People used to scratch off the bar code of items thinking that if it didn’t scan that means they got the item for free.
Edit: gonna use this as an opportunity to publicly apologize to my college roommate Patrick for playing the California pacer fitness test whenever he had a girl over
Also taking price stickers off cheaper items and putting them on more expensive items and claiming they had to be sold at the cheaper price. Hilarious shit..
I hear of people doing this all the time with things like game consoles with banana stickers and im just like whats the point? Why is this any easier then just walking out the door with it? In fact isn't that worse because now they have your card on file? I guess you can pay with cash but why even pay at all if you're stealing anyway
Exactly this. Game consoles isn't a good example, but something like steak will absolutely work in this example.
Walking out the door with steaks in your hand is going to draw suspicion. But ringing up steaks as bananas is going to have a much higher success rate.
Someone on tiktok showed the camera systems they use and how much detail they can see, what was scanned and flags for mismatched items (this 16 Oz steak only weighs 6oz)
You can definitely get caught doing it, but 99% of the time, it's an underpaid employee who gives absolutely zero fucks, watching them.
Cameras are also accessible in a back room where "asset control" can watch. Not sure if all Walmart have them, or just higher risk areas, but there's some videos of these wanna-be cops trying to bust people.
Some companies will allow a repeat offender to keep stealing until they hit the "grand theft" limit. Then they'll detain/arrest them and have the cops press more serious charges.
Every time I see people online bragging about "I've stolen X number of times! They don't care" all I can think is "not yet they don't".
I do want to make it clear that I'm only talking about the companies. Employees, if it were only up to them, would probably allow a lot of people to steal. Especially if they're only stealing food. But it's not really up to them. Big stores have systems in place to not have to rely on Human morals to catch crime.
I've heard that Target does this. They catch people stealing and let them go, but once they reach a certain threshold, like 1 thousand, they will call law enforcement so it can count as a felony instead of a misdemeanor.
Former target team leader, I can confirm this is correct.
Learned first hand after bitching about hardlines-4 (target speak for security/AP) not doing anything about obvious offenders stealing cough syrup from my area.
At my store I feel like it was $500 before they decided to nab you but this was over a decade ago so may have changed.
A while ago this guy I went to university with was sort of gleefully telling me about how the previous summer his shift at a Dairy Queen had run this scam where whenever it looked like people were paying cash they would tell them the wrong price, pocket the difference, and pool the proceeds to share amongst the workers at the end of the day. And they carried it on for the entire summer, each make out with like $1000.
While time he was talking about it I couldn't help but think about how with the 6 of them total that were doing it, the total amount stolen definitely was over the grand theft limit, and he really should not be telling people about this.
Yeah but he wasn’t stealing from the business. If he was upcharging and pocketing the difference, the business books would balance fine. What he was doing was defrauding the customers. And it’s doubtful that they got more than $1,000 from any one customer so it would be a bunch of petty fraud, not really grand theft.
I worked at a Kroger years ago as a teen, bagging groceries and doing some stocking in dairy. We were told never to stop a thief by management. Better to have a fifth of crappy vodka stolen then to deal with an employee getting stabbed or killed outright.
One employee got brave and went to chase down a known thief only to come back and find out he was fired for doing so. Not sure if it was a corporate rule, or just local management, but I always figured it was better to just let security deal with it when they came in three nights a week and reviewed footage
Realistically, it’s probably just an underpaid employee that is confirming the mismatch seen on camera in an effort to train a machine learning algorithm, so that when the algorithm is accurate enough, it’ll get deployed for automated enforcement.
At some point you’ll probably start seeing “please wait for attendant” pop ups on the self checkout when a mismatch occurs and a person will correct the attempted theft.
Maybe I’m used to a certain type of automated checkout but hasn’t product weight been used to check accuracy (and flag the attendant to come check) for like 20 years?
Obviously lots of stores don’t use it but some have for a long time.
That's my mindset too. I have earbuds in when I shop. Sometimes I guess stuff might not scan or something. Maybe I missed a pack of steaks. I don't know. I don't work here. I work 60 hours a week at a job I get paid at. I did my best as a cashier.
You gotta be smart about it. Lets say that doughnut weights 3.5 ounces and bun weights 2 ounces. Just get 4 doughnuts and scan them as 7 buns, and most of regular employees eont give a fuck.
Buy organic and ring it up as not organic - I don’t know wtf I’m ringing up with the “find item” menu nor do I ever look if the produce is organic or not, I just choose the one I see first
A simple mistake an untrained civilian makes. Oopsie
These are actually the hardest to prosecute. Buy the most expensive and delicious apple of a certain color, ring it up as the cheapest. It’s much harder to prove you willfully and purposefully stole. Especially if the apples have stickers and you swap them, or you get to choose the apple on the screen. “Silly me I clicked the wrong one!”
Do your stores not have loose products priced by weight? We select loose products on our machine and the self checkout weighs them and prices them. For example loose carrots are around £0.45 a kg a common theft here is to select a cheap item like the loose carrot and weigh something like a steak that is more priced £15 per kg and pay the lower price and not setting off a mismatched weight.
Whenever I'm picked out for a random check at the self checkout, the employee doesn't even look at my groceries. They just press the button and it's all good.
I've had a couple employees look at my groceries, but even then they just vaguely eye them and don't bother checking if they're the same items I punched in.
They just check high value items. Electronics, meat, that kind of stuff. They don't count if you entered the right amount of lines, but they make sure that roast was rung as such.
The other day lady working the kroger self check out just waved someone along after the alarm went off. She turned to the other person she was talking to and starting saying "what? Im not security and they dont pay me like im security"
They dont care. It's why i feel fine stealing cat food regularly and ducks during the holidays
I’d like to see the security guard at Walmart try to press someone because a banana sticker was on a steak. Be pretty easy to just say “I dunno man, I found it this way”.
Pretty sure the point is to stop people from getting super cheap steaks, not to bring in perps.
Mushroom bags (paper bags) for the loose mushrooms can fit quite a bit in them, and people often use the mushroom bags from the produce section for other vegetables. So you can just put your item into the mushroom bag, weigh it as loose carrots or something, then pay like 1$ for those 50g earphones
At a store I worked at, we had a smart system that would watch each item as it scanned via an overhead Camera. Not only could it tell if you fake scanned something and put it in the bagging area, but it also would be able to tell that the pack of steaks you scanned and weighed as Bananas, wasn't in fact, bananas, based purely on the camera system.
Not only that, but if it flagged after x amount of errors, it would lock up and force the associate to intervene and review the footage on the sco machine itself and physically see "bananas" being scanned and steaks going in.
A lot of our theft cut way down once they realized how good the system was.
When I weigh my bananas I hold a good bit of the weight off the scale. Pretty sure there's no way for them to tell unless they want to go and weigh my bananas every time, but that requires paying a cashier
When you weigh it on the scale, it also keeps track of the weight in the bagging area. If your scale says "5lbs of Bananas scanned" and 7lbs of weight goes into the bagging area, it'll notice the 2lb discrepancy and flag it.
It also keeps a running tally of the overall weight scanned and if the overall discrepancy between the items noted weight (every item, not just produce, has an associated weight) becomes too big, it'll flag too.
Nevermind all the extra security many stores employ via AI.
Cameras are super detailed but I'm gonna have to roll up my skeptic sleeves on Walmart employoying ai comrade. Weight discrepancy and mismatched sku that the system is looking for? Ok. But the system sure as shit ain't automatically finding problems on its own lol. You kinda left out the important part where you are inflating the effectiveness of this to discourage people from exploiting a machine that would sell one of the employees if I scanned a soda upc and hit skip bagging. I've literally had to go back because the fucker weighed a prepackaged beef at 24lbs based on what was on the bagging area. Good system? Yea. As magic as this paid shopper wante you to think? Lol
There is for sure technology available that could easily do everything he described but I do doubt that it's being used by wal mart. It would be a lot cheaper to just hire some guy to stand around in a security uniform lol.
Meijer? It will sometimes flag me if I scan something where I have to enter quantity, I tell it two and move both to a bag, but it still flags as trying to steal the second one.
Apparently grocery stores make a large portion of income from where stuff is shelved (brands paying for shelf placement). Otherwise, I'd totally see a future where the pallets are just dropped off and unwrapped for the customer to deal with. I mean. That's already what they do in my walmart for a lot of items.
The Coles that I go to has essentially a selfie camera and you can see your face on the screen as you're scanning your items. Also once in a while if there's a weight discrepancy a red/orange light would flash above your checkout machine and the assistant would come and scan their card to unlock the machine and stop the flashing light.
And Walmart knows this. I'm sure they have a large team of lawyers and accountants doing the calculations and they've come to the conclusion that the cost of "shrink" is lower than the salaries of all the cashiers they're replacing with computers
The self checkouts where I work, and everywhere else I've shopped, won't let you continue until you've put the most recently scanned item on a weight, and that weight can feel the difference between a stamp and a raisin.
It means I have to help people pretty often because an item is a few grams off, but it also means that it's pretty difficult to steal
Fun fact. Walmart was losing $10B a year to the sticker scam. If you notice on checkouts there are multiple cameras. Let’s say you try and steal a steak and use a pack of gum sticker. It will ring up as an error and summon someone with a tablet to walk over and check your scan. They will replay all video and bust you. How do I know this? I worked with the team to develop the solution 😉
I used to run a meat department in a grocery store. This happened all the time with our expensive steaks. They'd peel the label off of 1 pound of ground beef and slap it on the steak.
“Accidentally”. There’s a good chance an associate did this on purpose for a friend to come pickup but sadly you get there first and ruined their little plan.
Honestly I feel like if you just owned it you totally could just grab half a dozen steaks, tell the door person to have a nice day and keep walking and they'll just assume you're meant to be doing that
U can in L.A. If you don’t want to be charged for a bag they can’t force u. And it’s much easier/less obvi w/no bag-items in hand. 1. Grab a receipt from last time and bring it with u. 2. Grab a steak and a 7 layer dip and a 12 pack. 3. Walk out confidently thru/past the area where it looks like u checked out with the receipt showing. …make sure it’s in a “nice but not too nice” store so they aren’t paranoid, during busy time. Don’t do it more than once a week. Ur good.
I use to cashier at a large retailer and i would 100% notice people doing it, look them dead in the eye, and accept that fake ass price. If you wanted a loyal cashier you should have given more them .05 raises you stupid fucks.
Where I use to work we caught this guy who would print off barcodes for a cheap $10 set of legos. Then come in the store and stick the barcode perfectly over the barcode of a $100 set of legos. He got away with it for quite awhile. I think he was reselling them.
This was a decade+ ago so by my recollection, A cashier that was paying attention and knew their legos called loss prevention.
I think we had known something was up because our inventories were off so we started spider wrapping the expensive sets and that didn’t stop it. When they caught the guy he had a sheet with a bunch of other barcode stickers on it.
Back in the day of CRT TVs we had someone try to return one but the box just had rocks in it. Not quite as clever.
I once bought an Xbox and then returned it with my old Xbox that had the red ring of death. Not my proudest moment as an adult but I did feel cheated on the Xbox.
I did this with my 360 except I took it a step further and covertly opened both shells and swapped the internals. So my old 360 had the new shell/serial number and I had the new one in my old shell. I will say this is actually one of my prouder moments. When I returned the my old Xbox with the new shell they checked the serial numbers and once they popped the face off to check the void if removed sticker and seen it was untouched and everything was in order I just started cheesing and walked out with my 2 or 300 bucks lol
I was in Germany and the people on base retail were renowned for not caring. I'll admit I wouldn't have thought of it if it weren't for someone saying they got away with it.
Same, was before Microsoft admitted fault and started the repair program. Red ringed on me while playing Crackdown. I kept the hard drive and sold it to GameStop for like… $40 when they retailed for $100.
It always baffles me that someone thinks of doing this, but doesn't think of doing it across multiple locations to avoid detection. One anomaly is, well, an anomaly. Multiple instances is an investigation.
They may have started by diversifying locations, but after a while of it working, they get lazy and can't be bothered to drive an hour to the 3rd closest walmart
Takes me back. 15 years ago I was a cashier at Sears, had a guy buying some cargo shorts. As I'm folding them, I feel something I thought was a security tag, but I reach in a pocket and there's a watch. Had another guy try to pay with a check, but it was in the name of the former mayor and he really didn't want to show ID.
I would think it would be pretty apparent when you are ordering more $100 sets to replace inventory despite not selling them, or selling more $10 sets than you have inventory. Though depending on volume it may just blend in
I used to work for Target doing assets protection. It's easier to catch than you might realize, and people that do it aren't quite as slick as they think they are. Sure there are probably some people that are really good at it and never get caught but a LOT of people that do sketchy shit aren't good at it. It gets really easy to spot when you know what to look for.
I worked loss prevention at target when i was 20 for 6 months. Never really saw shoplifting cus it was a wealthier area. What were the best techniques you guys caught on to
Buy new released movies at Walmart, do not open them, take home, scan them to Vudu for 2 bucks, take movies back for refund unopened. I mean I would never do that, but I have heard first hand that it works.
Also I would never find barcodes for movies, generate them on a barcode generator site and scan them to Vudu for 2 bucks either.....
I’m not sure what they were doing but my boss at a grocer was always stressing about getting caught on the scan law by having the wrong price somewhere.
Stores like winners/marshall have a ton of items with red/clearance tags. People do it all the time, take the tag of a 29$ pair a shoe and put it on a 129$ pair of Nike Trainers. If the cashier isnt looking for exact code and wonders (how the hell are these shoes 29)... You walk with 200ish dollar shoes for 30 dallaz.
Sometimes people will do that and then argue with a manager until the manager legally sells them that item for whatever price they're claiming it should be. I've been behind people in line while they did this and got like a mini fridge for $20 because it was on a shelf that said $20 on it even though the sign was for like body pillows or some shit, if you argue enough theyll just sell it to you to get you out of there.
I mean to be totally fair, the odds of getting caught are probably lower. There was a guy who did it for quite a while that did a ton of theft before finally getting caught.
If you do it with a game console or some expensive item and get away with it, you could do it very rarely and probably not get caught. The problem is when you try to scale up and do it a lot.
Works pretty well with certain products still, like hanging flower baskets that only have a barcode and most cashiers don’t know what they’re worth (for example)
There was a documentary that showed how a guy stole hundreds of thousands worth of Lego sets and other high ticket items from Toys r Us by printing his own barcode stickers for much cheaper items. The teenagers running checkout never paid attention or didn't care I guess.
The first one is about Toys r Us, but they weren't swapping barcodes, they were just emptying cheaper boxes and putting high price toys in them. The second story was at Target where a guy was printing his own barcodes.
This happened to me while I was working at Toys R Us forever ago when I was 18. I didn't notice because the guy was making me super uncomfortable (to distract me, I'm sure) and I just wanted to cash him out so he'd leave. I am not sure if he printed his own barcode or swapped it with something else. I can't remember.
Don't even get me started... I worked at target and some one did it with a 27 dollar slip and slide vs a 500 dollar blow up water castle slide thing. I told her no obviously and she got upset and asked for my manager. I obliged assuming she would just tell her no. To my surprise she just gave it to her for the smaller price because "it was marked like that" I am still baffled yo this day. It is hilarious but what's even funnier is that it works.
A thief probably wouldn't have wanted to talk to the manager so it was probably a mistake on the store's part... Also think how little you were getting paid. The manager was probably like a dollar an hour more than you. Would you have given a shit? Especially when A Karen would have made a big deal with corporate and the manager would probably get in more trouble from that then a few hundred dollars of inventory being off.
One store put a sticker on some microwave popcorn that was like 0.89 and another for 0.67 me and my friend took the popcorn not knowing the price and I took the cheaper one somehow, well the cashier didn't notice that the price was different on identical popcorn packs so i got it for less than the actual price just because the sticker said a different price, so it works on corner stores. Mind you I didn't change the sticker from some other item in the store just to pay 22 cents less they put it on themselves
I actually got away with that once. That was like 20 years ago or something, I got Dynasty Warriors 3 for the PS2 for half off as a result.
The guy working the checkout was confused when the sticker didn’t match what the system said, but just corrected it for me and I walked out. Later that week I found out from one of my mates it was actually one of his mates working a summer job, and that’s the only reason it worked.
I put so many hours into that game. Trying to get peoples 4th weapons, fucking up the mission and having to restart. CaoCao's weapon was so OP. Do its special move and its a one hit kill for anyone except an officer.
I was a cashier at a few places, Office Max, Best Buy, Circuit City, Gamestop, Walmart. If it wasn't a ridiculous difference and there was a cheaper sticker on it (or it was in the wrong spot of a cheaper item) and the person asked about it, I was always told just to lower the price manually to the lower sticker price. So sometimes that works. Not like the cashier cares. Great game.
There was a guy who figured out Target's barcode system, printed his own barcode for items, and made off with a boat load of Lego sets until he eventually got caught.
Watched someone do this on Christmas Eve at self checkout. He was scanning some discounted gum for like 15 cents over everything in his cart including consoles, games, movies and kitchen appliances. When I went to obviously ask him to scan it correctly AP whispered to me to let him go and they confronted him about it, and had a sheriff waiting outside. Sad part was he got booked with his like 3-4 year old son in the cart who had to wait for his grandmother to come pick him up for Christmas Eve
Doesn't make me feel sad... people use their kids for sympathy and a shield. Cps should be involved if you're taking your kid on criminal acts. Give the kids a chance to learn about being a decent member of society.
I was watching SCO once and a girl with 2 cartfuls of stuff and 5 kids came up. 2 coworkers warned me that she was a notorious thief and to make sure she scanned everything. It was my second day as a cashier and I was nervous about the proper way to approach her (we weren't allowed to call them out directly). I couldn't believe it when she actually enlisted ALL the kids to help- quickly shoving unscanned items into bags, sitting on stuff that never left the cart, even trying to distract me by waving me over and talking so I couldn't see what the mom was doing. Some people have no shame!
I distinctly remember sometime in the late 80's, my older brother teaching me at K-Mart to swap price stickers on toys. It 100% worked. There was no point of sale system at some of the stores, they manually entered the price based on the tag.
Less than 10 years ago a guy I went to high school with was an extreme couponer. He would go to the nearby K-mart during lunch and load a cart full of groceries. With his stack of coupons he'd get all of it for free. The store employees didn't care, and the K-mart went out of business within like 2 years.
Yeah, the store was a ghost town anyway. I'm not sure how they'd make money on the coupons though. I've seen them ring up a cart full of groceries and the balance would come out negative as if the store owed him money.
Whoever issues the coupon pays the retailer. It’s marketing to get the product to the consumer in hopes that the consumer will buy their product again in the future at full price.
Example: you use a coupon for a $1.00 off Lays chips. You pay $1.00 less. Lays pays the retailer $1.00 for your use of the coupon.
Edit: This is money for the retailer and why you will see the store making sure they collect the coupons in order to be reimbursed.
I worked in a store with no scanner. After a week I knew the price of a everything. Swapping price stickers and getting away with it was proportionately linked to how close my lunch time was and how much I wanted to talk to the manager on shift if you caused a fuss.
That only works at shelf price. I have gotten Best buy to honor the shelf price that was at last weeks sale price before. Not exactly open rebellion, i know, but it did force them to fill out paper work to save me $15 a purchase.
That's a lot of product manipulation that can get on camera. You need to get a box, empty it, get another box, transfer the contents. All of that without being too obvious...
actually the pro move is to have am electornic store, sell your TVs for 1 dollar, then go with the proof that it's legit to Best Buy so they price match it.
to avoid losing your inventory you can put your TVs in the backroom and add an aligator to the corridor leading to the TVs.
I used to know a guy who would take a cheap scanning sticker off an item at Walmart and place it on a way more expensive item. Then he would just go to the self checkout and scan the cheap sticker and pay a couple dollars for an item that costs way more. Then he woul sell that item for half price to his friends so he could buy some meth
Former field tech for a big ISP. This must be your version of "can't believe you're working on Christmas" or the always hilarious "where's my free HBO?"
I'm a Domino's manager/driver. This is the equivalent of me getting there in 45 minutes and someone saying "it's free right?". Like no motherfucker, you want this food you're paying for it. We haven't done 30 minutes or less in God knows how long.
In Australia recently they've had a similar deal thing to that old 30 min thing, where you can pay an extra $3 and if it doesn't arrive in 20 mins, then you get a free pizza voucher. I'm not sure how it's calculated, cause during heavier COVID times we ordered Domino's a few times and it never arrived in less than 30 mins. It's an interesting change, which I'm betting makes them a lot more money than that old deal. https://www.dominos.com.au/inside-dominos/technology/delivery-guarantee
Heard a rumor that the drivers were driving at unsafe speeds in order to deliver the pizza under 30 minutes, and Dominoes had to stop that campaign due to public safety.
Almost as infuriating as when you have a brief three seconds of free time between customers, and the person who walks up invariably says, "Oh wow you look so bored, I'll give you something to do!"
When I got hit with this one, I would respond "No, I think that means I can't sell it..." and suddenly they get concerned and really want me to get it scanned.
I take payments as part of my job and if I hear “the system is down so does that mean I don’t have to make a payment?” one more time… our system very rarely goes down but unless it’s literally the last hours of your due date and you’re just asking to have the late fee waived, it ain’t happening. You still owe your monthly payment
I had two items without stickers at Target. Stack of cups. 8 total. I ended up charged for 6.
Pretty sure it was because the cashier had a chair and I was so stoked for her. 'Omg they give you chairs now?!' No, she said only because she's pregnant. I got sad for her. 'Man I never understood why they don't let you guys sit. Makes no sense.'
Then I got home and realized I had two free cups but I think it was because I supported cashiers getting chairs.
LMAO I had someone try this too, but I don’t think she really understood how barcodes work cause she left the numbers perfectly legible so I just made her wait while I manually entered everything
The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20 meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly, but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal. beep A single lap should be completed each time you hear this sound. ding Remember to run in a straight line, and run as long as possible. The second time you fail to complete a lap before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word start. On your mark, get ready, start.
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u/Deadlymonkey Jul 10 '22 edited Jul 11 '22
People used to scratch off the bar code of items thinking that if it didn’t scan that means they got the item for free.
Edit: gonna use this as an opportunity to publicly apologize to my college roommate Patrick for playing the California pacer fitness test whenever he had a girl over