Asda and mum embroiled in scan-as-you-go war of words

A mother of five has been banned from every Asda store in the country due to what she describes as faulty scan-as-you-go technology.

Beth Robinson, 31, claims the scanner failed to pick up £16 of items, GrimsbyLive reports. She comments: "A security guard approached me outside the shop just after I had finished and said I needed to come back inside because there was discrepancies with the shopping. They rescanned all of my shopping and found it had missed £16 of items off. One of them was an £8 tub of baby formula for my seven-month-old son, who was with me at the time. The others were very cheap Savers items like 70p ham and crisps for my children."

She adds: “Why would I steal from there? I do three shops there a week, spending about £100 to £150 each week. I've spent so much money there over the years - why would I start stealing 70p items? The staff said they could understand if I had stolen the items out of desperation, as it wasn't bottles of wine that people usually steal, but I honestly believed every item had been scanned. I was being treated like a common criminal. I told them to watch the CCTV and see for themselves that I scanned every item."

However, she claims that no one did this, and she was asked to sign an exclusion order which bans her from all Asda stores for a year. "It really shook me up. I tried telling them there must be a problem with the scanner but they said it would have frozen if it had," Robinson comments. "I knew I didn't have enough money for all of the items, so I had to return some of them to buy the baby formula milk. I go to that Scunthorpe Asda all the time - we use it for Christmas presents and school uniforms for the kids, and we're all registered at the opticians there. Now I will have to go somewhere else."

She and her husband Dale contacted the store several times to complain about the ban, and the latter admits that he became angry and frustrated. A spokesperson for Asda told GrimsbyLive: "We always want to provide a welcoming environment for our customers and asking someone not to visit our stores is always an absolute last resort. Whilst the customer did understand why we had to make this difficult decision and we're more than happy to discuss the situation with her further, we'd like to remind the customer and her partner that we cannot tolerate shoplifting or any form of abusive or threatening behaviour towards our colleagues."