After residents shared their experiences of being treated "like a criminal" in the Sainsbury's store in Marlow, I headed down there to see if I would have the same experience. 

A Marlow resident who asked to remain anonymous told the Bucks Free Press they had seen three customers become "trapped" in the self-service area of the Sainsbury's store on West Street last week.

They said the store assistant on duty at the time encouraged the customers to 'tailgate' other shoppers to get through the barriers, a policy they were concerned would attract shoplifters. 

Walking around the Sainsbury's store on West Street, Marlow, at first I didn't see what all the fuss was about. It was only as I was preparing to leave with my shopping that the difficulties highlighted by residents of the town became clear. 

Unless you pay with a cashier, the only way out on both sides of the store is through the receipt activated barriers in the self-service areas. 

I dutifully collected by receipt and made for the barrier, but found that it was already open and the store assistant waved me through after a previous shopper.

I couldn't compare my experience to that of a criminal hoping to slip through, since the receipt was visible in my hand, but it did strike me as odd that more checks weren't made.

For diligence's sake I dropped back into Sainsbury's later on the same day to see if I would be able to find my way out of the store without clearly brandishing a receipt.

A staff member told me the only way I could leave was through the barrier and proceeded to scan a pass, allowing me to exit based on my admission that nothing in the shop had caught my eye. 

I was also disheartened to see a recycling bin full of crumpled up receipts only a few steps beyond the barrier - a not very promising environmental side effect of the new measures.

While I'm not sure that I would liken the experience to being "trapped", my overwhelming sense was of an unnecessarily restrictive system with faults that have not yet been ironed out.

Sainsbury's first began trialling receipt activated barriers in the self-service areas of its UK stores in December 2022.

The barriers were introduced in response to a rise in shoplifting last year, with the Office for National Statistics reporting an increase of 22% across the UK.

According to Freedom of Information requests made by The Telegraph, Tesco and Sainsbury's stores accounted for 40% of shoplifting cases overall.

A spokesperson for the supermarket said:"This is just one of a range of security measures that is used in a small number of our stores at our self-service checkout areas."