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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. "
I feel that it's actually very disgusting that people do this. It can ruin it for everyone by retailers getting burned by activities such as this and deciding not to accept returns or similar decisions. I think it's just a matter of time before many companies decide to allow exchanges only and prohibit returns. If they do adopt the policy of no returns and exchanges only, it should be explicitly signed at the point of sale so that everyone knows before they buy that they can exchange only and not return the products. Where are these peoples' moral compass?
There's no place like localhost
These crimes have the potential to seriously affect the service provided to genuine customers through store's return policies. Many people will use retailers who are known to be return friendly when buying goods they are unsure of so as to gain from that store's returns policy and be able to return the product if it does not meet their requirements. If returns policies are widely shaken up, it could be the end for easy customer returns, and the ability to legitimately return goods that do not fit your needs.
Business Voyeur
Its intresting to read about technologies involvement in stealing, and a lite overview of how these people do it. Though in the end its the same old story with a slightly new twist. As with everything the criminals and cops(or "good guys") are playing a game of constant evolution
I think the net of this article is that if you are Target Inc and track each recipt in a giant database - you'll be less likely to get ripped off.
snowulf.com
and Sumerian and Roman times.
Fake gold, fake clothing, fake jewels.
it's just that the market is bigger and authentication is harder and harder.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
According to the Nov 2002 National Retail Security Survey, almost 50% of all theft was committed by employees, not consumers.
t y-crime-news0024.htm
http://jrrobertssecurity.com/security-news/securi
The internet is letting scammers really go into overdrive- every trick that's ever been thought of is out there free for the taking, so they can help each other get away with it. Every single time a legitimate person makes an assumption, there will be someone out there trying to defy that assumption for personal gain.
The end result, of course, is going to be that everything gets verified at every stage of the process. This is just a pain in the ass for normal customers not trying to get away with anything, but it seems to be an inevitable consequence of the information economy- it's so easy to change or hide information that the retailer cannot afford to take their virtual eyes off it even for a moment; if they do, they have to assume it's tainted and end the transaction. Thanks, human nature.
No one loses inventory when you download music. If you shoplift a CD, then the store loses inventory. And you can't 'return' a downloaded audio file, so there's really no equivalent fraud. Is downloading unlisenced music wrong? Yes. Is it shoplifting? No. Copyright violation is immoral and illegal. It is not theft.
As soon as I heard that he did this (about 3 weeks after he did it) I went and reported him to the retail store he did it to
You didn't try talking to him first? No offense, actually, I take that back, I mean a lot of offense, but you were a total dick of a friend. What kind of person potentially fucks up a kid's life and permanent record without at least trying to get him straightened out first? I bet you're the kind of douchebag who thinks all druggies should just be shot instead of treated.
Dont buy at those places then.
That's some great personal ethics you have there.. basically helping yourself to an extended warranty. You are a common thief, nothing less, and deserve the same punishment as a shoplifer, as that is EXACTLY what you are doing. Your justifications are bullshit. It's time for you to decide whether you are an honest person, or a cockroach. So far, your actions have been that of a cockroach.
what you did is MUCH worse.
How exactly is it worse? The friend committed fraud and the poster did not agree with fraud so he turned him in. I would like to hear your explanation for this though.
Every post I make begins with the assumption P=~P.
How serious of a crime must it be before you would report a friend? Would you turn in a friend who was a rapist? A child molester? A murderer? No? Then you are a horrible person.
Would you turn in a friend if he stole a 50 cent candy bar? A 500,000 check in an insurance scam? No then yes? At what point would you turn him in? At what monetary amount?
What you fail to realize, my ignorant, pinheaded amoral slug is that this "friend" was stealing from his friends unless they never purchased anything from that store. Do you think the store will eat the loss or pass it along to the customers?
According to the Nov 2002 National Retail Security Survey, almost 50% of all theft was committed by employees, not consumers.
I haven't done it, but I understand it... Back in the day I worked at quite a few stores, and I can tell you that when you are a one-dollar-over-minimum-wage employee living at or under the poverty line, it gets pretty tough to be surrounded by all sorts of products you want (and occasionally need) but couldn't possibly afford.
Not justifying it, I stayed honest... But I do understand. And I saw plenty of co-workers let go for theft. I do believe the problem would be much less severe (and customer service would dramatically improve) if companies paid their employees a little more, gave them real discounts (many places only give employees 10% off, if that... It barely negates sales tax), and perhaps even a gift card or something at Christmas you'd see employee theft decline dramatically.
A gift card or a store credit is hardly a refund...
Actually quite the opposit. The kid was under 18 so he only got a slap on the wrist, in other words: He may have learned a lesson and don't do it again.
If he'd been an adult and charged for Fraud then, well, as an adult he should have been aware of the risk.
Friendship doesn't mean that you let them get away with murder (or Fraud).
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
No. For a $.25 pack of gum, I'd go back and pay off his debt and then give him a serious mouthful about it in private. But if he's stealing $400 video cards for his own enjoyment from innocent victims? I guess I picked a bad friend. Sure, I'd ask him to turn himself in before I did it myself, but no way in hell I'll let him get away with it becuase he's my bud.
If "fair-weather-friend" means you drop people who turn out to be absolute amoral dipshits, then yeah, I'm a fair-weather friend. And I hope all my friends are, too.
Compared to what some of the poor, victimized by evil customers (thank you best buy) retail stores do, the "rampant rise of fraud" pales.
/I think I hear the theme from "Schindlers List" being played, but it is really, really quiet.
Let's take a look at what some / virtually all of the stores do.
1. Blatantly and regularly violating in false advertising and bait and switch laws by claiming "oh, it was a price mistake that we don't have to honor that price."
Virtually every online store engages in such practices, although B&M stores are doing this more and more as well.
1a. Not applying sale prices at the cashier or overcharging the customer
2. Using rebate houses that don't honor / lose / just flat out destroy rebates. (CompUSA, TigerDirect, and pretty much everyone else)
3. Using rebate houses that don't pay on time. I've filed over $10,000 in rebates and I can count on one hand the number of rebates that came on time. It should not take 8 weeks for someone to cut you a check. Again, everyone who offers rebates engages in such behavior.
4. Selling extended warranties that are for the most part entirely useless. (My friend's laptop sitting on a kitchen counter started melting - proc overheated, motherboard got scorched and even some of the keys, and the chasis melted, Circuit City refused to honor the extended warranty because they claimed it was "Abuse")
4a. Claiming something is a "warranty", when in fact it is not. Read the fine print on some of these "warranties", have a laugh / cry.
4b. Training their salespeople to lie about the benefits of the "warranty". If some AG wants to file a suit, I know that Staples stores have a couple training CD-Roms lying around that clearly contradict the policies in the extended "warranties"
5. Getting around pricematch policies by ordering slightly different (yet identical in all features) models from the manufacturer. i.e. a HP PSC 950 and HP PSC 950xi. Perhaps not illegal, but a shady, shady practice that lets retail stores ignore their price match policies for many items.
6. (This is really devoted to my favorite, favorite store, Fry'ed Electronics). Labelling missing items as "containing all parts", even though many parts are missing. Then accusing the person trying to return a half empty box of theft.
Or throwing returns back onto the shelf without any indication that the product was returned or is missing parts. I'm sure this violates a whole bunch of laws, but hey...
7. Frys also gets the award for selling accessories that clearly won't work with the product that the customer has. i.e. the sales associates pushing SATA drives onto people who have only IDE controllers, Pentium processors for AMD motherboards, etc, etc.
Of course, every so often, the poor, helpless retail stores get caught and get - at most, a light slap on the wrist.
If you engage in clearly unethical business practices on all levels - from the very top to your store managers and even in the training materials that you give to your associates, you have as much right to complain as someone who paid a drug dealer with fake money and realized that they were sold orageno.
The fraud perpetrated onto the customer by these retail stores far exceeds any losses. Moreover, shady behaviour is encouraged by management and continues, even in the face of the occasional "Martha Stewart" FTC / BBB / "local / regional government agency that handles this sort of stuff" investigation.
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I worked at one of the major computer/office machine retailers in North America, and we would often see attempts of return fraud and brazen theft. A few that stand out in memory are the router box looking pristine and still shrinkwrapped on the outside, was found to contain a jumble of random AV cords to approximate the weight of the original product, many mismatched serial number returns, B routers in G boxes. We even had a couple walk in with a stroller with a blanket over it complete with phony kid legs hanging out the bottom. I tell you, work retail for a short period, and you'll lose faith in humanity. Especially when a manager lets it go because they are too afraid to tell a customer that for once they aren't right.
My one piece of advice to consumers, is scrutinize your boxes before you take them home. If it's been retaped, don't buy it. Sure, 75% are fine, but it's the other 25% you don't want. Associates cannot possibly test the products to be OK, we aren't paid enough to care, when fraud is caught nothing comes of it, and you end up doing the vast majority of the legwork to recify the issue if it doesn't work. Force retailers to tighten return policies through consumer choice, or buy online to avoid this altogether.
Big box retailers don't give a damn about return fraud, or at least not in proportion to the amount that goes on. In the end, it's the honest customer that pays higher prices to cover the costs, and backwards rebate structures make up for it.
I had a manager tell me once that when we beat sales expectations, it essentially means the employees on the floor are overworked, and that is a good thing to head office. It isn't just individuals to blame, think Enron, Worldcom, and Haliburton. There is a corporate ethos that if you can get away with it, do it. The corporation and profit is our culture, and culture is shredding our social fabric. Observe the result.
When my daughter was 3 she took a candy bar from the store. My wife and I made her go back and confess to the store manager, give the candy bar back, and apologize. He declined to press charges. (Actually he was very nice.)
She learned a valuable lesson not to steal. Does that make us assholes in your book?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I can't believe you snitched on your friend. I can appreciate you telling him you feel strongly about this sort of thing and that you cant be friends with a thief, but your actions were most innapropriate.
I consider betraying your friends trust to be worse than his fraud.
The correct procedure to have followed in this case would be to either pay for the extended warranty of buy a new Xbox.
Look at it this way: if you justify stealing from Walmart because a product is out of warranty and you didn't bother to buy an extended warranty then the logical continuation of this is that all "customers" would be justified in doing so.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
For "just a friend"...if it was under $100, I probably wouldn't do crap
For a "real" friend - someone I would trust my life with, those rare few you have in your life, my response would entirely depend on the situation and context
I really feel sorry for you. If your would have known thieves as "real" friends and then trust them with your life you have bigger things to worry about!
If the boy was 14, I'd probably agree. I admit I ran off the handle, picturing a 17 year old (after all, he did have 450 bucks for a video card).
If he was 16-17, I think he should be treated harshly. He's old enough to know what he's doing. Plus, let's not dramatize; it's not like hes gonna be doing hard time. I'm guessing a suspended sentence and a clean slate when he turns 18.
wowa.. first off narc'n your friend out is unnacceptable. I pulled some stupid stunts like this in high school, and although I was obviously wrong, narc'ing on someone about as wrong as you can get. I guarantee if someone I knew had narc'd me out, They would very soon be in need of a wheelchair to get around. You should have gone to the store and given them an anonymous tip about that type of fraud if you were so concerned. Didn't your mom tell you no one likes a tattle tale?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"It isn't just individuals to blame, think Enron, Worldcom, and Haliburton. There is a corporate ethos that if you can get away with it, do it. The corporation and profit is our culture, and culture is shredding our social fabric. Observe the result."
:Zen and the art of making a living.page xxxi.
Actually it is individuals to blame. From that particular manager to the individuals that ran those companies. Behind every misdeed you've ever heard about is the individual. Every society that's historically fallen, has fallen from within. From the moral corruption of the individual, to the destruction of the family. Flowing outward and upward. Until humanity acknowledges original sin and it's ramification. We will forever be plagued, and it will grow exponentially worse because our science has outreached our grasp. Making true "knowledge is power" while handing a gun to a species that still hasn't learned how to handle the bows and arrows it already has.
I recommed reading
Agreed here as well. At least he could have said, "dude, that is uncool. Go bring that sh*t back and tell them you made a mistake or I'll turn your punk ass in." But instead he listened to his former friend brag about his new loot, nodding and maybe saying nothing other than, "hmm." Then like a coward went and told the authorities without so much as a warning. Weak.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Don't like a place's actions? Don't buy there. You don't have the right to commit fraud.
Now, as to your actual points:
1. No reputable B&M store does this. They do make mistakes. They are legitimate mistakes.
2, 3. Rebates are offered by the manufacturer, not the store. Take it up with them.
4. Yeah, I'm sure you're right. I don't buy them.
5. That's part and parcel of pricematch policies. Places want to offer them, but they don't really want to get into price wars. Deal with it. If they didn't have these outs for the pricematch policies, they probably wouldn't offer them, so I don't think you're missing out on something anyway.
6. Fry's no longer puts returned stuff back on the shelf without labelling it as returned. Not because they are angels, but because they got remaed over it in the courts. Best Buy, on the other hand, still seems to do so. I personally don't generally buy these marked boxes, because of the hassles you mention. Now, on the other hand, the one time I did, I bought a $500 video card, when I decided to take it back (defective), the serial number on the card did not match the serial number on the box (not my fault). They had to get a manager, but did they accuse me of stealing? No.
7. That's a gray area, given that you can return anything you buy there, I don't see why this is a huge problem for the customer. And besides, don't buy crap you don't need.
I shop at Fry's a lot, and my experiences have been good in general. Returns are slow there, but partially that's because they allow you to return anything (a good thing in general) and people are there returning BS, like video cards they couldn't overclock enough. Or they are returning something they bought from Fry's just to keep for 3 days while the one they ordered from newegg at a lower price arrives.
In general, I have more problem with the other customers than the store.
But again, in the end, if you don't like the place, don't buy there. You don't get to commit fraud as some kind of vigilantism.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
If after doing what research I can online, I'm still not 100% sure that it will work out (for example, a new camera that doesn't have online reviews, or a new subrevision of a card that previously was supported under OpenBSD, but might not work if they changed the chipset), then I'll buy from a retail store with a good return policy.
There are four ways a business (be it a "brick and mortar" store, online, etc) can get my business:
- Supply the products I need now, something I can't wait for shipping (replacement parts, etc).
- Carry products not easily found elsewhere.
- Better prices (Total cost of purchase, taking into account sales tax, shipping, the hassle of the transaction.)
- Outstanding customer service, including return policy.
#1 can be fulfilled in a couple of unobvious ways, from the "pick up at at your local Border's" deal Amazon has, to driving twenty miles out of my way to pick up computer hardware at the warehouse of a national mail-order giant.I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
It seems like our entire economy is based top to bottom on how much you can screw somebody. An electrician's car breaks down, the mechanic screws him for just as much money as he thinks he can get away with, but that's ok because the electrician will screw you for just as much money as he can possibly suck out of you. And then all three of you get sick and go to a freaking doctor...who screws all three of you and your insurance company, if any of the bunch is lucky enough to have insurance. And then out of this pool of crap, we elect people to office, who promptly start screwing the public for as much money as they think they can possibly get away with without winding up swinging from a rope.
I finally broke down and watched most of Fahrenheit 9/11 tonight (ironically, ripped to my hard drive, off of a rented DVD), and I must say that my blood was boiling half-way through it.
I swear I sometimes wonder how the US has made it as long as it has. It is hard to believe we can remain competitive in the world economy, when so much of our money didn't come from any actual service or product, but rather comes from screwing people. I hope people enjoy it while they can, because one of these days the bubble is going to burst.
It reminds me of the excellent movie, the Devils Advocate. Only in our economy, the devil just isn't a lawyer, he is a doctor, a mechanic, the retail stores, the RIAA/MPAA, the politicians, the insurance companies, the salesmen, the retail stores, the manufacturers, the customers etc. etc., and each and every one of them is setting out to drown us in a sea of their dishonesty.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul