Walmart vows probe after shopper waits 30mins with 1 lane open before receipt check as he urges chain ‘get it together’

WALMART has promised an investigation after a customer claimed he waited half an hour to check out only to be flagged for a receipt check.

The retailer’s lack of open checkout lanes — both traditional and self-checkout —has been blasted by shoppers many times.

X / Jay Calderwood

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Many shoppers have taken to social media to trash Walmart repeatedly.

“Yo @Walmart now your checkout is 15 items or less,” Jay Calderwood (@ jaycalderwood ) fumed in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

“They made me go to a lane as you can see there was one open, waited 30 minutes and the receipt nazi had the audacity to stop me and try and check my receipt,” he continued.

“Get it together,” the angry tweet finished.

Walmart’s help account seemed to reach out to Calderwood immediately.

“This isn’t the experience we want you to have, Jay. Would you mind sending a DM, and we’ll take a closer look at this,” the account wrote .

Walmart has promised to look into the other matters as well.

Another disgruntled customer, Mike Wennersten, told X about his recent in-store experience.

“Went to @Walmart to buy some beef jerky yesterday, and many bags had mold, the store was a disaster, and there was almost no registers open,” he claimed in a post .

“I guess the stories are true.

Walmart is losing my business.”

Wennersten seemed to be referring to the growing number of complaints from other shoppers about store checkout areas.

The U.S. Sun has previously reported on customers who have complained about closed registers .

The retailer responded to his post and asked him to send them a DM with more information to look into his claim.

Legality of receipt checks and detention

In an effort to curtail retail crime, stores are increasingly turning to receipt checks as shoppers exit.

Legally, stores can ask to see a customer’s receipts, and membership-only stores have the right to demand such checks if shoppers agreed to terms and conditions that authorize it.

Many legal professionals have weighed in and come to similar conclusions, caveating that all states do have specific laws.

Generally speaking, stores have Shopkeeper’s Privilege laws that allow them to detain a person until authorities arrive when they have reasonable suspicion that a crime, like theft, has been committed.

Declining to provide a receipt is not a reason in itself for a store to detain a customer, they must have further reason to suspect a shopper of criminal activity.

Due to the recent nature of the receipt checks, there is little concrete law on the legality of the practice, as it takes time for law to catch up with technology.

Setliff Law, P.C. claims that “there is no definitive case law specifically relating to refusal to produce a receipt for purchases.”

For stores that improperly use their Shopkeeper’s Privilege, they could face claims of false imprisonment.

“The primary law that applies to these types of wrongful detention cases is called ‘False Imprisonment’,” explained Hudson Valley local attorney Alex Mainetti .

“Of course, you’re not literally imprisoned, but you’re detained by a person who has no lawful authority to detain you and/or wrongfully detains a customer.”

It is likely that as altercations in stores over receipt checks continue, more court cases will occur giving clearer definitions and boundaries to the legality of receipt checks.

However, it appeared that Wennersten was not happy with the brand’s response.

“Not sure why you need a DM, we are talking here just fine,” he wrote.

“How about don’t close self-checkout if you won’t open traditional registers,”

“And then after I check myself out you make me show a receipt at the door,” Wennersten continued.

“No thank you, I don’t shop at places that treat me like a thief.”

The retailer responded to his rant again and asked for more information.

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