Proxy sales

Can someone explain the law of proxy sales to me please? I work in a supermarket where we operate challenge 25 policy, I saw a young boy and 2 girls down the alcohol isle chatting and pointing at different alcohol. The boy then comes through self checkout and the two girls walk off. I believed it to be a proxy sale and that he was selling for a minor but asked my manager first to get her opinion. She said if I don’t actually hear them asking him to buy them alcohol then I can’t refuse the sale. I understand this totally I’m just intrigued whether it’s just our company policy or if you can only call it a proxy sale if you hear the conversation regardless of what you believe has happened?

Original post by samg09

Can someone explain the law of proxy sales to me please? I work in a supermarket where we operate challenge 25 policy, I saw a young boy and 2 girls down the alcohol isle chatting and pointing at different alcohol. The boy then comes through self checkout and the two girls walk off. I believed it to be a proxy sale and that he was selling for a minor but asked my manager first to get her opinion. She said if I don’t actually hear them asking him to buy them alcohol then I can’t refuse the sale. I understand this totally I’m just intrigued whether it’s just our company policy or if you can only call it a proxy sale if you hear the conversation regardless of what you believe has happened?

What you (and your company) need to consider is why you 'believed' this person (who wasn't a boy if he looked 28 and was over 18) he was buying for the girls. Because without hearing a conversation or something of substance like that, there's a significant danger that you are basing your belief on grounds that display your own biases. What made you 'believe'? Could have been an uncle with 2 nieces out buying for a family barbeque/party, or was he 'wearing the wrong clothes' or did he have 'the wrong haircut'?

Hearing a conversation gives you, on behalf of the company, reasonable grounds to think it's a proxy sale. Just 'believing' is not necessarily wrong, but it's far trickier for a company to act on, if there are also innocent explanations.

Reply 2

samg09

OP

7

I agree although I don’t understand where you’ve got 28 from? He was a young lad with two young girls, they were obviously a group of friends. But yeah I understand what you observe isn’t always the truth but in some cases like this it’s just so clear what is happening so my only question was can you only refuse a sale if you actually hear the spoken conversations that was all.

Proxy sales

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