Home Bargains is offering customers rewards worth up to £500 as it looks to clamp down on the rise in shoplifting.
The discount retailer has opened a confidential hotline for customers to provide “any information” about a theft or crime in their local shops, The Telegraph reported.
Posters have gone up at the front of the stores with the phone number, telling shoppers they can receive a monetary reward for information that leads to the “arrest and successful prosecution of anyone committing a criminal offence in our stores.”
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Home Bargains warned potential shoplifters that its stores were filled with CCTV cameras where anyone caught will face automatic prosecution, either by the police or through civil action by the retailer.
“It is twice as expensive to shoplift at Home Bargains,” one of the posters conclude.
The move is part of an trend towards “fortress” stores as the retail sector looks to tackle the shoplifting “epidemic”.
Other retailers have introduced additional security guards, body cameras for staff and electronic security barriers at self-service tills.
According to the British Retail Consortium, the crime is costing retailers more than £1bn a year in stolen goods and £715m in crime prevention.
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Theft isn’t seen as a crime these days, particularly when it’s from large chains such as these, even burglary and car thefts are not investigated and most store won’t dare to stop a thief on “safety” grounds these days or the risk of been prosecuted for being heavy handed when apprehending the shoplifter.