Sainsburys smart shop random checks

sillyvixen

Anyone else feel like they are being picked for spot checks because they are vegetarian! Usually get a 7 item scan 3 out of 4 times and they dig deep into my bags - looking for meat and fish I haven't scanned apparently! It's outright discrimination I tell you!

prowla

Sainsburys seem to be doing their best to make customers feel unwelcome; my one has an exit barrier which you have to scan your receipt to open.

My normal routine when shopping is to fold up my receipt and put it in my wallet, and oftentimes I automatically do that only to have to get it back out to escape.

I commented to one of the staff that I found it annoying and they just said it's to stop shoplifters.

I prefer to shop elsewhere.

J63320

I was selected for a Smartshop rescan in a big Sainsbury’s but they needed a special scanner to do it, they only had one and they couldn’t find it. My checkout couldn’t be done without it, so a staff member had to put all my shopping through a different checkout, which meant that I lost out on my personalised Nectar Prices. It wasn’t much money, but I was so annoyed by their incompetence that I wasn’t prepared to let it go. They didn’t have a clue what to do about it so I looked at the app, added up the discounts in my head and told them the total. They accepted my figure but even then they couldn’t just take it off my bill - they had deduct the cost of one of the items I’d bought so I got a bit more money off.
After all that I was, of course, selected for a rescan the next time I shopped there. I told the staff member who did it what had happened, and she told me that they now had three of the special scanners in the store!

dealyboy

I shopped at my weekly shop Sainsbury's this morning and checked out at the Smartshop 'self scans' it seems everybody was being advised that there would be a 5-item check before the shopping would by QR'ed to the till. (One oversight seems to be the fact that the 'alert' light stays green unless you select 'Help'). Anyway I got through that, paid, got my folded receipt out of my wallet (@prowla) to scan to exit the self scan area and then went through adjacent tagging gates and the alarm went off.

Tagging gate alarms are always going off in this store and nobody takes a blind bit of notice, except me, I am the one who always tells staff of a security risk. Anyway I stopped, came back to the self scan area and told the colleague that I would check my shopping, I also said that one day I would forget to scan something when shopping, the colleague immediately spotted pyjama bottoms (from Tu) in a bag, of course they needed de-tagging and I had forgotten during the kerfuffle.

When I got home I checked my Nectar points (like a good MSE'er) and found that my celery hadn't got any points, I then checked my receipt ... the celery wasn't there ... but it was in my fridge! ... I had stolen it! ... aargh!

PS. I phoned Sainsbury's, apologised and asked if I could pay next week. The advisor, Anne, said it was very unusual for somebody to phone up and admit to being a thief, but I was to be commended for doing so, she would let the store know, and that was fine.

I tell you I almost expected to be awarded some Nectar points for being honest ... but no ... haha.

mikb

prowla said:

Sainsburys seem to be doing their best to make customers feel unwelcome; my one has an exit barrier which you have to scan your receipt to open.

OK, what happens if you go in there, find they haven't got the thing you wanted to buy, and then you want to get out of the store? Do they provide "Just browsing!" passes??

Serious question -- at one point at ALDI they did force all "exit" to go through the checkouts, which was a real nuisance if you'd bobbed up there for a middle-aisle item that they didn't have. You had to either join a queue (with nothing to buy), or try and exit the shop backward through the entrance (looking like a shoplifter in the process).

This has changed since store layouts included self-service, which is an area you can walk through without barriers and challenges! It is unnecessarily stressful having to deal with that sort of nonsense.

pumpkin89

mikb said:

OK, what happens if you go in there, find they haven't got the thing you wanted to buy, and then you want to get out of the store? Do they provide "Just browsing!" passes??

Most of their shops have a "no purchase" exit right next to the security guard's station.

jon81uk

mikb said:

prowla said:

Sainsburys seem to be doing their best to make customers feel unwelcome; my one has an exit barrier which you have to scan your receipt to open.

OK, what happens if you go in there, find they haven't got the thing you wanted to buy, and then you want to get out of the store? Do they provide "Just browsing!" passes??

Serious question -- at one point at ALDI they did force all "exit" to go through the checkouts, which was a real nuisance if you'd bobbed up there for a middle-aisle item that they didn't have. You had to either join a queue (with nothing to buy), or try and exit the shop backward through the entrance (looking like a shoplifter in the process).

This has changed since store layouts included self-service, which is an area you can walk through without barriers and challenges! It is unnecessarily stressful having to deal with that sort of nonsense.

At Sainsbury's you would leave through the entrance, its not like Aldi with the one way gates. The Sainsburys gate is only on the self checkout.

Money_Grabber13579

jon81uk said:

mikb said:

prowla said:

Sainsburys seem to be doing their best to make customers feel unwelcome; my one has an exit barrier which you have to scan your receipt to open.

OK, what happens if you go in there, find they haven't got the thing you wanted to buy, and then you want to get out of the store? Do they provide "Just browsing!" passes??

Serious question -- at one point at ALDI they did force all "exit" to go through the checkouts, which was a real nuisance if you'd bobbed up there for a middle-aisle item that they didn't have. You had to either join a queue (with nothing to buy), or try and exit the shop backward through the entrance (looking like a shoplifter in the process).

This has changed since store layouts included self-service, which is an area you can walk through without barriers and challenges! It is unnecessarily stressful having to deal with that sort of nonsense.

At Sainsbury's you would leave through the entrance, its not like Aldi with the one way gates. The Sainsburys gate is only on the self checkout.

My local Sainsbury’s has got entrance and exit gates and you can only leave by going through the exit gates. Well, that is the theory because all of the gates are set to be permanently open!

ikklwchick

THREE years it went on for me, every week without fail, mainly a scan of 14 items, but at leats once a month a full rescan at a checkout which means unpacking everything carefully packed and starting over, waste of an additional half hour.
I get followed by security as well, I feel it is weird profiling as I am very heavily tattooed and have a facial tattoo or two; but this DOES NOT mean I am on the nick!
Each time is the same, I call and complain and get told the systems need updating their end. Uninstall their app, and then reinstall but 24 hours later and all should be good again.
The rescans went in February but are back again with avengence; I get a full rescan at a checkout now every week and it is driving me to distraction. They have removed all. but TWO checkouts in my local large Sainsbury and there are usually huge queues to use these two checkouts. I like to shop at Sainsbury so I can save all my necter points all years and have a 'free' Xmas shop with all the points I save (usually over £100 what with dog insurance points monthly) 
There profiling though is off the charts wrong! 

danny13579

ikklwchick said:

The rescans went in February but are back again with avengence; I get a full rescan at a checkout now every week and it is driving me to distraction. 

Why are you getting full rescans? Normally they scan 5 or 6 items in a spot check and if all goes well you can go on your way.

Have you failed one or more of these spot checks, thereby requiring a full scan?

If you fail a spot check you're likely to be spot checked much more often. I doubt their system knows or cares you have tattoos. Security staff (like many people) have their own prejudices.