One in five Australians are shoplifting from supermarkets, survey finds

Nearly one in five Australians steal from supermarkets through dishonest behavior at self-service checkouts, according to a recent survey.

In new research, nine per cent of shoppers admitted not scanning items before leaving the supermarket, while another ten per cent deliberately lied about what they had scanned to get a cheaper price, for example by putting an avocado on the shelf. scale but saying it was an onion.

That’s according to a nationally representative survey of 1,010 respondents conducted by Finder.

Extrapolating to the whole country, that would mean that 3.8 million Australians have stolen in the last year.

Finder’s Richard Whitten linked the thefts to the rising cost of living.

“Of course, most self-checkout machines can’t tell brown onions from portobello mushrooms,” he said.

“I suspect many Australians don’t consider scanning items wrong on purpose to be the same level of theft as running out of a store with a loaf of bread.”

The research also showed that two per cent of Australians dined and ran last year.

Six percent said they had left without paying for gas.

If you haven’t stolen anything in the last year, you’re among 81 per cent of Australians.