Is the Tesco self scan being policed more ruthlessly?

Irish Times

22-05-2025

One of the best things about being a member of the
Tesco Clubcard
scheme – apart from that fact that almost all the promotional products are now made exclusively available to this cohort – is the ability to scan and bag your shopping as you go.
It means that when you reach the till, all you need to do is scan a bar code and pay for your shopping.
It has the advantages of allowing you to keep an eye on how much you are spending as you shop and removes the need to queue for ages before taking your shopping out of the trolley and putting it on the conveyor belt before bagging it and paying.
To dissuade shoplifters, Tesco operates random spot checks with staff sometimes scanning a number of products in your basket to make sure you have scanned and paid for them yourself.
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The system works. Or at least in our experience it works. A reader called Kathleen from Galway has had a very different experience of late and one which ruined her day.
'I am feeling somewhat humiliated by a recent experience in my local Tesco store in
Galway
where I have shopped every week since the day it opened in 1997,' her mail begins.
'I use the self-scanning facility as I shop which I find very useful as I have a large weekly shop and I am regularly subjected to service checks on checkout which I have no issue with.'
She says that the service check has always consisted of a random check of up to 25 items in the trolley but 'apparently last October a more intensive service check was introduced without notifying customers which involves a full scan of the entire shopping trolley. Last Saturday, May 10th, I was subjected to this re-scan of my entire trolley laden down with 87 items at a cost of €288.'
She says that 'aside altogether from the inconvenience of having two staff members unpack, re-scan and reload my shopping, I was left standing there for 25 minutes feeling deeply embarrassed and humiliated while this was going on'.
For the avoidance of all doubt, she says there was no issue with any of the products in her trolley and she had scanned them all accurately.
'Anyone passing through this area during the recheck would reasonably have assumed that I was guilty of some fraud that necessitated a full recheck,' she says. 'My shop is of similar size and value every week. Anybody I spoke to about this subsequently has been appalled but unfortunately the response from Tesco customer care was the usual corporate speak. I am assuming Tesco are experiencing a rise in pilferage, hence the upgraded checking. Surely if this is a problem then Tesco should simply withdraw the scanning facility altogether rather than engage in this behaviour?'
We contacted the company to find out what was going on.