Received e-mail from Asda Yesterday Feb 18th: Good Afternoon Ian, Thank you for your email to Andy Clarke. As part of Andy's Executive Relations Team, I'm available to respond on his behalf. I'm writing to confirm we've received your email and are looking into the issues you’ve raised. Once we've completed our enquiries, we’ll be back in touch. In the meantime, thank you for your patience. Kind Regards Executive Relations Sent Reply: Dear Executive Relations, Thank you for acknowledging my e-mail. I visited your store in Thurmaston today as the People Sevices Manager never contacted me on Sunday as he said he would. I updated the duty manager with the fact that I had forwarded an e-mail to the CEO of your company. I have submitted a verbal Subject Access Request to her for the CCTV footage from the moment I entered the store to the moment I left and would also submit this request to you in this e-mail if you have already not been made aware of it. The copies of this can be forwarded to my company (Name of Company deleted on forum) for my attention. Whilst in the Thurmaston store I also gave the duty manager the opportunity to contact your department to resolve the situation before it went further but she decilined to accept my offer. I would remind you that I am not a resident in the UK and that if I have not heard from you further by this Wednesday I will be putting the case in the hands of my solicitors to seek financial redress. Having already taken independent legal advice I am advised that the criteria for both unlawful detention and false imprisonment have been met and that also my rights under articles 5 and 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, backed in the UK by the Human Rights Act 1998 have also been breeched. I look forward to hearing from you by Wednesday 20th February. Regards Ian Valentine Received telephone call from the store 5pm today 19th Feb offering "vouchers" by way of an apology, so informed them that it was not about the vouchers it was about clearing my name publicly, making sure they put in place safeguards to prevent repitition, and financial compensation for the detention, distress etc caused. Informed store it is in the hands of their CEO and that i will deal with him to resolve the settlement.

There were no signs up to say we reserve the right etc and that was confirmed by the security guard just before he insisted i return to the store, as i specifically asked him that question.

Asda are entitled to ask to see a receipt. You are not obliged to show it to them however. It was a normal till so they could have easily asked the cashiers on duty in a matter of seconds, especially as it was a trolley load of quilts and bedding so not your normal everyday grocery shop. Showing a till receipt when exiting a shop is not reasonable as when showing the receipt often the person rummages through your property in the hope of finding something that should not be there. Fishing for shoplifters if you like, but what would happen if the cashier failed to scan an item and you did not know about it, cashiers make mistakes not taking security tags off all the time for example, you would be the one detained and arrested whilst the cashier would get off scot free. Hence i always refuse to show a receipt if asked.

Security staff in stores can only detain you if they have concrete evidence that they have witnessed themselves or seen via camera footage, and whilst a store are perfectly within their rights to ask for a receipt you are under no legal obligation to show it as far as i am aware. If the staff were only doing their job then they need serious retraining.

They told me that i would have to accompany them into the security office and refused to let me go on my way giving the reason that i had refused to show them my receipt. They told me that i would be detained in the security office until they checked everything out. I was never cautioned by the security guards or the Police, in fact the Police were very amused saying that they have made a bit of a cock up here haven't they. I am a male. I was detained for over an hour. Nobody put their hands on me, so no physical assault took place, although when two large security guards with aggressive atitudes confront you then you tend to try to avoid any physical interaction just for fear of being assaulted.

The details below form the main body of an e-mail i have sent to the CEO Andy Clarke of Asda following an incident yesterday. I would be interested to hear forum views, and apologies moderators if this is in the wrong section, please feel free to move it to the correct section. Dear Mr Clarke, I have today been humiliated, embarrassed and had my good name and reputation publicly tarnished by the actions of your security staff and Asda colleagues at you store in Thurmaston, Leicester. At 12-14pm I purchased and paid for £108.42 worth of goods at store terminal number 70728924. Upon leaving the store a middle aged man wearing a high visibility jacket stopped me and said can I see your receipt, he never identified himself as being an employee of your company or why he was asking me to produce a receipt for the goods I had purchased. I refused to show him my receipt at which point he said that he could not let me go and that he would have to call security, he held onto the trolley containing my purchase preventing me from going to my car to load up, then called security on a two way radio that he produced from his pocket. I explained to him that he had no right to prevent me from leaving and his reply was it is not my fault, I am just doing my job. When two security guards arrived a moment later they were deliberately trying to intimidate me by saying it was my fault that I was being prevented from leaving for not showing the receipt to the first colleague, and were forcefully insistent that if I did not show them my receipt then they would have to take me to the security room in the store. I explained to them that they had no right to prevent me from leaving the store or to detain me without making a specific allegation against me, and that the refusal to show a receipt for my own goods was not in itself sufficient grounds to suspect that I was leaving the store without paying, and was not a reasonable or actionable reason for my subsequent detention in the security room. This was all taking place in the main exit of the store in full view of all the entering and exiting customers on a busy Saturday lunchtime. The security guard stated "you are on private property we can do what we like as you don't have the same rights as when on public property", and proceeded to usher me and my trolley of goods into the security room past all the exiting customers. At this point I told him to get the store manager and to call the police as I was being illegally detained and that I wished to pursue the matter further, if necessary through the courts to gain redress for the humiliation, embarrassment and the damage to my reputation as well as the illegal detention that I was now under. I told him I had not committed any offence and he had no right to detain me to which his reply was "if you just showed us your receipt it would have saved all this buggering about". Whilst waiting in the security room for the arrival of the store manager and the police I was further embarrassed by the fact that the doors to the security room were left open with a security guard outside to prevent me from leaving, but it allowed passing customers to look in at me like some sort of caged criminal or a circus freak show. Upon arrival of the duty manager to the security room I explained to her that she and her colleagues would be facing action from my legal representatives for my false detention. She said that as I was unwilling to show my receipt to them, when requested, that my detention would be longer as she would have to make the "necessary checks", I explained to her that as it had now got to the stage where Asda had detained me illegally then I was prepared to wait for the Police to arrive to bear witness to the situation so that I could make a formal complaint to them about the illegal conduct of the Asda employees. I was then left on my own in the security room with the security guard standing outside. After some time another Asda employee entered and identified himself as the People Service Manager, he explained that he had only just come on shift and that he needed to find out what had happened, so rather than detain me any longer he asked for my contact details which I gave him, he apologised for my detention and said he would contact me on my mobile telephone on Sunday once he had got to the bottom of what had happened with the employees in question. I re-iterated to him that I had been detained illegally now for more than an hour, had been humiliated in public, had my good name and reputation tarnished by the actions of Asda employees and that I would be instructing my solicitor to take legal action against Asda for my false detention if I did not receive suitable financial redress. As I was about to leave the store two Police officers arrived and whilst the people service manager explained to them what he intended to do they asked that I tell them my side of what had happened, so I went back into the security room with them and explained what had happened. The first officer then asked if I minded showing him my receipt for the purchased goods, and as he is an officer of the law I duly obliged, he confirmed that the receipt showed that I had purchased the goods and that there was no reason for being detained. The people service manager then came back into the security room with a till copy of my receipt confirming exactly what I had said all along that the goods in the trolley were mine as I had paid for them in full. He apologised once more and re-iterated that he would contact me Sunday 17th February on my mobile telephone once he had time to resolve what had gone on with the staff in question. The Police then lodged the incident as incident number 326, took my details and allowed me to leave. I do not know whether they have taken further action against your employees for their conduct in the way they handled the situation. If I do not receive a reply from either the people service manager tomorrow or yourself by Wednesday next week then I will assume that you would prefer it to go to court proceedings and will instruct my solicitor accordingly. I await your reply. So far nothing from the people service manager.