Retail Fraud on the Rise

prostoalex writes "They buy the merchandise, print their own receipts, and return it. They buy two watches - an expensive one and inexpensive one, and then swap them and return the one with the highest price. Business Week talks about retail scams, and how merchants are trying to avoid them without losing the customer service battle. They are fighting against surprisingly sophisticated techniques, too." From the article: "Q: What role do auction Web sites play in all this? A: Retailers have stopped giving cash back in many different cases. Instead, they do refunds in the form of gift cards or store credits or store value cards. If a crook can get enough of those, he might sell $2,500 worth of gift cards for $2,000 online. It's a benefit for the buyer, who gets a discount and will use those gift cards. And the person who has manipulated the return-scam system has a way to [make money]. But the retailers lose out. "

Comments

Challenging Retail Theft Myths

[11223]

Wasn't this covered on Slashdot already?

The BBC is reporting on a study by retail research firm The Leading Question, which found that people who swipe music from stores paid for four and a half times more music than regular music fans. Also that most of these people "are extremely enthusiastic about paid-for services, as long as they are suitably compelling." What is nice is that the BPI welcomed the findings that not all kleptophiles are actually evil... they still pledged to carry on the 'carrot and stick' approach though.

Oh, right. Substitute retail theft for downloading above and you'd get what was actually on Slashdot. Suddenly it's wrong when somebody's stealing from a store, but not when they're downloading it against the wishes of the author.

Re:There's one thing I often do

[mumblestheclown]

I agree. You're practically Gandhi, the way you enter into an agreement when you buy a product with a one year warranty, but your moral compass extends it to five or six for you. Actually, you're more like Gandhi and the founding fathers rolled into one, with a bit of mother theresa thrown in for good measure.

You absolute wanker.