An Aldi customer with partial blindness was left humiliated when shop staff "accused him of stealing" after he used a magnifying glass to check product labels.
Jason Pearce claims he was just trying to buy ginger nuts and white chocolate for his wife at the Coventry branch earlier this week when shop staff insisted on checking his bags.
The suspicion at the checkout led to a stand-off between the 50-year-old and staff, who then checked CCTV and realised he'd not stolen anything.
Jason told the Coventry Telegraph: "When they asked to look in my bag I knew they were accusing me of shoplifting. They refused to say that though and said I was acting suspiciously.
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"However, all I was doing was using my magnifier so I could see what I was buying. My wife has an intolerance to caffeine so she can only have certain types of chocolate.
"But if they saw me struggling why didn’t they ask if I needed help?
"I had gone there to purchase a 25p pack of ginger nuts for me and £1.49 white chocolate for my wife as a surprise. My wife can only have white chocolate as she has stomach problems when consuming caffeine."
When Jason was led to another checkout and a manager asked him to empty his backpack, Jason refused and insisted he'd done nothing wrong.
"It was so humiliating. I told them to ring the police, but they refused, and I told them to check the CCTV footage," he said.
Jason claims the manager disappeared to look at the footage and left him standing there.
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He added: "I was very frustrated I’d been singled out, because of my disability, and accused of shoplifting, when I’d done nothing wrong."
An Aldi spokesperson said: "We were sorry to hear of Mr Pearce’s experience in store and apologise for this misunderstanding."
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