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I've seen video of people walking out of a store with big ticket items, like a tv. Nobody stopped them to see if they had a receipt. This happened in the Houston area a few years ago. As I recall, there were other expensive items that somebody just walked out the front door with. Nobody at the store noticed this. It was like taking candy from a baby.
Houston Police Dept says a single shoplifting call can tie up an officer for five hours!! With 1,000's of shoplifting calls in the Houston area (mostly from Walmart), that's a lot of officers having to respond to nonviolent crimes.
I've seen video of people walking out of a store with big ticket items, like a tv. Nobody stopped them to see if they had a receipt. This happened in the Houston area a few years ago. As I recall, there were other expensive items that somebody just walked out the front door with. Nobody at the store noticed this. It was like taking candy from a baby.
Houston Police Dept says a single shoplifting call can tie up an officer for five hours!! With 1,000's of shoplifting calls in the Houston area (mostly from Walmart), that's a lot of officers having to respond to nonviolent crimes.
Our Walmart has someone at the door checking receipts. They're not THAT on top of things, as I suspect it's possible for someone to sneak through if there are a lot of people in queue. At this point, perhaps their cameras can catch this, although I don't know if anyone one monitors them, or they're just recorded and archived for later review.
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One thing I did miss is in order to prevent folks from using the same receipt twice, the receipt checkers use a highlighter to mark them so they can't be used more than once.
I've seen video of people walking out of a store with big ticket items, like a tv. Nobody stopped them to see if they had a receipt. This happened in the Houston area a few years ago. As I recall, there were other expensive items that somebody just walked out the front door with. Nobody at the store noticed this. It was like taking candy from a baby.
Houston Police Dept says a single shoplifting call can tie up an officer for five hours!! With 1,000's of shoplifting calls in the Houston area (mostly from Walmart), that's a lot of officers having to respond to nonviolent crimes.
I used to work retail and they always hammered on if you see some one stealing let them go. I guess they'd rather deal with stolen t.v.s then have to deal with a law suite over a dead employee. Insurance is cheaper than litigation.
The nuisance is that they're chronically understaffed & using the police as their own store security. They have poorly designed / laid out stores & not nearly enough people to staff them. How often do you see an employee when you're walking the aisles at the depot? I rest my case.
Wal mart is just as big of a corporate mooch. In my area, Wal marts average 1000 calls to police per year.
If the business attracts enough police attention that you pretty much need to "assign" an officer to the store, then the business needs to justify itself to the community. Many communities decide they don't want night clubs for the same reason- whether it's drunken patrons, stealing patrons, parking lots that attract drug-users & prostitutes.. It's the same thing - homeowners subsidizing businesses that aren't necessarily worth having.
Both HD and Walmart have plenty of security personnel. They are also very large retailers equaling the output of hundreds of smaller stores. Ergo it is to be expected that more shoplifting would occur there on absolute numbers. Both these companies, as any other business, should have the expectation that the police will enforce the law. The fact that "they're going too often" or they don't want to deal with the paperwork is not an excuse, THAT'S THEIR JOB. If they are understaffed it's time to hire, not time to let criminals have free reign
I used to work retail and they always hammered on if you see some one stealing let them go. I guess they'd rather deal with stolen t.v.s then have to deal with a law suite over a dead employee. Insurance is cheaper than litigation.
Oh, absolutely. I worked in loss prevention for a while. The policy where I worked was that we not follow, harass, search, accuse, or touch anyone. We could move around and 'keep an eye on' someone by staying in the area of the store where a suspicious individual is "shopping", but we couldn't just stand and watch them.
This is very common in retail, because anything more than that requires special insurance, expensive training and certifications (resulting in paying higher wages) for loss prevention employees, and a company with an expensive legal team on retainer just for dealing with cases arriving from shoplifting. Some companies do this, but most do not.
Finally, if we visibly caught someone in the act, we could ask them to put the product down and leave the store, or we could ask them to stay and wait for the police to come and arrest them, but since we could not touch them, much less cuff them or lock them in a room, they were essentially free to just leave.
Basically our role was to intimidate people into not stealing. And if caught, intimidate them into sticking around for police.
The Home Depot I worked for was one of the smaller stores and the theft rate was insane. Every month over $10,000 worth of merchandise was stolen. That's CRAZY! When copper theft was huge, the theft amount was even higher. Losers would stuff copper pipes inside each other then into PVC pipes and cap them. It was AMAZING how many people I caught doing this. Suddenly they didn't want any of those pipes.
Part of that problem is the scales at the register won't catch it since the large bulk items are scanned from the cart. Home Depot should experiment with floor scales under the carts as a long term investment, if they could work out what kind of cart is there and make sure personal items are removed
Oh, absolutely. I worked in loss prevention for a while. The policy where I worked was that we not follow, harass, search, accuse, or touch anyone. We could move around and 'keep an eye on' someone by staying in the area of the store where a suspicious individual is "shopping", but we couldn't just stand and watch them.
This is very common in retail, because anything more than that requires special insurance, expensive training and certifications (resulting in paying higher wages) for loss prevention employees, and a company with an expensive legal team on retainer just for dealing with cases arriving from shoplifting. Some companies do this, but most do not.
Finally, if we visibly caught someone in the act, we could ask them to put the product down and leave the store, or we could ask them to stay and wait for the police to come and arrest them, but since we could not touch them, much less cuff them or lock them in a room, they were essentially free to just leave.
Basically our role was to intimidate people into not stealing. And if caught, intimidate them into sticking around for police.
Seems to me like the best way to deal with these people is to have a security detail off the books (aka a couple of guys) that takes shoplifters to the back of the mall and roughs them up a bit. The perps give back the merchandise, pay a "fine", and you never see them again
not if they have $500k in sales per month... 2% shrink is about average.... here in the Vegas, the good Walmart's goal is 1% shrink.... They easily do $100k per day in sales
that shrink is on the retail price, not net income. So if the store's MSRP on goods is 100K and their profit margin is 20%, a 2% shrink is $2000 which is actually a 10% loss on their 20K net
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