"Prices are going up on everything," he said. "If there's $200 worth of groceries, they might pay $50."ĭoyle said in his experience, self-checkout thieves tend to be average shoppers looking to cut down their bill. "They'll scan the oranges there, but they'll put the steak in the bag," said Doyle, with Corporate Protection & Investigative Services in Toronto. Tom Doyle, a plain-clothes investigator who patrols Ontario retail stores, said he frequently catches people doing this at self-checkouts. Some say it adds insult to injury with inflated prices and call the search of bags an invasion of privacy.Īnother trick is called "skip scanning," where thieves scan only some of their items. "The real issue that retailers have is they find it very difficult to prove that I am a thief as opposed to a poor scanner."ĭuration 1:54 Loblaw customers are disgusted by signs posted in stores that say customers must be prepared to show their receipts to validate their purchases. The machine was difficult to use,'" he said. "I can simply say, 'You know what, I'm sorry, I've obviously made a mistake. Beck said that can embolden thieves to steal, because they feel they have a good excuse if they get caught. Sometimes customers make honest mistakes at self-checkout, such as accidentally failing to scan an item. Two-thirds of the retailers said self-checkout-related losses were a growing concern. I was already watched by the staff member who was monitoring the self-checkout.- part of an industry-funded study published in 2022, Beck surveyed 93 retailers (he wouldn't provide names) spread across 25 countries that have incorporated self-checkout technology.Īccording to the study, retailers estimated that as much as 23 per cent of their store losses were due to a combination of theft and customer error at self-checkouts. I had a receipt check tonight by the security guard at the exit. "If you've ever used the self-checkouts, you know how unbelievably easy it is to rip them off." "It's treating us like criminals because of the changes that they made to the store because of this expansion of self-checkout," said John McCracken, who encountered a receipt check warning sign last month at a Loblaw-owned Superstore just outside Halifax. Some major retailers have adopted random receipt checks in selected stores, but the practice has sparked backlash from shoppers, who say they shouldn't have to pay the price for self-checkout theft. The Retail Council of Canada (RCC) told CBC News that shoplifting is on the rise and that it's working with retailers on solutions. painting us all with the same brush, that they're assuming that everyone who uses self-checkout is going to steal." "It made me feel like a suspect, like I had done something wrong," Simpson said. He says after paying for his items at a self-checkout, a security guard blocked him from exiting and demanded to see his receipt. For Brian Simpson, a recent routine shopping trip to a Canadian Tire store in Toronto turned into an unsettling experience.
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