Thanks to your article, which basically pointed me where to go (as it is not a definite conclusion, although I’m unsure if Kathy read that far even, or if she has any idea what logic is), I now know my rights… I think.

Basically, costco states that “To ensure… all receipts and merchandise will be…” This does
NOT SAY
1) I have to stop.
2) They have to inspect my physical goods. (The SQL Database and register contains both my receipt and what I purchased, this is in their possession)
3) That they inspect “my” goods, but they will inspect all of them somehow.

As stated above, to ensure the customer is not overcharged is bull, I may have gotten bored and decided to memorize all the prices I could at walmart, but even I couldn’t get all of them, and I doubt costco employees get that bored, much less push their brain because they have actual skills beyond retail.

They have both CCTV and SQL, a simple SELECT statement will let them inspect my goods. I was not detained, but guess what..

The policy doesn’t state you have to show your card upon entering.
It does not state who represents costco if they do say “give it up” to your card.

My state laws 4.24, 9A, and 65A are the other relevant ones, which basically say “You can’t stop me if you have absolutely no reason to suspect me of anything”

Now, my main point to drive home is do not take a stance “against” this idea. What if you owned a biz, how would you like to be able to protect your earnings? Do not hate costco, and do not drive “You’re being bad to me!” Instead, argue that you, and them, should both exercise your rights, and not allow others to step on them.

Take an intelligent stance either way, and put yourself on the other side of things. Even if it seems reasonable, eg. Kathy’s logic… she did not consider “What if I had to wait 25 minutes.” or “What if my son is sick” Also, final note to Kathy: THEY DO NOT USE THE MAIN EXIT IF THEY ARE DOING THAT!

I’ve seen a lot of empty packages, DVD’s and CD’s missing from packages left in automotive, baby food packages ripped stuffed between pet food, I’ve seen tons of _ethnic group_ just put on baseball gloves and walk out of the store. I’ve seen that same group also pay for things, I’m not biased, just observed this with my own eyes, although if you don’t know the difference between judgement and observation, you’ll think I’m racist. This somewhat irrelevant paragraph explains how people really steal stuff,…

Yes, they can shove it in a box and buy the box, but how is a “receipt check” going to spot that? We had a policy called Look Inside Always (lisa), but that stops theft at the register.

Long story short, if you have a receipt in hand and walk out of the store, clearly showing that you paid… then there is no reasonable cause to detain you.

I just stumbled here when searching, do not take anything I say as fact, as things may have changed or you may not be in my area.

Good article! Awesome comments, the CA police officer drove home an interesting idea, along with the “I thought you guys were in a free country” person

The most common mistakes of cashiers are items at the bottom of a basket/cart like bottled water, paper goods, and stamps. For example, a customer may pay for stamps at the register but its so busy the cashier does not hand over the stamps or a customer (so rushed glued to their cell phones) leaves it somewhere near the register. A check of the receipt and we ask “Do you have your stamps?” Some don’t and we make sure they are ‘reunited’ with the item they purchased.

For those who have not been charged for an item its not a matter of assuming ‘theft’ its a matter of not being charged. There is a special register with no waiting nearby for those corrections.

Generally the rule of thumb is to ‘count’ items and match it against the receipt. If there is an error the member should want to know about it and be refunded if over charged or know of an error if under charged. Any loss drives up the cost of services at some point.

Members also leave merchandise all too often somewhere between the cashiers lane and the exit. Generally in a food area, bathroom, or kiosk stand for something they just ‘had to see.’ We reunite them with those items as well.

In Club stores there are no RFIDs or security tags or security devices such as department stores. This too times 600+ stores is what drives up prices. To keep prices balanced checkers check items in the basket with the receipt.

In our chain there is NO profiling. In fact, the company goes to redundant extremes to make sure it does not occur. And we are technically NOT loss prevention. There are those who are in the store undercover but not the paid people working at the doors. Most of us are part time employees there for access to affordable health insurances we cannot get in our primary employers or as small business people. We moonlight for part time additional 2nd incomes and insurance. I can’t tell you how rude and obnoxious it is to have some jerk not show their receipt or make a ‘constitutional’ issue at the door with some poor retiree, kid there for college income, or professionals like myself in this economy just trying to survive. True, there are a limited amount of cameras pointed at us and we get only a few seconds to hopefully get the job correct both for the store and for the customer.

If you are stealing something we have no instructions to do anything than call a manager. Its the managers discretion to verify a receipt and merchandise. But people do the strangest things. Why would a woman buy $500 of products and steal a salmon inside her purse? Or a family buy the staples of food but hid a dozen blue ray DVDs under their baby in a stroller? We don’t stop those people to look. Loss Prevention has seem them personally in the store and waits till they leave the doors to detain them – and our PD in this city is PROMPT at arriving to make an arrest. We at the door have no idea what is going on and are not alerted to do anything other than verify receipts.

Another trick of real thieves is to take a receipt from another store that has not been verified with a florescent line through it and come back into another store for the same items and claim constitutional rights to make a scene with hourly paid employees when in fact the codes for the store do not match (receipt says store 4321 and they are trying to leave store 1234. Or the dates do not match. Those are the ones we sometimes catch if we can look at the receipt for longer than 3-5 seconds. Even so, we ask people to move to one side and have a supervisor check the receipt further. Its not our job to arrest or do anything other than alert management.

Those who just bull through and run over us with their carts are perpetrating a crime of assault and battery. I’m standing there wearing a urinary catheter. Run over me and YOU will be paying a higher crime for assault and battery or aggravated assault with a cart or flatbed. And I WILL press charges by calling the police and use the Camera security video at the exit door in court against you. Or the person you cause to have a diabetic response, heart condition or some other issue.

The problems you have are with the Store. Its not with an employee who is probably just like you and trying to survive with a lousy job just to have access to health insurance or pay their bills. There is no profiling. 99% of the time we’ll try to make conversation with you and thank you for shopping at the membership club where you’ve poked down annual fees to buy cheaper than other retail and a store experience less than the masses at WalMart where it gets really weird and full of nut jobs.

Most times it is hard to read a receipt. Someone bought 3 bottled waters but the receipt looks like 4 until pointed out the cashier caught the mistake, added a correction and it was take care of. And it saved you 20-30 minutes in the return line to find out instead on your way out the door. Or how about when we catch your produce has mold on it and call for someone to get one that is healthy or suggest you get a refund? Or the fact you bought one bag of bagels when in reality you paid for 2? LIttle things we catch to try to help a customer.

How about the employee who runs after you who brings an item you left behind somewhere like at the register. Or like your membership card or ATM card or credit card? Or the cart person who finds you left a full front seat top of the cart full of merchandise after you’ve loaded the larger section and are ready to drive off.

Some go nuts they have to show their card on the way in. Many assume their arrogance means nothing but it does hassle the persons paid to see and click you have entered. The click on the card and not the ten other families you brought with you to all shop on your card. That to provide half hour updates of how many have entered to management to keep the number of lanes open to accommodate those crowds. And to stop any who do no have cards from coming in to shoplift or fill a cart with everything and then choke up a register because they have no card to be processed. How would you like to be behind them while it takes forever to clear the conveyor and get them processed and voided out to ring up your valid membership card and purchases?

The discount clubs are not like being in a WalMart. And Thank God they aren’t. They are fast, a frenzy and sometimes gruff. But they do save you something that caused you to sign up, agree to the terms and conditions, and shop there often. And their return policies are so graceful contrasted to returning anything almost anywhere else. Especially if it really doesn’t work verses the ones who use the discount stores like free rental companies for TVs for the SuperBowl or just trash something till it stops working and wants to get another free one to replace what they did to theirs.

The only one you really screw is the one who is fired because you wouldn’t show your receipt on the way out a damned door as per your contract with the store for membership. Usually its some single mother trying to feed her family, have insurance and you somehow made cry because you assumed your arrogance was more important than complying with the store’s rules. We have words for people like you and hope that on your way home you just piss off the right person who does something about it.

And the loss of the good employee who goes above and beyond for the seniors, or the physically challenged, or those who leave something behind, or are overcharged, who went above and beyond are replaced by someone who really doesn’t give a damn doing the bare minimums to get by. Or they are the ones CPR certified and keeps you from choking on a hot dog for .99 cents in the food court because you are glued to your cell phone yelling at someone while trying to bulldoze your way out of the store without showing your receipt.

Just do what you agreed to do when you joined the club. And if you hate it so much why did you join in the first place? Quit. Go to Sam’s and find out how bad service really can be. If there’s anything worse than Sam’s its Fry’s. Try returning something there.

I worked for a national retailer in Texas who lost a lawsuit for $500,000 for a bad stop…the key to the suit? The store could not identify the merchandise on the shoplifter (yeah, she did it) as theirs—there were no tags. she had pulled them off (no doubt when another element was missed—unbroken surveillance.

Sam’s club will argue you know you have to show your card when you go in the door, so you should have your card ready and you shouldn’t be so careless as to leave it at home. From the registers to the door is no more than 20 steps, there’s really no excuse not to have your receipt in your hand ready to show at the door. Since you know you will need to show it, there’s no excuse not to keep track of it for 5 minutes. Yet, some lady puts the receipt in her purse and has to dig through her purse for it while holding up the line or several times it’s ended up in a shopping bag. Others have tied their bags shut and had to untie them at the door so the checker can see what’s in them.

Here I’ve never seen them catch a mistake checking receipts, it’s more like you have a receipt and that looks like about the right number of items for the receipt. You have one person at the door and 15 people waiting each with about 100 items in their cart. I see lots of people pile their carts high or a couple might take 2 or more carts. They look at the receipt then in your bags. Now if someone has 50 cans of soup, they don’t have time to count each one, you could have 48 or 52 and they would never know.

The difference between Costco and Walmart is that Costco can terminate membership at their discression and can use refusal to show receipts as reason to deny access on any future occasions, but they still cannot oblidge a search on shoppers.

Every retailer has the same right, they are able to deny access to their store. In essence this means they can block entry to their store at their discression, however they cannot block exit from their store. Costco’s legal standing on blocking entry is even stronger, because they have a a requirement for membership and signed agreements as a standard policy for granting of access to their store.

http://www.costcoinsider.com/does-costco-have-the-right-to-check-your-receipt/

stating:

“Interesting, you say the policy has an unconditional consent to search? It states: “Costco reserves the right to inspect any container, backpack, briefcase, etc., upon entering or leaving the warehouse.” This statement is listing types of property (etc. infers any other type of property), NOT your person, nor does it mention detention. And, this states INSIDE the warehouse, not outside, as you state. Also, detention for a breach of contract (the COSTCO policy), not for a lack of probable cause, is considered false imprisonment in most states.”

..which was removed!