A study by watchmywallet.co.uk has revealed that almost a third of shoppers surveyed admit to shoplifting when using self-service scanners at their local commercial property supermarket.
What’s more, around a quarter of those who have never used the machines to sneak several items through for free claim that the only reason they have resisted temptation was a fear of getting caught.
The most common method of paying less for the weekly commercial property shop was to trick the machine into processing more expensive items at a lower price. For example, when checking fruit and vegetables, several of the 4,952 shoppers surveyed admitted to weighing oranges and telling the machine the items on the weighing plate were white onions – usually the cheapest vegetable.
Self-service checkouts in supermarket commercial properties are very rarely adequately staffed, meaning that slipping an item under the radar is all too easy for some shoppers. And even though self-service machines have detectors to disable the checkout when an item that has not been scanned is placed in the bagging area, harried staff often override the function in an attempt to keep queues moving.
A watchmywallet.co.uk spokesman explains; “Staff regularly override the checkout in order to keep the queues flowing.
“One checkout supervisor recently landed her employer in hot water when she overrode the till to allow a seven-year-old girl to purchase wine for her mother.”
A spokesman for watchmywallet.co.uk explains why, although shoplifting is a criminal offence, very few convictions are actually made annually.
He says; “Without proper supervision, small items such as packets can easily be slipped into a bag unnoticed and passed off by the customer as an honest mistake, if challenged.”
Perhaps the most worrying result of the study is the belief among experts that these shoplifters are not motivated by lack of finance – rather, it is simply the fact that they will probably get away with it that has shoppers leaving commercial properties with more than they paid for.
Psychologist Beverley Stone says; “Often the people who choose not to obey the rules just don’t have a conscience. They only do the right thing if they think they might be caught, so if the chances are slim they’ll do it.
“I don’t think they can be motivated by poverty because they’ll still be paying for some of the shopping – so they can’t be that poor.
“These statistics show a lack of morals in this country today.”
Large commercial property chains, such as Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons, could potentially be losing millions of pounds every year as a result of undetected shoplifting. Also, the discrepancies between the items in individual commercial properties and the electronically stored stock lists can cause a headache for staff when stock taking. This means that staff are required to stay in their commercial properties longer to fix any mistakes, and of course overtime pay then applies, costing the businesses even more.
Perhaps this study shows that commercial properties should abandon the self-service checkout for good. In a time where millions of people in the country find themselves jobless, the money saved by forcing these shoplifters to pay for their items at a manned till could be used to create jobs in these commercial properties themselves. After all, shouldn’t big businesses be leading the attempt to bring Britain out of the double-dip recession?
