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Hmm.. I'd like to claim that I've been prevented from just rescanning the same item twice, but I'm not sure of that. I'll try and see if that works for duplicate items next time I'm shopping.
I just double-scanned some store-labeled bagels today. I had two packages and one of the barcodes was damaged, so I scanned the other one twice. Worked fine. Even when I picked up the first one off the scale (to rescan it) and put the second one on, Indiana Jones-style.
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I could 100% see fresh sliced deli meat being unique enough in a barcode (Item, weight to 1/100th of a pound, timestamp down to a second) that simple double scanning logic would catch you messing with this.
For pre-packaged anything meat with similar package weights, though, you'd doubtless be able to double scan.
The most I steal is exotic peppers being coded in as jalapenos or white onions as yellow, and that's 90% convenience of fast scanning and 10% the price difference.
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I can scan the same item twice at my local grocery store. (The legitimate use-case is to scan one item X times when you're buying X copies, rather than manually going through the entire stack of the copies).
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Maybe the scanners used in other countries are different, but here you will not be prevented from scanning the same item twice, provided that an equivalent item is placed on the scale. I often do this with multiple half gallons of milk for convenience reasons. The UPCs are the same.
This ignores Target and Home Depot, which allow you to use the hand scanner and never weigh the items anyway.
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