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The US Sun
Walmart shopper fumes as she spends $332 & ‘hateful’ clerk demands receipt – others were told ‘I like you, you can go’
By Matthew Aquino,
5 hours ago
A WALMART shopper has shared their frustration after a negative experience while checking out at the retailer.
Arkansas native Sookie Simone complained in a Facebook post about a recent experience at their local Walmart after spending hundreds of dollars.
An employee inspects a receipt at an exit of a Walmart on Saturday, March 16, 2019 Getty Walmart superstore receipt close-up Alamy The entrance to the Walmart department store in Prince Frederick, Maryland on December 1, 2023 Getty
Simone said she purchased $332 worth of items in an hour at Walmart in the post .
She then described the scene while she was checking out.
“The hateful woman asked to see my receipt,” Simone said.
“Then she told all the self-checkout customers they could go saying, ‘I like you. You can go.’”
The disgruntled shopper revealed that the clerk did not check any of the people’s receipts that she said could go.
Simone said she wrote a review upon returning home from the retailer.
THE AUDACITY AT CHECKOUT
“I wrote a review explaining my rude disrespectful experience from the woman checking sales receipts,” the shopper said.
In the review, the shopper revealed the day, time, and location where the incident took place.
The angry customer vowed to shop somewhere else.
But the in-person shopping experience wasn’t Simone’s only gripe.
At the beginning of her Facebook post, Simone complained about online shopping for the retailer.
“Online is outsourced to unreliable retailers in other states,” the shopper raged.
“It is offensive to be sold a product that never comes period.
“Only to end up waiting for a refund to be processed back into my account.”
The U.S. Sun has reached out to Walmart for comment regarding the issues.
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.
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.
MORE COMPLAINTS FROM SHOPPERS
This isn’t the first time Walmart shoppers have aired their grievances with the retailer.
One Walmart shop per revealed she “nearly cried” during her latest checkout experience earlier this week.
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