you do not suffer any negative consequences of having someone look in your bag unless your bag contains something you don't want others to see (solution - leave any such items at home or in the car)

I use a large trolley bag that clips onto the sides of the trolley. When I go through the checkout, I unclip one side and tip it right over so they can see nothing inside it or underneath it. I've been doing this for quite some time now.

I do see them eyeing my shoulder bag that I usually sling in the trolley so I have m hands free to pack but have not so far been asked to let them look at it. Not so sure with the amount of shoplifting that goes on whether that might become a thing in the not so distant future, searching personal bags when leaving the store.

How? Real shoplifters are brazen and they aren’t going to bother with niceties like going up to the cashier. They often come in in gangs of people with a pre-planned idea of what they’re going to do.

Those are the people that cost us money.

First they came for the shoplifters. I wasn't worried as I'm not a shoplifter. I never expected them to come for me next!

‘Upmarket’ shops have their thieves too and will have policies in place to tackle it. And that’s as it should be, unless you want the UK to follow the USA in creating no go areas for businesses which are eventually forced to close and move elsewhere ?