Slashdot Mirror
How Retailers Watch You
garzpacho writes, "With $30 billion lost to shoplifting and employee theft last year, retailers are turning to increasingly sophisticated electronic surveillance systems to fight theft. Some systems, like RFID tags, have been well-publicized by privacy advocates. Others are less well known: video surveillance systems are being tied to software that can recognize specific types of activity and identify individuals; and data-mining software is being used to analyze everything from shoppers' habits to irregular register activity." From the article: "Despite this revolution in retail tech, you won't find many stores bragging about their new security tools. No one wants to tip off shoplifters or advertise that they suspect their customers. That's why so much of the technology is hidden in the first place. But another reason stores don't talk much about surveillance is that they know it sparks concerns about privacy. Consumer groups and legislators have opposed the spread of RFID and video surveillance for just that reason."
I can think of a number of times when I've bought something and the clerk -- whether new to the job, distracted, or just lazy -- has forgotten to deactivate or remove the RFID tag, and I've walked toward the front door and had the alarm go off.
The most recent was just two days ago -- I'd ordered a DVD on sale from Best Buy's website, and chose the store pickup option. Basically you choose a nearby store, they hold it for you at the customer service counter, and you walk in with your order info and pick up the item and a receipt. The customer service people presumably hadn't been trained to deactivate it, and I certainly didn't have any reason to go through the line -- I'd paid for it already, after all -- and the greeter/receipt checker certainly had no reason to think that it hadn't already been deactivated. It wasn't a big deal, as the guy had already seen my receipt and just took it over to the counter to deactivate it, but it was still an easily-avoidable false alarm.
The worst are clothing and/or department stores, especially around holidays. A couple of years ago I bought an item at Robinson's May on the second floor, walked downstairs, walked out the door, had the alarms go off -- and no one reacted. OK, I had a store bag, but if I'd been a shoplifter, I could have walked right off and no one would have noticed, despite the blaring alarm. I went back and forth a few times to make sure it was my bag, then went to the nearest cash register -- note, not anywhere near where I paid for it -- told them what had happened, and they didn't even check my receipt before pulling it out and removing the tag.
I've been at other clothing stores and heard the shoplifter alarm go off repeatedly during a half-hour stay. I think I've only seen an employee approach someone once. I assume this means there are so many false alarms that they have no sense of urgency when an alarm goes off, because most of the time, it's a customer who is going to come back of their own volition so they can get the tag removed and actually wear whatever it is. It's just sound and fury.
You can have the greatest detection tech in the world, but if people don't use it properly, it won't help one bit.
Does anyone remember the commercial where the suspicious looking guy with the trenchcoat walks around a store, stuffing things into his pockets and makes for the door only to have an employee stop him saying, "sir, you dropped something," and handing the item to him?
I wonder if indeed there will be stores in the future - perhaps entire malls - where to even enter you will need to have a wireless credit device.
I don't like the retailers watching me, but perhaps I wouldn't feel so strange about the actual merchandise itself watching me.
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
My work here is dung.
How long will it be until these systems start to look at the ethnicity/gender/age of people and use that to gauge threat level? We're on a slippery slope here...
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
It'll be interesting to see how this pans out.
The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
Professional shoplifters will target multiple stores, so it would be in the interests of the retail industry to share information. Barring legislation they would have no reason to delete this information. If you act suspiciously once, you could be tagged for life. They could match all of your purchases (even cash purchases) with your face for life. The LCD screen near the entrance could change to match what they want to sell you.
Think data mining in the physical world. It's just going to get worse over time.
Think of the cameras as hi-tech plain clothes store "detectives;" y'know, the pensioners who are paid to blend in with the patrons and report anyone suspicious. The cameras and high-density servers just do their job, only more efficiently and less expensively.
I swear, some days Slashdot just seems so... analog and anti-progress.
When you use a credit card - I just wish the people who want your home phone number, the people who want to see your drivers licence, the people who want your addrss and zipcode and the people who want the hash code off the credit card would all get together and decide which pain in my ass I have to accept.
In Sweden, we had a raging debate over this a few years ago. It all started out when a mall wanted to put camera surveillance in the dressing rooms. Apparently, this is where most of the thefts occur.
I seriously doubt that we will have a waterproof method anytime soon, but I imagine that we will eventually have nano technology that you can simply spray on merchandise and deactivate it only at the desk. You can't remove what you cannot see but as long as we're using bulky stuff and stamps on it, people will always find a way to remove it safely and just walk away.
Full Tilt
Why is this a YRO category topic? It doesn't appear to be about online shopping.
In my store I use a baseball bat. While a double-edged sword is quick, it also leaves a big, bloody mess, and lots and lots of police paperwork. I prefer just to crack 'em in the kneecap with my aluminum bat. It hurts a lot, and they have to just lie there until the cops get there.
It's pretty damn effective.
Others are less well known: video surveillance systems are being tied to software that can recognize specific types of activity and identify individuals; and data-mining software is being used to analyze everything from shoppers' habits to irregular register activity.
Yeah, I'd love to see the false-positive rate on these. I've used that travesty they call a "self-check-out" at Home Depot enough times to know that they can't even put together a machine that can correctly detect a bag of nails, much less flawlessly predict which customer is going to shoplift.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Lets please assume absolutely no privacy in any retail facility. Not even in the dressing rooms.
I make most of my own clothes; I have not shopped new clothes for 10 years, however the few times that i have used a dressing room, I put on a pair of new, clean underwear prior to leaving home to go shopping. This way, I have no cause to care if I am watched in the dressing rooms.
Also please don't assume you can see the cameras. I was given a demo of a high quality video camera that was smaller than amout 1/2 inch square and about 1/4 inch thick.
Retail facilities are not synominous with privacy.
Cleara
In Soviet Amerika, you are guilty before you're proven guilty!
Seriously though: DRM, Activation, data-mining video surveillance, bills of attainder...it's getting worse.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
n/t
(who uses these trolls nowadays anyway?)
A long time ago when I worked in retail (Computer City), we had store numbers that suggested anywhere from 50-100% of our net-profit each week disappeared due to 'shrinkage' -- that was the innocuous term used for shoplifting. Back then companies weren't so blatant as to openly suggest a large # of our 'customers' were liberating the products, but that was precisely what was happening. Pretty slick stuff to.. it was back when Win95 was release, people would use razor blades to open the box, slide out the cds, and leave the box behind. That's why now shrinkwrapped software comes in that ridiculous overpackaging -- the corragated cardbord box inside a box is to prevent quick theft.
/I'm speaking as a Canadian, but our laws are roughly equivalent in this regard.
Stores are private property. Arrests and/or charges are still to be laid by legitimate police officers too, the most they can do is detain you. Your rights are not violated in any way.
I don't even mind RFIDs too much, but think they should be designed to be easily removable once you leave the store. This will take a few years to sort out I'm sure, but inventory tracking is a huge potential cost savings.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
i was recently shopping in las vegas at a well known men's shirt designer's boutique. i was promptly asked if i needed any assistance and gave the ol "just browsing, thanks".
the man proceded to watch my every move. i don't believe he was ever more than 3 feet from my position. i looked over at my girlfriend and she gave me a huge, silent "WTF?!". the only reason he ever left me alone was because another shopper came in and he started stalking him.
only once before in my life have i been treated like a criminal as soon as i entered the store, and that time before i left without any heistation. give me some respect, please!
R.I.P.
The other day when I went to my local Safeway supermarket, I selected a plastic hand-basket and noticed something odd. It had a small black box, about 1" X 1/2" X 1/4" sloppily zip tied to the underside of the basket. I flipped the basket over, and read some company logo along the lines of ShopTracker or some such thing. I was pretty irked, so I tossed it behind the stack of baskets and selected an unencumbered model. They want to know where you visit, and where you linger. No warning on the basket at all...
I just checked my last grocery receipt and I have saved somewhere between $200 and $250 this year so far using that card. That's good money for me to be saving. That's about a month and a half of gas money for my commute to work! I could care less if I lose a little privacy for that kind of savings because I get something that I can see the benefits of.
But what have I gotten out of **government** privacy invasions.
Jack.
Shit.
Unless you are one of those soccer moms or country club dads who is so terrified of a few sabre-rattling third world nutjobs that you think that anything that gives you a 0.000000000001% great chance of not being hit by a terrorist is worth it.
(Being a southern, I saw respond with a middle finger and rebel yell)
Targets security is going insane. I've seen them stop people who they watched pay for their items. The best was a guy who bought a Grill and only a grill. It was in a HUGE box and 2 target guys where wheeling it out for him. The security guard watched him pay for it and he still stopped him at the day to verify his receipt. All that does is tell your customers we dont trust you.
"50-100% of our net-profit each week disappeared due to 'shrinkage'"
I'm not sure tech can turn a situation like that around.
Absolutely true- and a point I'm trying to get across to my bosses at Oregon Department of Transportation in their bid to use GPS tech to charge road-mile taxes.
Privacy issues are transactional cost situations. If you're getting more benefit than danger, then the risk will become acceptable. Savings cards give you a return right at the checkout. I say that if we want everybody to use GPS traking for taxes, then we need to give them an equal added benefit, say, adaptive NDGPS based cruise control. Keep the cars separated out with line of sight bluetooth communications of the GPS information of both vehicles, and you've given added value to the driver. Maybe even partner up between a nice mapping software and bluetooth burst communications from http://www.tripcheck.com/ and you can have up-to-the-minute traffic jam avoidance in the Portland area.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I was at Walmart 2 weeks ago and the alarm went off when 3 of us walked out with full carts. The greeter asked which of us had set it off, we all shrugged, and she just told us to go. Granted, none of us had actually stolen anything, but how easy would it be if the security people never bother with checking anything.
Other stores I've been to on the other hand (mostly notably a large musical instrument store) checked what I had on me when I walked in, took anything that they sold in the store from me, and gave me a ticket to retrieve it when I got back to leave. On my way out whenever I bought anything they'd hand the receipt to the guard, he'd individually check off every item on that list, then hand me my stuff and escort me out the door. Sure, it takes longer than RFID tags, but it actually worked. If you're in a store that has a low enough volume of sales but a high enough cost of sales, then it may be worth it to just do something similar.
Remember those hand held beepers that home answering machines used to come with? I managed a 5 and dime back in the early 90's. The most advanced pieces of technology that we had were some two-way mirrors. Whenever I suspected someone of shoplifting (but couldn't prove it), I would stand next to the exit with one of those beepers and hit it when the person tried to leave. I had about even odds on the person either immediately professing their guilt, running, or otherwise doing something funny in response to the beeper. It was quite fun, actually.
And now my social commentary: we were in a really, really wealthy resort town. The people who were stealing (or at least who we caught stealing) were almost always the teenage daughters of the rich guys that came to the town for vacations... what gives? Any psychologists reading? I mean, we also caught some teenage boys and even a nun, but most were teenage girls. Older men and women were better at stealing, and usually it took the form of price-sticker swapping. We didn't catch them as often. Usually they would get caught by handing a mis-priced product to the cashier that had just spent an hour pricing the same item :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's ok if you can choose to give up your privacy. You want the card 'cause it saves you money, fine. If someone doesn't, he can simply opt not to. FYI, there are even companies that give you good money if you tell them about your choices and shopping habits.
It stops being ok if there is no chance to avoid it. Cameras don't discriminate between people who consider it ok to be filmed and those who don't. Also, it stops being ok when it becomes suspicious if you don't opt to take the card and be monitored.
As long as you can choose, it's fine. It's not when it is forced upon you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm suspicious that I'm saving anything with my shopper cards. I think all that's happened is that the normal sales that would be available to anyone who wanted to buy the item are now only available now to card holders -- that you aren't saving any money over and above that you would have saved before the shopper cards.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Yes, I advocate privacy when I'm stealing store merchandise too.
I understand your argument about commercial versus government intrusion, but you should hear what that sounds like from another point of view.
Basically you're saying you can be bought for $300. I mean that's what you're saying isn't it? Pay me money and you you're welcome to abuse me and trample on my rights. By your logic you would be perfectly happy for governments, or anybody else to abuse your information rights so long as they paid you?
So what if you walk out of the store, and the alarm goes off, you know you aren't guilty, and just continue walking. What can the store do except ask you to stop and hope you do? Are there any laws against disobeying the order of a private security guard?
I own a store ( a lot smaller than Best Buy ). I try to encourage my employees to think like the boss; to have the same goals and the same motivations. To accomplish this, one of their perks is to be able to consign merchandise here. When it sells, they get 80%, the house keeps 20%.
So they have an incentive to prevent shoplifting, for it could be their stuff going out the door. THe most extreme case was when one of my employees ran after an obvious shoplifter, and tacked him across the street. He had him pinned down on the sidewalk, stolen merchandise spilled in plain view. He yelled for the employee in the place across the street to please call the cops. The other employee refused because he 'didn't want to get involved.' After all, why should he? He was paid by the hour and got the same amount whether he tried or not.
As someone who knows quite a few people who work retail and work retail loss prevention, you could have very simply been at a store where no one is authorized to do anything about shoplifters except specified loss prevention employees.
Or, a store where secrity watches you pretty closely on camera and the employees know that if you set off an alarm, and then get back to the register to have it deactivated, and loss prevention hasn't shown up already, that you're in the clear.
Or, you could live in a state where concealing unpurchased items is enough for a shoplifting conviction, in which case if you go through the securty gates with stuff in a bag, either you've already purchased the items and someone forgot to deactivate the tag, or loss prevention never saw you put something in the bag and there's nothing they can do about it anyway (and most times, if you're in the store with a bag from that store, loss prevention is going to be all over you.)
It may appear unreasonable to you, but you ust don't know how (or why) it works the way it does.
paintball
I'd like to point out that $30 billion lost is based on the price of the item, and not the cost to make.
For instance, jeans at a $60 markup (from cost to make, not including advertizing) means that 500,000,000 jeans were stolen last year. Still a large number in my opinion.
Security tags weigh less than a paperclip, and can be hidden VERY well. I once bought a wallet at a store where my wife worked, and whenever I would fly after that I would set off the metal detector at the airport. And when they would wand me, the wallet would set off the wand.
Still took SIX trips through airport security before a TSA agent got zealous enough to find the security tag embedded in some recess of the wallet. (The others looked enough to be sure there wasn't something nefarious in there and then just let it go.)
So, no, you're not going to know the tag is there, short of tearing the product apart.
paintball
The whole buying experience at Fry's Electronics is customer-hostile, but the security check at the end of the cash register cattle pen is especially galling. I used to get mad about it, but now I use it as an opportunity for some street theater. I never bother to even stop to let the security people look at my receipt. Instead, I just walk past at a normal pace. If I'm lucky, they ask to see my receipt as I breeze by. To which I reply, in my best project-to-the-back-row theatrical voice,
"Why? Am I under arrest for shoplifting?"
Of course, I'm not, because I'm still inside the store. So they say no, and I tell them politely, but loudly, that no, they can't look at my receipt, and walk out.
Sadly, I have never been detained, because it would be totally worth the hassle.
Back then companies weren't so blatant as to openly suggest a large # of our 'customers' were liberating the products, but that was precisely what was happening.
The people who pay for the item are the customers. The people who shoplift are criminals.
paintball
Target Corp has some crazy AP technology. They actually hold seminars and train the FBI. They setup the surveillance for the entire downtown Minneapolis area. They also rushed some tapes to make critical identifications in big cases to their AP division. They do large busts, including international fencing rings and stuff. They are absolutely huge when it comes to assisting the law enforcement community and have won a few awards.
I don't think consumers have anything to worry about. Who really cares what you buy at a Target store? If you are willing to let the cashier know then why not the AP staff? The odds are so ultra low anyways that they actually are paying attention to you.
Customer shoplifting is a noticeable part of shrinkage, but it's definitely not the only part, and in many retail stores it's not even the major cause. More often than not, employee theft or incompetence will be the cause of shrinkage. Throwing merchandise in the garbage to pick it up later, just taking stuff when the employee leaves the shift, or just forgetting to ring an item are the more common reasons for shrinkage in many US chains. When you add to this all kinds of underhanded tactics to take cash directly from the store, shoplifting becomes the least of your troubles. I've not looked at the fraud numbers for an electronics chain like CompUSA, so there is a chance that shrinkage had a completely different shape than it does in apparel, groceries or furniture.
Sssshhhh.....This is the dirty little secret to those "card savings"....The price listed without the card is manufacturer's suggested retail price. You get a double whammy with this scheme. First, you get people thinking they are actually saving when they use it (and they are given the MSRP is an over inflated marketing gimmick to begin with). Second, you get MSRP from those that are too paranoid to get the card and give up the ever precious tracking data.
I want to make a T-shirt to sell to black hat attendees that reads something like: "By looking in my direction you implicitly agree to have your likeness stored in my feeble brain and/or my camcorder flash memory cartridges."
But I'm too dumb/lazy to make it into a snappier statement.
Here are some links on Sousveillance so I can earn my +1 informative point:
I think that's just to keep baskets from being removed from the store. I live in a slight above-porverty neighborhood, and people around here routinely "borrow" the grocery carts for everything from laundry to moving stuff to painting. It's really disgusting on an ethical and practical level. It used to be bad a couple of years ago when people would just park their grocery carts in front of my door. The apartment's groundskeepers (probably illegals) also use a grocery cart to cart around their tools! It's quite shocking, actually.
GP put the word in quotes.
Plus you can always give false personal info. I clearly gave CVS false info and they did not care. One example I have used at a different store: Jane Doe that lives on 194 Anonymous St.... with a phone number of 432-111-1111.
When my local Krogers introduced those cards they increased the prices on some products and gave a "discount" that made the price the same as it was before the cards came out. Of course you only get the discount with the card, so really the card gives you nothing and you pay a premium if you don't want to be tracked. Never shopped there again.
I put on a pair of new, clean underwear prior to leaving home to go shopping. This way, I have no cause to care if I am watched in the dressing rooms.
Ahhh.... I love slashdot. We're all so human.
If I remember correctly it was an IBM commercial.
Libertas in infinitum
Only on /. would someone make a point to mention that they put on clean underware before leaving their domicile. I think normal people must take clean underware for granted!
*rolling eyes*
Libertas in infinitum
Here's an interesting social experiment for the audiance. List all the ways that the actions of others (however trivial it may seem. e.g. ...oh you know) have a negative impact on others (however indirect that may appear).
And while you're doing that. Read "Everybody does it: crime by the public: ISBN 0-8020-6828-6"
I do not oppose RFID chips if they are used correctly.
As long as the chip information is purged from their system once the return policy has been passed (like 90 day returns, whatever the store's policy), that's fine. They don't need to keep information in their system passed that.
Maybe we need legislation introduced to make it illegal for any store to retain RFID-based information for more than 3 months once an item has been purchased.
I think stores should do all the freakish Big-Brother stuff they want to protect their valuable commodities, but people need to be informed. If the methods are effective, they will work whether people know or not (perhaps even better if they do)- if not, they will fail once a thief gets wind of the details.
You can't get software security by hiding your code, and you can't get store security by keeping us in the dark.
P.S on RFIDs, I just walked out of a library with an RFID tag that failed to register with the checkout machine as borrowed, but allowed me to get past the front door. Since I was informed about the tag (standard anyway, but for arguments' sake) I went and reported it. But if they were playing wise-ass on us, I would have kept the book for ever and ever. And ever.
I can tell you for a fact that theft at the Computer City stores we used to have here in St. Louis, MO (USA) was mostly by employees. I used to run a popular computer BBS back in those days, and one of their employees offered to barter hardware for download credits with me one time. I visited his apartment, willing to discuss the idea - and found a large walk-in closet stuffed full of brand new CD-ROM drives, RAM, hard drives, and other goodies. He worked at Computer City and admitted that a group of them were collecting up as much stuff as they could from the store, in order to get a "better salary out of the cheap bastards".
... One store by me was Arab-owned and operated, for example, and many people felt it should have been run by an American instead. Another just had constantly poor customer service. You could walk around for 30 minutes trying to get help and nobody would seem to be around. I think that's really why they experienced such high loss-rates. Employees were all out to screw the stores over, and many who shopped there didn't feel guilty buying property known to be stolen from the place either.
Another time, I was interested in buying an expansion board to do general MIDI with ROM samples on a Soundblaster AWE type csound card. Computer City supposedly had 2 in stock at the store closest to me, but when I got there, they were unable to locate anything except empty boxes. Shortly afterwards, a guy I knew told me that he had "connections" who could get me one of those cards cheap, as long as I didn't mind it was "hot". Funny... one of his buddies worked at Computer City.
That place seemed to generate a lot of ill will with people
Then I noticed that my normal shopping bill went up by a few dollars, in the space of a week. I started looking around, and sure enough, items that I regularly bought for $4.99, or whatever, now had "$4.99" in some bold color, and underneath in very small print, said, "$5.99 without shopper card".
So I got a card, and then had to replace it a year later when it wouldn't read anymore. "Just put your phone number in the number pad..."
"Ummm, I had a different number then, and don't remember what it was."
Now I just use my work number, and have discovered that most of my co-workers do, too, so we don't even have to lie on the stupid forms anymore: Someone from work has already signed up at every store in the area.
And what will they do when I move and someone else gets the phone number, if that is the "unique identifier" that they are using?
The retailer watches you!
No, really.
In Soviet Russia, the Government is the retailer, so the retailer does watch you.
I would love RFID tags left on my CD/DVDs. What I want is a reader/scanner and some software so I can inventory my library and keep track of when my friends/family walk out with one or two. I don't mind them being borrowed, I just want to know when they go out the door and with whom. Plus,it would be nice to know what I have.
"No one wants to tip off shoplifters or advertise that they suspect their customers."
trying to catch someone is expensive, hard to do, error prone, and has a sizable civil risk.
IT is far better to have people appoach suspects and talk to them, or just obviously follow them.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As the owner of a tangible piece of property, or as an agent ( employee ) of the owner, you have the right to grab people who steal from you. You can make a citizen's arrest. You just have to be able to convince a judge/jury in civil court that your actions are reasonable. You can use force, just no more than a judge considers neccesary.
...but I am married to one )
You are a perfect example of what I am talking about in GP. ( And I mean no offense by saying that. ) Your employers decided to give you an incentive not to prevent shoplifting. They told you only the bad side of grabbing shoplifters. And you responded accordingly.
It all makes sense from their point of view. When they have multi-million dollar deep pockets they are a target for a lawsuit by a lawyer operating on contingency. Even if that lawyer knows that his odds of winning are only 1 in a 1000, it still makes sense for him to try it. So they take the low-risk approach.
But for me, whose total possesions would bring less than a 100 grand if seized and sold at fire sale, it does make sense for me and my employees to use force. I have relatively shallow pockets. I'm not a potential target for a contingency lawyer. No lawyer will touch a lawsuit against me unless the plantiff pays thousands up front.
It is kind of ironic. Criminal law codes permit them to grab people, but civil law ( as it is currently understood ) makes it unreasonable.
IANALBIAMTO (
Which doesn't really help any.
Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
My worst problem with this is, as others, when the RFID tags are not deactivated. In my case, it was a pair of shoes someone had bought me for a gift. Problem was, the tag wasn't deactivated. Additionally, the tag was BUILT INTO the shoes! Every time I entered and left a store wearing the shoes, it would set off the alarms. I had more than one overzealous doordude try to stop me. Eventually I got to where I would warn them before I even stepped through and hold my hands out so they could see I wasn't carrying anything. One refused to listen and tried to detain me - I told him to get his *@*## hands off me before I had to defend myself against unlawful detainment. He was furious, but I had already explained to him the situation, and he was too stupid to comprehend that a tag might be on something I OWN and not have been deactivated!
Finally, when the shoes were completely worn out, I cut them up and found the tag. It was deep inside between two layers of cloth - it had to have been put in there at the factory.
-- If it ain't broke - overclock it more.
"Absolutely true- and a point I'm trying to get across to my bosses at Oregon Department of Transportation in their bid to use GPS tech to charge road-mile taxes."
They are trying to gather steam for this notion in my state as well. Schemes like this are just plain silly besides being a HUGE intrusion on privacy. What prevents a stalker from cracking the transmitter this device most assuredly will have and using it to track his victim to their death? The lawyers will have a field day with this one.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
I'm just imagining the stats... "You mean this shopper card buys 30 boxes of sanitary pads a week, and four dozen condoms? 48 cans of dog food? 5 tubes of nappy rash remover? What the hell is going on there?"
I was doing some low voltage wiring repair at a high end lighting retailer. Turns out that their shrink was staggering before they simly installed some video cameras in the wharehouse. Some of them were not even functional, but you could not tell which. Their employee theft problem went away over night.
The threat.. implied or real.. of watching employees is often enough to encourage desired behavior. It is a direct application of game theory.
while (1) {
them: "here sir, please fill out this form and you can start using your 'savings' card today."
me: "I'm kind of in a hurry, can I fill it out and get the top part back to you?"
them: "sure. have a nice day."
}
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The majority of shrinkage dollar value has always been by the employees rather than shoplifters.
:)
Shoplifters walking in off the street might steal a few things and leave. The guys who work there can steal in volume, constantly. This is what killed the Zayre store chain: employees literally were backing trucks up to the loading docks and hauling away the high-priced stuff. Minimum wage store security goons were told to follow suspicious shoppers and watch for something to happen -they used to follow me; I made a game of wandering all over the store. Made them earn their pennies an hour.
But while following people like me, nobody was paying _any_ attention to the loading dock. Low profit margins and heavy theft losses eventually killed the company.
My co-worker used to work for CompUSA and has told stories that would make loss prevention's blood drain from their bodies. If they had any blood to begin with.
Computer City sucked anyway so I don't have a lot of sympathy for their demise, but I do miss at least having A choice to shop against CrapUSA. We now have Frys opening in our area so things are actually pretty good at the moment.
Everyone knows about the tags that set off the ICS or whatever they are calling it these days. Those are completely useless since they have old ladies manning the front doors who can't stop anyone. Here in my town they just installed RFID but have yet to get any RFID merchandise. They do have some nifty tricks like laser designators that signal the cameras to follow targetted people. They can use them to track up to six "targets" at once.
Oh, btw the wal-mart in Bryant, AR does not prosecute ANY shoplifting because of complaints by the county court about all the work they were having to do. This includes the guy that I observed getting caught FIVE, YES FIVE times inside of two hours trying to steal a 1500 dollar lcd tv. He was never charged, police never called. He was only told not to come back.
In cases like that, it's often the employees they don't trust.
It's not that hard to slap on a lower-priced sticker from an item, arrange with your good buddy to scan you through, and make a normal looking transaction a quick pay-off.
The guy checking the receipts is checking up on the employees just as much - if not more - than the customers.
For this sort of money they could afford to hire extra staff instead. Not only would stock losses lessen, but service levels would be up too.
Or when I lived at home with my parents, groceries weren't something I would buy. So when I did go to the store, it would be for something my parents don't pick up such as chips, soda, cheese, butter, canned foods. you know, the stuff that the insurance company would "die" over if they ever got a hold of my "prefered club shopper" records.
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
For supermarket chains, the serious losses are not from shoplifting. The really serious theft is the entire truckloads of goods that never make it in the backdoor of the store, but that the chain ends-up paying for. These operations are usually operated by insiders, often reaching up to quite senior management levels, as full-time businesses-within-the-business.
None of this tracking nonsense is going to make the slightest dent in that.
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
May the Maths Be with you!
At the moment a lot of large stores have "self checkout" lanes where you scan and bag stuff yourself. These use various clever means to detect that the thing you've scanned is the thing you bag. In a couple of years, once the price goes down, each item will have its barcode on an RFID tag. Put everything in your bag, walk through a thing similar to existing security gates in stores, and within about 10 seconds it will have worked out all the items you bought, priced them up, and you just put in your card, tap in your PIN and away you go. I don't know how they deal with things like loose onions or other items that have to be weighed. I suppose you'd still have to do that.
It's the polite way to stop shoplifters, too. Walk out with a bottle of vodka in your jacket? You get charged for it just the same...
OK--next time you are at X-mart try and collect as many RFID tags as you possibly can. Then attach them to your body in creative and interesting ways. Finally--run for the door. When stopped asked for a body search.
This could be a lot of fun with a large group of 20-30 conspirators.
I don't have a card. I always tell them that I forgot it, and they run the store card for me. So I can have my privacy AND my discount too.
I hope they do analyze them once in awhile...
(And why was your response modded "Flamebait"?)
The cameras and high-density servers just do their job, only more efficiently and less expensively.
And don't bitch about missing "Murder She Wrote" or "Matlock", or how those crazy kids dress these days, or how their car got forty rods to the hogshead...
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
You're not "saving" money by using the card. You're avoiding being raped like those who don't use a card. In most cases the sale price for using the card is just the normal price -- the price you pay if you go across the street to the store that doesn't require a card.
And that is why I go across the street.
Behave "weird" in the store and at the register.... then when you walk out and get stopped and dont have any stolen goods... bam instant 2000 bucks because of false accusation from the court, and with pursuing mental distress, countless more.
A lot of stores try to hide their security equipment. I guess that makes sense for them.
Here's the flipside of that: A friend of mine works in a smaller store that can't afford much of a security system. So they bought the little tags that you can pin on to items (The shop sells a lot of clothes) and they put them on the articles and dont try all that hard to hide them. The funny part is that the store doesn't even have the detectors at the doors!
Their theory is that shoppers / shoplifters see the taged clothing items and just assume that the rest of the security system is in place. The best part is that it seems to be working!
Nathan Friedly
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
As Self Pay Terminals become more the norm throughout the department stores, I wonder how the tags that require deactivating are deactivated. Possibly by scanning the barcode. But that would require the tracking tag to be placed by the barcode, thus enabling easy location and possible removal of the device.
In my day, shrinkage came from swimming, not shoplifting.
IMHO, IANAL, TINLA, etc...
The point is still that it has to be a risk-benefit analysis. What's to stop a stalker from cracking the frequency & digital address of your cell phone and tracking you that way? Or better yet, just using the spoof that The Register used with Verizon to turn on web based cell phone tracking (all that is needed is 30 seconds alone with the phone while you're logged in with another phone on the same account)? Nothing- but the benefit of carrying a cell phone outweighs the risk for most people.
Most privacy concerns come down to such transactional costs- and the way to get people to accept the risk is to provide a benefit that far outweighs the risk.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
IMHO the fact that theft is so widespread is a sign people aren't being paid enough and prices for many items are too high.
Essentially, this means white guy, doesn't it?
There are a lot of Americans of every ethnicity the last I heard, including Arabs.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
There is a point where risk outweighs benefit. I don't own a cell phone and never will since they don't work in the hollows of WV. They are expensive annoyances that I live without.
You will find it hard to convince people here that the taxes already collected for road work isn't enough. Besides, unless it is nationally mandated, it is a futile effort for a single state to have it. Nothing prevents a citizen in one state from purchasing a car from another that doesn't have the GPS. They would also have to outlaw tampering with the things. No, this type of scheme is too risky to both the state (loss of revenue due malfunction / tampering) as well as the owner (big brother is watching you).
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
You will find it hard to convince people here that the taxes already collected for road work isn't enough.
A drive down any rural highway in Oregon makes that argument an easy one actually. Most haven't been maintained due to the lack of road taxes, some to a dangerous extent.
Besides, unless it is nationally mandated, it is a futile effort for a single state to have it. Nothing prevents a citizen in one state from purchasing a car from another that doesn't have the GPS.
At which point, with the way the law is being rewritten, you'll still get charged gas taxes when the pump can't make the bluetooth connection (same goes with wrapping the unit in tin foil) at a rate high enough to discourage such behavior (I hear they're talking $.50/gal).
They would also have to outlaw tampering with the things. No, this type of scheme is too risky to both the state (loss of revenue due malfunction / tampering) as well as the owner (big brother is watching you).
As with any technological solution to charging weight/mile taxes (after all, you could monkey even with a mechanical odometer). And who cares about big brother watching you? Big Father Walton (Wal*Mart) is more dangerous to your life than any government ever will be again.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Yeah.... quite so. But I'm just passing along the general sentiment I heard. The idea that someone of obvious foreign descent running a U.S. computer store is generally seen as a negative by quite a few customers (biggoted though that opinion might be).
The same thing always happened with the Chinese around here. We used to have a computer reseller called Computer-4-U, owned and operated by Chinese. (There was one guy living here in the U.S. who took care of the store as "manager" day-to-day, but his brothers were the primary investors and technically the owners, and they lived in China. They visited once a year to check up on things and tell him if he had been successful enough that year so he could carry this or that name-brand product.) Many computer store owners I knew who purchased products from him held a pretty low opinion of his operation - primarly because of the impression they got that his "language barrier" was at least partially an excuse. (EG. His English got a lot worse if you had questions about an exchange or return than if you wanted to make a new purchase.)
If you look more closely at http://www.criminalattorney.com/pages/firm_article s_citizens_arrest.htm, which parent claims supports his position, you will note that the attorney quotes the California Penal Code:
0 04.pdf ):
A private person may arrest another: 1. For a public offense committed or attempted in his presence. 2. When the person arrested has committed a felony, although not in his presence. 3. When a felony has been in fact committed, and he has reasonable cause for believing the person arrested to have committed it. (C.P.C. 837).
He then proceeds to say: Unlike the California statute, which only permits citizen's arrests in cases of felony...
He is clearly in error here, for a 'public offense' includes virtually all felonies, misdemeanors, and infractions. This guy is trolling for clients.
To be precise about the definition of a 'public offense', I quote from ca.gov ( www.boc.ca.gov/Regulations/2004/RestitutionStats2
"CRIME" AND "PUBLIC OFFENSE" DEFINED. A crime or public offense is an act committed or omitted in violation of a law forbidding or commanding it, and to which is annexed, upon conviction, either of the following punishments: Death; Imprisonment; Fine; Removal from office; or, Disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit in this State.
In the state of California ( where the sidewalk squashing occurred, BTW ) if you see it committed, you can make a citizen's arrest for almost anything. A felony, a misdemeanor, an infraction. Even something punishable by a fine. Even - as GP said - for jaywalking. The few offenses that are not 'public offenses' are things like jumping bail where it is not a violation of law, but a violation of a court order. All 49 other states are similar.
Most Americans do not seem to realize that in English common law - which is much of the bedrock of American law - the power to arrest is in theory the right of a citizen, and the cops are employees of the citizenry. ( This is why police in England originally carried whistles. They were to use them to alert or wake up the citizens who then would make the arrest. )
As we slowly become a police state, these roles are being reversed. Now, many people believe that only the cops can arrest.
As I wrote earlier, IANALBIAMTO.