I'm not a thief and won't be treated like one.
Its also loss prevention.
We’re not talking about “government database” kinds of people.
Really? How many of them are prosecuted? Tell me, how is it that porch pirates (thieves) are so prolific if there's some master database of every thief everywhere?
> Retailers should concentrate on those instead of harassing non-thief customers.
Retailers must not discriminate against anyone until after a crime has been committed. Otherwise it's a slippery path down to redlining.
Bag checkers at BestBuy, on the other hand....
I understand it is in response to theft, but has no one thought about the detriment this does to the consumer using self check out? The very nature of the self check out and all of its problems are driving people to hate them, and in turn resent the retailer.
I mean, everything in my cart is stuff that I just finished willingly recording into their sales records, so it's not as if I've had time to develop much sense of privacy or attachment over it.
For whatever reason, I think I'm more annoyed/discomfited by the "higher security tiny store within a store" thing some places have been doing, especially when all I wanted was a single toothpaste or something.
It is straight up illegal in Canada for a store to require you to show your receipt in order to be allowed to leave. It's unlawful detainment.
This applies to Costco as well. Of course you can have your membership revoked if you refuse there. However other grocery stores have no recourse if you leave without showing your receipt.
That seems like a straw-man argument. I've never seen anyone actually detained by private employees who suspect theft, and I'll bet many companies' policies quite explicitly prohibit those employees from trying.
Of course they actually do. Just be glad you're lucky enough not to have had to deal with that.
C'mon man, citation needed.
I'm going to pre-buttal a bunch of "that's not actually the same claim" items here:
* If it's a couple notable incidents before the company gets a bloody nose in an expensive lawsuit and changes things, then that's not regular behavior.
* If the employee detains someone in accordance with local laws (e.g. the seldom-usable "citizen's arrest"), then it's not illegally acting like police.
* If the person is detained by actual police because the employee called them over, then that's not the private company doing the detention.
For example, down in Washington State, I'd paraphrase the law [0] as "store owners can't be sued back if they had good evidence and only stopped the person enough to record information." (Note, that's separate from "citizen's arrest", which comes more from common-law precedents than from explicit statue.)
It's not just not a strawman, it's already happening, even if it is illegal
Your link doesn't say that though. Where does it supports the claim that suspect-customers were/will-be illegally detained?
Do you have some other source? And I don't mean "it happened once or twice before the company got slammed with a massive lawsuit that made them substantially change the policy."
Not sure what your understanding is, but imo if a person is physically blocked from leaving a store, then they are being detained. It doesn't matter if an employee is doing it or if it's a gate with a receipt scanner
They can and have had employees standing at exits to check receipts in the past, but people are under no obligation to present a receipt in order to be allowed to leave so most people just walk right by
Physically placing a barrier in the way to prevent that is detainment. Replacing the employee with a scanning machine doesn't somehow change that.
It's just not civilised.
What are you talking about? I use self checkout at every opportunity I can. Feel free not to if you don't want, but this projection is weird.
“Another approach is adding a receipt-scanning gate at self-checkout areas, which Safeway has done at multiple locations in California, in addition to shutting down self-checkout entirely in some stores.”