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• A shopper was accused of attempted shoplifting at Pak’nSave Manukau and told to pay a $395 ‘fine’.
• Foodstuffs apologised, and the security guard involved was fired after an investigation.
• Consumer NZ says security guards cannot detain shoppers or impose fines.

A supermarket shopper says she was accused of attempted shoplifting and stood over by security who demanded she pay $395 or be trespassed from the store.

Foodstuffs has apologised to the shopper over the Pak’nSave Manukau incident on January 25.

And the security company founder told the Herald he was devastated about the incident and confirmed the matter was with police.

“I was at the checkout and when I finished my payments I tried to put everything back into the shopping trolley,” the shopper told the Herald.

But she said a security guard loomed over her and said she’d tried to take two bottles of moisturiser without scanning them.

“I was looking at my receipt and thought: Oh bugger, I probably forgot it.”

She said she’d been in a fluster and couldn’t understand why the moisturisers did not scan.

“I tried to explain ... I was trying to remember what I’d done.”

The shopper said she initially thought the guard was just doing his job but then he told her: “Normally we’ll call the police but this time you probably have to pay a fine.”

She said the guard told her to accompany him to an office, where a female security guard was already present.

“Then they asked me to sit down and close the door.”

The shopper, originally from China, said as the guards accused her of wrongdoing, she asked to see CCTV footage, but they initially refused to show her.

“The lady security officer asked me: ‘Are you a New Zealand citizen’?”

She said she was, and claimed the woman then said that was “lucky” for her.

“She asked for my ID and details,” the shopper added.

“She said, ‘In this room, you’ve got nothing to say. What we say is the rule’.”

The shopper, in her mid-30s, said the male guard also berated her.

“He said, ‘If you don’t follow the rules you will be facing more fines’.”

She said arguments continued but eventually the guards played the footage which showed her scanning the moisturisers.

She said there must have been an error with the self-checkout machine but the guard still made her wait.

“He just sat there for a while on his phone and said, ‘Oh, I know you look tired, you may just go’.”

The shopper said the male guard demanded to take a photo of her before she left.

“It was horrible.”

She said she reported the incident to police, and the supermarket company had apologised to her.

But she wondered if other people had been scammed in a similar way.

Consumer NZ was made aware of the incident.

The woman was “bundled off in front of shoppers ... and then effectively stood over”, Consumer NZ chief executive Jon Duffy said.

“That must have been extremely distressing.”

He said no security guards had the right to detain shoppers.

“We were extremely surprised to hear that fines were even being mentioned. The starting point is, security personnel do not have powers of arrest so they can’t detain you,” Duffy told the Herald.

“If security guards are telling you that you can’t leave the premises then they’re misleading you. They can’t deprive you of your liberty.”

The security company director and founder told the Herald he was horrified by the alleged incident.

“We’re doing an investigation. I really want to let the guys know I have zero tolerance with this kind of behaviour.

“It’s hard for me because I’ve built this [business] right from scratch.”

He said no security guards anywhere should attempt to “bribe” people.

“It’s not worth it. You lose your licence and everything else. When it happens, you’re liable for it, not the company and not the client.”

He said he wanted to send a message to everyone working in security that there should be “zero tolerance” for such behaviour.

“I’m just really gutted,” he said.

But he added: “I’m happy it came to light so I can deal with it.”

He said the guard in the alleged incident had been fired.

Foodstuffs, which operates Pak’nSave, said in a statement: “We have sincerely apologised to a customer for a distressing incident in Pak’nSave Manukau on 25 January allegedly involving a third-party provider.

“We take such matters extremely seriously. Our customers have a right to be safe and welcome in our stores, and we will undertake our own review to ensure such incidents don’t happen again.”

The Herald has contacted police and confirmed police were making inquiries and assessing the case.

The incident comes in the wake of rising concerns about retail crime and the cost of living in recent years.