Purchase Inspection

[BeerNut]

Interesting article.
Receipt checking has been a pet peave of mine ever since I waited in line for over 10 minutes at Home Depot to have my ticket marked after being rung up (which took 15 minutes). I was having a VERY time-sensitive plumbing issue at home, thus making the wait incredibly inconvenient. I stood there like a good customer, but in hindsight I wish I hadn't.

From my understanding of this, Pewter is pretty much correct. From a legal standpoint, receipt checking is a purely VOLUNTARY process:

1. Once you pay for your items, they belong to you, just like anything else you may have brought into the store, like the clothes you're wearing, the watch on your wrist, the shoes on your feet or the cell phone in your pocket. They are YOURS.
2. Nobody has the right to take your property from you, even to look through it, except a police officer on suspicion of wrongdoing.
3. A store employee does not have the right to detain you unless you have committed a crime, namely shoplifting. If they detain you and you have committed no crime, you can have them arrested for kidnapping and unlawful detention and quite likely win against them in a civil suit.

I've written loss prevention policy for retail stores before, and I can clearly see both sides of this issue; however, the moment that any process becomes a signficant inconvenience to the customer, it qualifies as bad in my book.

My personal thoughts on it are simple: If it is a quick and easy check with minimal/no wait: Fine, I'll be Jonny Good Buyer and play along.
If it is a wait that compares to or exceeds my time in the checkout line, then I've got somewhere to be.

[nonstop]

Once again, the beer has spoken well. I'm the same Beer. When the line at Costco is long, like around holidays, I go right through when them saying "hey." I usually look aback and say "hey".

[tagyourit]

Businesses have every right to put in to place measurers to protect themselves from theft, but they do not have the authority to take away my rights. Why not institute strip searching at checkout (Job application denied Houdini.)? I don't mind helping them out, but if they won't help me out by paying for more employees to insure a minimal amount of inconvienence, then I decline to submit to their VOLUNTARY policies. God I wish they would illegally detain me; that ought to be good for atleast a few grand.

I am so sick of this tone in America to sacrifice individual rights for the so called good of society.

[Nytefyre]

well, i understand the time and personal ryghts viewpoints...

but, ppl do need to remember, the people in the store are just trying to do their job 2....im sure they dont wanna check off 10000 receipts a day either...

im all for leaving when ur free to go....i will say that i highly dislike people who are rude about it tho....

ive seen alot of people act '2 good' for the common worker or clerk
and take a tone/attitude with them....now that DOES piss me off...

im biased tho...im looking at it from more of a business owners standpoint kuz of my dad and his business

[pewterdragn]

well, i understand the time and personal ryghts viewpoints...

but, ppl do need to remember, the people in the store are just trying to do their job 2....im sure they dont wanna check off 10000 receipts a day either...

im all for leaving when ur free to go....i will say that i highly dislike people who are rude about it tho....

ive seen alot of people act '2 good' for the common worker or clerk
and take a tone/attitude with them....now that DOES piss me off...

im biased tho...im looking at it from more of a business owners standpoint kuz of my dad and his business

Giving the store a problem isn't being "too good" for the people that work there. That's all in attitude and I agree with you thats ridiculous.

The employee does work there though. The store does make it part of their job to check 10000 receipts. And if consumers don't have any problems checking off the receipts and don't complain about it, then it won't change. The store employees and even store managers don't have the ability to change these corporate policies. But they have the combined voice that can change the policy especially when united with the consumer.

[Nytefyre]

i totally agree...

im talking bout the people who target the individual employee with their anger like it was THEIR decision....

ya, if its store/company/corp policy thats different, as long as you hold the ryte party responsible

[Taffy]

If they had hot young chicks doing it you could just say the receipt is in your pocket go ahead and grab it

But seriously, it rarely happens to me. Last time I had something similar happen was a couple of weeks ago when I bought a Sony Bravia LCD TV (1080p rocks btw), and the guy who brought it to my SUV checked the receipt. Other then that I can't recall when it last happened, and it has never taken very long that I recall either.