I admit I don’t quite understand this; how would checking receipts replace registers? Or are they just unconnected occurrences?
I have to admit, if there was a frickin 10-minutes wait at the registers AND a wait for the reciept-checking guy I’d just stroll past him too.
Coincidental annoyances that seemed to be done on purpose to my tinfoil-laden skull.
The signs advertising their efficient consumer-friendly policy were replaced with signs advertising the fact that not only does the checkout line suck, but you’ll also have to wait in a second line after you’ve already given them your money. Insult to injury.
I understand their side of it, however, if the doorway is 30 feet from the register it’s rediculous to be checked again.
It’s only annoying if I’m trying to get in and out quickly. Even then, if I only purchase 2 or 3 items I wont even use a bag and I’ll just hold the receipt in my hand. I’ve never been asked to show the receipt
I accidently stole a body puff (those mesh things to shower with). I was using the self-checkout and I didn’t want to put it on the dirty conveyer belt (you’ve seen raw chicken juice on those, haven’t you? - yuck) so I put a plastic bag under it, then set it on the conveyer belt. It didn’t register so I “stole” it. I didn’t realize it until I got home and noticed it wasn’t on the receipt. No one stopped to check my stuff then.
Now that I think of it… I’ve never been stopped after using the self-checkout.
*Side note: After that incident I bought a case of individually wrapped body puffs from ebay. No more worries if the unwrapped puff has been on Walmart’s floor. *
How is anybody’s reputation being sullied or whatever? No one is accusing youof shoplifting, because they are checking everybody. I seriously don’t care myself, but I really wonder about the folks who feel their dignity is being harmed. Seriously, what’s the problem here again?
Sorry, what? You’re talking about dignity when shopping at a Wal-Mart or warehouse store?
I’m only half-joking. These stores deal in cheap and/or bulk merchandise. People go there for deals, not frills. There is no dignity involved in these stores in the first place. You want dignity, go to a specialty kitchenware shop where you can be waited on by a knowledgeable staffer instead of going to a place where, if you can actually track down and capture an elusive salesperson, they MIGHT be able to tell you where to find a box set of pots and pans for $30.
Box stores run their margins tight and try to make it up in volume. Even that is a tenuous position when, since you can’t afford high quality, loyal salepeople due to the need to keep prices down, you run the risk of incurring too much loss.
I have no love for Wal-Mart, and in fact boycott it due in part to the indignity I feel while there, but I can understand why they and Costco do what they do.
As I stated earlier, I no more regard a receipt check at the door as a personal accusation than I do the average security measures at the airport. If they’re asking everyone to do it, then it’s just a policy that everyone follows.
After all, it’s only a glance at your receipt and bags–not a full body cavity search! Hardly an affront to my dignity. Guess my pride is a little less easily damaged.
Kind of hard to do these days without getting caught because of all them black bubbles mounted in the ceiling.
I wouldn’t let a police officer search my belongings just to make sure that I wasn’t breaking a law, so I can’t see how it’s ok for some random guy at a discount store to do so. I can’t see myself even acknowledging the request, and unless they physically restrain me I’m not playing. “Excuse me sir, can I check your receipt?” “No thanks!”
Or, what Troy McClure said in post 79 or so.
Yes, I know, “don’t shop there” - brilliant response that. Do the stores put up signs so I know ahead of time that I’m expected to relinquish my rights when shopping there? Does Walmart have a big ol’ “Entry to this establishment implies acceptance of the EULA available within” or do I have to go in to every store in the area and inquire? Or should I, as an American citizen that is assumed to be innocent until proven guilty, believe that I will not have my personal belongings rifled through without a court order or a probable cause?
Yeah, that was a reach and it’s not THAT big of a deal, and since I’ve never run into this outside of Costco and once in Best Buy when I was walking out with a laptop sans bag (even I thought I looked fishy), I’m not terribly concerned, I just think this is weird.
Employees are the biggest cause of shrinkage, IIRC, not tubby middle-aged suburbanites, which may be why they don’t bother with me.
Have I missed a suggestion of simply shooting the guard?
The Wal-Mart in my town only has someone check your bags if the door alarm goes off. I’ve had that happen a few times when new cashiers forget to rub electronics on the platform that deactivates the security bar.
Sometimes, though, they don’t even pay attention to the door. My son and I went through there a few days ago, and he picked out a new DVD. He didn’t want to give it to the cashier, he just held it up for her to scan with the hand-held thing, so the security bar didn’t get deactivated. I didn’t even think of it until we got to the door.
The alarm goes off: “The Wal-Mart security center blah blah inventory control blah blah something something blah!” over the loudspeaker. I stop, realizing that it’s yelling at me, and wait…and wait…and nothing. No one comes running, security guys don’t appear out of the floor, no one even looks at us. All the way to the car, I’m expecting someone to come up behind me to check my stuff. Nothing.
They must just not care here.
And in less than forty years I will be one of them! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-haaa…
The Circuit City I go to sometimes has a guy checking receipts - but it is the most half-assed check I’ve ever seen. There’s never a line. You show him your receipt, he check-marks it with a highlighter, and you’re on your way. Less than five seconds. Hell, I’ve timed it right so that I don’t even have to break stride.
If there ever was a line you can be damned sure I’ll just keep walking and tell them to call the police if they’re that sure I’m shoplifting.
In California they cannot make you be checked - at least not if the alarm hasn’t gone off. Source - millions of letters to the complaint columnist in the Murky News.
The last time I went to Macy’s the alarm kept on going off with no one anywhere near the door. Very few low paid cashiers are going to bother to run after you.
Don’t those policies have to be legal, regardless of how many people condone them?
What really cheeses me off is that the cashier will see me putting away the receipt in my wallet and putting my wallet in my purse and zipping up my purse, and never bother to tell me that my receipt will be checked at the door. No way I’m going to dig it back out so that some bored clerk can barely glance at it.
This is especially irksome at places where they do not check receipts on a regular basis. I’m “trained” to keep my receipt out at Costco because they ALWAYS have a receipt checker there. But at Home Depot they rarely have one, so they could at least let us know to keep it out when they do have one.
I usually don’t let them check my receipts even if I do have them out.* I just walk past them. If they get in front of me so I have to interact, I just say “no thank you,” as if there were trying to hand me an advertising flyer or something. This unexpected response confuses them for at least a split second (sometimes longer) and gives me enough time to get past them without further incident.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who thought of that (scary) thread.
I’ve always been annoyed by the practice, but one occasion really sent me over the edge.
I was in my local CompUSA, and the store was completely dead. There were only a few customers wnadering the aisles, and i was literally the only person at the cash registers.
The receipt-checking person wasn’t doing anything at all, so she was standing near her post chating to the staff members manning the nearby registers. She stood talking to them, not 15 feet away from me, while i made my purchase. She watched me pay, and then pick up the bag of merchandise handed to me by the cashier.
And despite witnessing the whole transaction, she waited as i walked the 8 paces across the floor towards her post and asked to see my receipt. I was completely incredulous. All i was carrying, literally, was the single plastic bag that the cashier had handed me, in full view of the receipt-checking person, not five seconds before. I kept walking.
I don’t know Macy’s policies, but I worked at Sears for a few months one summer, and we were told very explicitly that it was not our job to prevent loss that way. There was a whole room of security guys, with cameras, and plainsclothes security around the store who were trained to do that.
Not us.
My guess was that the liability of having some overzealous checker try to detain someone unlawfully was much greater than the savings to be gained. They also told us that the stores lose far more to employee theft than they do to random shoplifters. mhendo, remember that the biggest source of loss is through sweethearting. Seeing you check out and carry the bag to the door doesn’t mean that you correctly paid for what’s in the bag.
And I, like many others, make a point of ignoring such requests. The biggest deal that was ever made of it was at Circuit City when, after I said “No thank you” to the first request, the checker turned and said “Excuse me, sir. I said I need to check your receipt.” I was out the door by this point, so I turned as I walked and responded “I heard you. No thank you.”
“You have to let me check your receipt,” she said.
“I’m pretty sure I don’t,” I said, as I continued to walk to my car.
Your missing the point that the reason for doing the check is that they trust the CASHIERS less than they trust the customers. When I worked retail there were a few busts for petty shoplifting, but the big losses were inside jobs.