Yeah I dunno about the case law, but that was kind of an aside. The point is I believe they can ask you to check receipt, and if you don’t they can’t sick the police on you (probably) but they can just ban you from the store, same as Costco.

I have heard this same explanation a number of times but it doesn’t quite make sense to me. Sure at Costco you are agreeing to allow them to search your stuff via the terms, however it is not illegal as far as I am aware (ianal) to ignore this. The consequences may be that your membership will be revoked, but you haven’t broken the law.

Now for Walmart, if you refuse to have your stuff checked you also haven’t broken the law but if Walmart decided to they could ban you from the store (effectively the same as Costco’s consequence).

So they are effectively the same in outcome, maybe you are more likely to be banned at Costco than Walmart.

As for if they can detain you if they suspect you are stealing, many US states have “shopkeers privilege” laws that do in fact allow stores to detain customers who they have a reasonable suspicion are stealing. This would apply to both Costco and Walmart regardless of the “terms”. Now would refusing to have your bags checked count as reasonable suspicion? Who knows, I bet there is case law on this somewhere, but I’m too lazy to look.

This isn’t exactly answering your question, but I thought I’d share this strange gadget the twiddler 3. It’s a full keyboard you can hold in one hand and it uses “chords” (think chords on a piano) to achieve a full keyboard with only a few buttons.

Seems you can achieve a typing speed of around 60 wpm with a bit of practice, might make typing a bit easier and it is super mobile unlike a real keyboard.