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At the risk of sounding presumptuous, we truly believe we speak for millions of Canadians when we say that we despise the charitable shakedown at the cash register.

You know the drill: you just want to pay for your merchandise and leave, but you’re asked to cough up some dough to a charity of the company’s choosing. We hate being put on the spot like that. And talk about a win-win proposition for the corporation: it later presents the charity with a big juicy cheque – but it is the company (which donated nothing) that gets the tax receipt – not the hundreds of individual donors.

But what happened to one Loblaw customer in Quebec is truly beyond the pale.

The CBC recently reported that after Kirk Bennett finished shopping at a Maxi grocery store in Dorval, he began scrutinizing his receipt. And that’s when he noticed an unusual line item. Namely a 62-cent charge for “PC CHARITY”.

But Bennett says he did not authorize this charge and that the cashier never even asked him if he wanted to make a donation in the first place.

And Bennett isn’t a one-off: several people have taken to social media to complain about these involuntary donations.

So, what’s going on?

At best this is negative option billing; at worst, it’s outright theft.

We emailed the media relations department at Loblaw. We had three specific queries:

1. How many consumers were charged in such a fashion?

2. What was the dollar amount raised?

3. How did this situation happen in the first place?

Several days passed but our queries went unanswered. So, we paid a personal visit to the headquarters of Loblaw Companies Limited in Brampton, Ont.

Only after security frogmarched us out of the building did we finally receive an emailed statement from Loblaw:

“We're aware of reports about unauthorized donations on some customer bills during our recent fundraising campaign for President's Choice Children's Charity. These appear to be isolated incidents.

“Our standard practice is to always ask customers if they'd like to donate. We learned early in the campaign that there was a system issue and potential for human error, where some customers were automatically charged. We immediately fixed the issue, retrained our store teams, and corrected the process. We regret this and apologize for any trouble caused. Customers who find this charge and weren't asked can contact our customer service team for a refund, if a refund wasn’t automatically issued.”

We’re somewhat confused: Loblaw says there was a “system issue” – yet, in the same sentence also notes there was “potential for human error.” Well, which is it?

Then again, this is the same company that was found guilty of participating in a massive bread price-fixing scheme.

Bottom line: should you go shopping in a Loblaw grocery store, much like Kirk Bennet of Dorval, perhaps you need to doublecheck your receipt. You know, just in case Loblaw for whatever reason decides to make an unauthorized donation for one of its charities using your money.