One in eight shoppers steals from stores by cheating at self-service checkouts, a poll shows.
Using the so-called ‘banana trick’, they choose a cheaper item on the till screen – such as fruit or vegetables – than the one they actually take.
Applied to the UK population as a whole, this means six million people may have used self-checkouts to deliberately under pay.
The survey of 1,099 shoppers by Ipsos found that 48 per cent believed the con should not be considered a criminal act.
Eight per cent admitted taking items worth up to £10 without paying at all, and 13 per cent said they had filched something that was worth up to £1.
However, 26 per cent believe stealing goods worth under £10 should not be an offence, and 47 per cent thought the same about shoplifting items worth less than £1. There have been 443,995 shoplifting offences in the 12 months up to March – the equivalent of 50 every hour, and the highest total in two decades.
The figure is 30 per cent higher than during the previous 12 months, and with goods worth £1.8billion taken each year, retailers claim the cost of shoplifting adds at least 6p to every transaction. As a result, shops have had to spend an extra £700million on security measures.
Many in the industry blame the introduction of self-service checkout tills for the increase. The UK now has 80,000.
However, stores in the United States have begun to return to staffed tills – and some big British chains are following suit. Morrisons is rowing back on its selfservice checkout policy, with its boss admitting that the company ‘went a bit too far’.
Chief executive Rami Baitiéh said it was ‘reviewing the balance between self-checkouts and manned tills’.
The northern supermarket chain Booths announced in November that it was scrapping its self-service tills, and Asda revealed last week that it was investing in more checkout staff.
Under the Theft Act 1968, a person caught shoplifting may be arrested and put on trial.
The maximum sentence for stealing goods worth less than £200 is six months in jail, however, this is usually dealt with by the imposition of a postal fine.
For the theft of goods worth more than £200, the maximum sentence is seven years in prison.
An Ipsos survey showed a quarter of shoppers asked said they had not paid for an item
Others in the survey said that it should not be a crime to take an item up to £10 for free
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