At self-service checkouts, shoppers learn to steal

Self-serve checkout machines haven’t caught on at Canadian supermarkets as predicted.

But if they ever do, grocery managers may want to keep in mind a new British survey that found one in five Britons steals when using the machines.

Nineteen per cent of U.K. consumers surveyed by VoucherCodesPro admitted to pilfering at supermarket self-checkouts, with the majority saying they steal on a regular basis.

The average dollar value of good stolen per customer was 15 pounds (about $27 Canadian currency) a month.

The most popular items taken were fruits and vegetables.

One reason people steal from self-checkout machines is that they realize they can get away with it. Most people said they first stole when they couldn’t get an item to scan.

“I’m sure most of those who now admit to stealing via self-service checkouts didn’t initially set out to do so–they may have forgotten to scan something and quickly realized how easy it could be to take items without scanning them,” says George Charles, spokesman for VoucherCodesPro.

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