Dear Supporters,

I don’t know about any of you, but I had a nice running set of incident-free checkouts at Tesco these last few weeks — which today was brought to an abrupt halt. To be honest, I was dreading such a thing would happen, but I was hoping it wouldn’t.

Firstly, the hand-held scanner I was using lost its signal at the trolley self-checkout. Secondly, when a Tesco staff member got the signal back — the scanner asked for a rescan. I could not believe it. Thirdly, I saw a glimpse of the scanner requiring TWELVE items to be scanned. It appeared that more than that were scanned and I had to stand around at a different self-service checkout while other shoppers were free to go. The items rescanned weren’t put back into their proper places and the delay at the checkout caused me to miss my bus — one minute less at the Tesco checkout today and I would have got that bus.

It appears word is not yet out on this issue (not to Tesco, at least) that a maximum of TEN items should be required for rescanning. I don’t know about anyone else, but until today, I’d also never had any issues with the handheld scanners signal during shopping. Please spread the word about this petition. I am with you shoppers — frustration and unnecessary delays at the checkout should NOT be part of shopping!

Thank you for your support.