Primark forced into change at the tills in bid to stop shoplifters after thefts soar

PRIMARK is sealing customers’ carrier bags with giant “Sold” stickers to halt shoplifters.

Thieves were nicking stock by taking the chain’s paper bags into stores, filling them up and simply walking out.

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Now the blue labels, which include its logo and the word “Sold” in different languages, are put on bags’ handles at checkout.

It means customers must break the seals to access their purchased gear — making the bags much harder to reuse.

Any sticker-less customers are stopped at the door.

A worker at a branch in South East London trialling the stickers said: “The thieves would put anything in which didn’t have a tag and wouldn’t set off an alarm.

“They could blend in with customers because you can only get bags from the checkouts. It was very hard for security guards to spot.”

Last year there were 1,000 shoplifting incidents a day reported across all stores in England and Wales, with Primark boss George Weston saying the problem should be taken more seriously.

Primark said: “Anti-social behaviour and crime is rising and we’re working with retailers and organisations to help tackle this.

“We’re now also trialling new measures to help prevent stock loss, which includes sealing bags with ‘Sold’ stickers once a customer pays for their items at the tills.”

“We’ll be keeping an eye on this and monitoring the impact these new measures have.”

This post first appeared on thesun.co.uk