There is a great article at Black and White, Birmingham’s City Paper about the practice of stores stopping you when a security device is triggered upon your departure from the store or they ask to review your receipt prior to your departure. Essentially what it boils down to is the fact that assuming you have paid for all of your purchases you are doing them a service by stopping and that you are under no obligation to stop. And, in keeping with the theme of a number of previous posts here, I feel that it is your duty to depart the store. Otherwise, you are endorsing their policy of treating customers like thieves and potentially hinting that you yourself may be guilty of some crime.
Let’s take the instance whereby an alarm is triggered as you depart the store. Assuming that you have paid for everything that you intended to purchase, the triggering of the alarm must be due either to the failure on the part of the person that checked you out to deactivate the device or the malfunction of the sensor. In either case it is not your fault. It is an inconvenience to you to have to stop and their expectation that you stop indicates that they think their customers are criminals. Under no circumstances do they have the right to detain you. As the article indicates, you should proceed on your way. In the event that they have failed to remove a tag that triggers the sensors, I suppose it may be convenient to have that removed, but the bolder amongst you may take a stab at Urban Sprinting. (Via Link)
In the instance where it is the stores policy to check your receipt upon your leaving of the store, things are a bit different. The only store that I regularly visit that has this policy is Costco. A place where I rather enjoy shopping. They indicate that they check your receipt for numerous reasons A) To check that you you did not overpay for anything, B) To confirm that you paid for everything in your cart, and C)To mark your receipt so that it cannot be reused. So, with A and B, it is their fault if an error occurred. At my local Costco, you are ushered straight to the door after your purchase with no means of returning to the merchandise area. The only way that something did not get paid for was if their employee failed to ring up the merchandise. They even have employees unload your cart presumably to prevent this from occurring. As the article points out, there are no prices on the products they are on the shelves and in the shopping area. Since the receipt-checker has no access to floor pricing (other than their memory which I have to presume is less accurate than the computer checkout system) they have no way of confirming that you have in fact paid the correct amount. This is pretty much the “warm and fuzzy” way that they justify the search of your possessions to you and it is pretty much BS. Can they really assess it in the time that they dedicate to their task? If so, I majorly underestimated the skills of the average Costco employee and recommend that we get them to NASA pronto. The final reason is probably the most offensive. Of the hundreds, maybe thousands of retailers that I have shopped at in my life, why is it Costco alone that feels it is necessary to mark my receipt so I cannot reuse it? Is such a large percentage of their customer base (someone who is willing to pay around $100/year to save a few bucks per trip) running an elaborate scheme or receipt reuse? Why wouldn’t I run my schemes at a store that doesn’t charge me to even walk in the door? This is a clear case of treating the bulk of your customers like criminals to prevent the less than one-percent whom may be able to pull this off one or two times at most. Once I have paid for merchandise, it is my possession, just like I have no control over the money that I have just paid them upon the completion of the transaction. They have no right to rummage through my possessions, on the mere assumption that because I shop at their store, I am a criminal.
At the end of the day, it really isn’t all that big of a hassle to stop and have my bags checked and I doubt that I will stop shopping at Costco in order to take a stand, but it does make me think about whether I am going to stop in the future. I probably consented to this violation of my 4th Amendment rights when I signed up for a membership.
This does, however, shine a light on Bed, Bath, and Beyond where my brother worked during holidays in high school. In contrast to other establishments, there policy on shoplifting is to essentially offload a barrage of kindness on suspected shoplifters. To the extent that it could be embarrassing and even uncomfortable, calls go out over the intercom system directing dozens of employs in the customers direction to offer assistance, compliments, and kindness. If, however, the offender opts to leave the store, they are free to go without the slightest hindrance. Additionally, they will offer you a return on any item, even if it is questionable that they ever carried it or in what state it is, receipt, no receipt, receipt marked with Costco highlighter. Oh and those coupons you get in the mail. They take them no matter what the expiration date. It’s nice to see someone gets it. In fact, I think I’ll send a little of my Christmas business their way as a show of gratitude.
technorati tags:Costco, Retail, Shoplifting, Bed_Bath_and_Beyond
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