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They are simply implying there is no legal basis for them asking to see your receipt. But surely there is a legal basis to prevent you from leaving the store w

• SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
  The key here is that OP has paid for their groceries. Once the transaction completes, the groceries are their property. OP has no obligation to prove to anyone that they own their own property after that (except in the case of Costco and Sam's club, which you of course don't have to prove either, but they will revoke your membership if you don't). In your scenario, you haven't paid for the groceries yet. So they are still the store's property. And they can of course take measures to protect their property while it's still in their possession. Receipt checking, by definition, always happens after the transaction has completed and the payer has taken possession of the groceries, hence the receipt. So receipt checking is always a practice to verify that your already lawfully purchased groceries match up with what you are removing from the store. This is a practice, while rooted in a perspective that benefits the store, that you have no obligation whatsoever to comply with. The store, as mentioned above, has no obligation to let you back into the store (they can ban you), but they also have no right to detain you and force you to prove that you own your belongings as you are leaving either. And a store is not going to ban someone unless they are completely sure they have stolen something. So in practice there is really no issue with telling receipt checkers to pound sand for trying to verify my lawfully purchased groceries. I usually don't, because it feels standoffish for no reason sometimes, and you risk encountering someone that doesn't fully understand the law correctly. But if I have a good reason, as mentioned above, I will definitely tell them to pound sand. I realize now rereading the thread how these two scenarios became conflated, because OP responded to the "before purchase" scenario that you provided with an "after purchase" scenario. So we are really talking about two different scenarios here.
  • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    > And a store is not going to ban someone unless they are completely sure they have stolen something. That isn't true. Just being rude to staff can get you banned from many stores. If you don't like their policy of checking receipts, they can ban you, although they can't really enforce anything without a trespassing order, at best they can just refuse service.
    • SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
      Of course, but refusing when they ask you to show your receipt is what we are talking about here, not some arbitrary other thing that can get you banned from a store. There are all sorts of behaviors that can presumably get you banned from a store, as you pointed out in your example. If someone has ever been banned simply for politely refusing to show the receipt and nothing else I would like to see some evidence. I’ve never heard of it happening. But yeah it is of course theoretically possible, you could be banned by a place of business because they don’t like the way you have a spring in your step, provided that the underlying reason is not because you’re a member of a protected class. But no business is arbitrarily handing out bans for things like this because it’s bad for business. Also AFAIK in the States it’s quite easy to get a “trespass order”. My understanding is that in most jurisdictions you simply tell the person they are in trespass and they are required to leave the premises or be subject to detention by authorities if they don’t. Now your typical employee may not be able to just hand that kind of order out due to some internal policy but in theory any agent of the business would be able to do it. There’s no real additional paperwork or legal process that needs to happen outside of a verbal exchange
• seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  > But surely there is a legal basis to prevent you from leaving the store with groceries before you have paid for them. There isn't really. The store can call the police, and when they show up, they can stop you from leaving. But...ya, that doesn't work out very well. I imagine in Europe you would just become a social pariah and might get a knock at your door by police (at least in Switzerland...), while in the states...they can't do much, there is no social pressure.
  • doctor_radium 3y ago
    As a teenager/early 20's in the late 80's and early 90's I worked at a K-Mart style discount store. We employed up to four plainclothes "loss prevention" associates who absolutely could and did detain people for shoplifting. We even had a code for it: "Code 100!". Hear that on the loudspeaker and you know there's a shoplifter either on the run or nearly so, and if you're able to give pursuit or just look tough, get to the front NOW. I chased shoplifters twice. One was tackled by a bystander in the parking lot, and while the other got away, I gave the cop a description and they picked him up at the McDonalds down the street. Sensibilities/budgets may be different today, but back then it was a rush for a young guy. I was also once in the position of acting as witness in the loss prevention office when one of my classmates was caught (no chase) stealing fishing gear. Awkward.