I have been a regular customer at this store for o...

I have been a regular customer at this store for over 33 years. I would undoubtably be one of Kmarts best customers, spending well in advance of $5000K per annum in store. This evening, after spending another $343.00 in this store my just turned 14 year old daughter & l had paid for our goods at the assisted checkouts & were heading out of the store when we were stopped by the Secure-Me security guard & my daughter was asked to open her shoulder bag for him to inspect, this shoulder bag is 12cm by 12cm & is worn over the shoulder by a thin strap. Before I could stop her she was unzipping her bag & holding it out for him to inspect & was offering to open up side zippers, etc.
l was very taken aback & as we left the store l stopped & asked my daughter to sit on the seat outside the exit while I went back inside to clarify a few things with the security guard.
As I began this conversation the young shop assistant who was assisting at the assisted checkouts that we had just used joined us & they both proceeded to tell me that a condition of entry to the store was that all bags be presented for inspection upon leaving the store. Now I have never been stopped when leaving this store & asked to open my bags for inspection & l certainly don t think that it is acceptable for anyone to stop MY CHILD while she is with ME under MY supervision & ask her to open her small shoulder bag for inspection.
The security guard should have asked ME her PARENT and LEGAL GUARDIAN if he could inspect her bag. My child didn t know her rights, most wouldn t. She does now though.
l have told her that the law says that sales assistants & security guards are not legally allowed to open anyone s bag for inspection without probable cause , actually
they need to be 100% sure that they have seen you put something in your bag & be confident that you are about to leave the store without paying for it before they detain you & they would want to be damn sure or the store could find themselves in trouble for falsely detaining someone and get sued.
The security guard argued with me the entire time that l was trying to explain this to him and kept saying repeatedly ,
But you let me inspect her bag & you didnt say anything , a bit beside the point really, I just wanted him to shut up & listen.
God only knows what happened to The customer is always right , certainly not in this Kmart store anyway .
Then he proceded to tell me that his boss from the Security Company had told him that he was to ask every single customer
( i ll bet the boss didn t use that word though, probably just person ) to open their bag/s for inspection. The checkout assistant chimed in saying, Yeah, its store policy to ask the customer to open any bag larger than A4 size for inspection. Hmmm, my daughters bag was half the size of an an A4 piece of paper. So confusing.
I simply don t understand the point of having a
Store policy at all if you are going to sub contract to companies that don t follow your store policy & instead have completely different policies that they follow while working for you in your store. Regardless, the law is the law, you can have as many policies as you like but that doesn t mean they are legal .
Legally, you can refuse to open your bag for inspection. All they can do is tell you that as you didn t adhere to the conditions of entry ( which must be displayed prominently at all entrances ) they must ask you to please leave the premises, which of course was precisely what you were trying to do in the first place.
I do of course understand that businesses really struggle with shop lifting & need to use loss prevention techniques . However, there are other ways to do this besides making every customer leaving your store feel like a criminal. In my opinion security guards would be a more successful deterrent spending their time in-store, their presence alone more effective than randomly asking customers to open their personal baggage at the check out.
Not happy Kmart