Nightmare for customer accused of shoplifting

According to the Global Retail Theft Barometer, South Africa is among the top five countries hardest hit by shoplifting, or as the industry terms it, “shrinkage”.

And that’s not just bad news for the companies – prices are inflated to off-set shrinkage, and store staff are on high alert for shoplifters, occasionally falsely accusing their customers of shoplifting.

In order to spare them the humiliation and trauma of such a false accusation, it follows that store security staff and management should be trained to proceed with utmost caution and respect, should someone be suspected of shoplifting.

Sadly, that doesn’t always happen.

Kubeshini Reddy’s experience was about as bad as it gets.

She visited Edgars in Chatsworth, Durban, two weeks before Christmas with her two children, aged one and four, and two cousins.

Ironically she is a customer care manager.

She took a pack of panties and a bra to the pay desk, and presented her Edgars card for payment.

The cashier then placed the goods into a packet before sealing it and stapling the receipt to it.

Reddy’s nightmare began when her packet activated the security scanner at the store exit.

The security guard then found that the receipt only reflected payment for one of the two items in the packet – the bra.

The cashier in question claimed not to have seen the panties before.

The security guard claimed to have viewed the footage and told the store manager that it confirmed Reddy had only handed the bra to the cashier for payment.

“I asked how I could have opened the packet to add the panties and then resealed and re-stapled it, but they refused to listen – they’d made up their minds that I was guilty.”

Reddy and her family were then led to a room at the back of the store. “In front of my daughter, the manager said the police were going to lock me up in their van.”

In the course of her 90-minute ordeal, Reddy claims she was told she was “not allowed” to use her phone, denied her request to look at the footage herself, and separated from her children at one point.

“When the security guard got a camera and took my mugshot, I started to cry…

“They were breaking me down to such an extent that I was starting to think I had made a mistake…”

Reddy’s cousin used her phone to call Reddy’s husband, who arrived at the store soon afterwards with his mother.

Reddy, who is an Edgars account holder in good standing, was then asked to sign an admission of guilt form, stating that she would be barred from all Edgars stores.

Finally, Reddy’s uncle arrived, and pointed out that she couldn’t be detained without allowing her to look at the footage. It was only then that the manager viewed the footage herself, and saw that Reddy had indeed handed both items to the cashier for payment. She then apologised and offered Reddy a R100 gift voucher, which she declined.

Reddy asked In Your Corner to take up the case.

Responding, Edcon spokesman Anisia Naidoo said the company “formally apologised” for Reddy’s “apprehension” in the Chatsworth store.

Security personnel hadn’t adhered to the company’s apprehension process, she said, “which led to the unfortunate series of experiences thereafter”, she said.

“The allegations made against Mrs Reddy were unjust and the staff were negligent when processing her purchase.”

Reddy should have been “afforded all facilities” in the back room and treated with “the utmost courtesy” while the manager viewed the footage, Naidoo said.

Reddy has since been offered R3000 in cash, and Edcon agreed to her demand that she be allowed to see the security footage, finally; that the photo taken of her in the back office that day be deleted in her presence, and that appropriate disciplinary measures will be be taken, although Naidoo declined to elaborate.

Reddy initially considered taking legal action against Edcon, but decided against it because of the cost and inevitable long wait for her day in court.

In the case of Karen Susman versus Mr Price, heard in the South Gauteng High Court in 2011, Susman sued the retailer for damages for her unlawful detention and defamation in the Balfour Park store four years earlier.

She claimed to have been prevented from leaving the store until she could prove that she had bought the peep-toe polka dot shoes she was wearing from another branch of the same store only the day before, with the tag still attached on the sole.

The court dismissed that case with costs, having found no evidence of Susman’s claim to have been detained against her will in the store, and accepted the store’s claim that by stopping her inside the store, not outside, she had not been treated as a suspected shoplifter, but rather as someone who may have mistakenly failed to pay for the shoes.

As for routine bag searches, Consumer Goods and Services Ombud, Neville Melville, said in a recent decision: “I am of the view that the Constitutional Court or other competent tribunal would find that the practice of security checks is a permissible limitation of a person’s right not to have their property searched.”

But this should be disclosed at store entrances, and the checks carried out “tactfully and with dignity”, he said.

“Customers should not be made to be felt as if they are being treated as criminals.”

Contact Wendy Knowler on consumer@knowler.co.za