One shopper, Wendy Ponting who was buying cat food for her four cats, said that she had arthritis in both her knees and her hands and that she struggled to lift heavy baskets.
She said: “I come here at the weekend sometimes, put a basket on top and push it along.
“If they say anything to me, I’ll say: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t carry a basket.’”
Kiri Theo, another shopper at the Asda supermarket, said: “I’ve never had these rules before. If it’s an elderly person who needs their trolley to sit on, for example, then that’s not fair.”
Sumesh Chellam, a customer, said: “I don’t think it makes much sense because there are a lot of items that people can take without scanning, especially fruits like bananas.”
Another shopper, Eddie, said that he had refused to leave his shopping trolley at the door because he had other belongings in it.
He had been allowed to enter the shop anyway.
It comes as shoplifting offences reach record levels in England and Wales, costing retailers approximately £1bn a year.
More than 430,000 offences were recorded last year – or 1,178 a day – the highest number since records began in 2003.
In London, shoplifting numbers jumped by almost 50pc in the 12 months to May.
In September last year Lord Stuart Rose, the Asda chairman, said on LBC Radio that shoplifting had become “decriminalised” on LBC Radio.
He said: “It has become minimised. It’s actually just not seen as a crime anymore, we’ve become risk averse.”