Morrisons bans £2 coins after foreign currency scam

Rights, Scams and Politics

Updated on 16 July 2014 | 5 Comments

Morrisons will not be accepting £2 coins at self-service checkouts in the West Midlands until further notice, after discovering some customers had been paying with foreign coins of similar weight.

Morrisons has discovered that customers had been using coins from Thailand and Iran as substitutes for £2 coins in its self-service checkouts, as they’re a similar enough weight and size to fool the machines.

The 250 Iranian rial coins being used are worth less than a British penny; 87,000 rial would be approximately equivalent to £2. The 10 Thai baht pieces found are worth slightly more, at around 18p.

Self-service or no-service?

Designed as a convenient alternative to queuing for a manned till when you only have a few items, automated checkouts have become somewhat notorious for getting ‘stuck’ during the process.

This isn’t the first time self-service machines have made the news as people take advantage of them – a survey by VoucherCodesPro.co.uk earlier this year revealed that frustrated shoppers who were getting sick of waiting for an item to register had just walked out of the store with it instead.

A temporary measure

Morrisons is now refusing to accept £2 coins in self-service checkouts at some stores in the West Midlands, where they found the problem had originated.

A spokesperson told the Daily Mail that this was a temporary measure while the problem was solved, and it wasn’t expected that resolving the issue would take long. Morrisons has offered its apologies for any inconvenience caused to customers.

Have you ever tricked a self-service machine? Are they open to abuse? Let us know your thoughts in the comments box below.

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