High streets have warned that shoplifting is “spiralling out of control” as more than one in three people have admitted to stealing from shops.
A new survey revealed that 37 per cent of customers purposefully fail to scan at least one item when using self-checkouts.
Men and people under 35 are among the most likely to carry out the thefts.
The survey, carried out for The Grocer, polled 1,000 people of which 38 per cent admitted to scanning loose items through incorrectly, a tactic known within the industry as “the banana trick”.
Men and people under 35 are among the most likely to carry out the thefts
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This allows buyers to steal more expensive goods by marking them as cheaper items of the same weight when putting them through a self-checkout machine.
Figures from the British Retail Consortium showed there were over 20 million shoplifting incidents in 2024.
These incidents cost retailers £2.2billion, up from £1.8billion in 2023.
The chairman of Marks and Spencer, Archie Norman, said shoplifting was “creeping in” among middle-class people.
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He said: “It’s too easy to say it’s a cost of living problem. Some of this shoplifting is gangs. Then you get the middle class.”
“With the reduction of service, you get in a lot of shops, a lot of people think ‘This didn’t scan properly’, or ‘It’s very difficult to scan these things through’ and ‘I shop here all the time. It’s not my fault, I’m owed it’.”
Supermarkets have attempted to crack down on stealing by installing more effective checkouts.
Co-op revealed last year that it was adding AI technology in its shops to help monitor what customers were scanning through.
Retailers such as Zara, Uniqlo and Marks and Spencer have started using tills which automatically know what’s in your basket
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Other retailers have installed checkouts where instead of scanning each individual item, shoppers simply have to put their basket on the machine and it automatically knows what’s in there.
These machines use radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips embedded in price tags to detect which item is which.
Retailers such as Zara, Uniqlo and Marks and Spencer have started using these tills.
However, other shops have decided to do away with self-checkout altogether.
In 2023, Booths said it was replacing self-checkouts with human cashiers in all but two of its 27 stores across northern England.
Morrisons’ chief executive Rami Baitiéh also said the supermarket had gone “a bit too far” on self-checkouts and was removing some of the machines from certain stores.
He said: “Some shoppers dislike it, mainly when they have a full trolley.”