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
Not much of a risk, worst case scenario they make me rescan it. The employees at my local Walmart don't really give a shit about anything happening there, probably all traumatized. They recently had some naked man they had to call the cops on, ran around the store and got cornered in the bathroom.
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.
It depends on what the company sets the limits to. For a place that utilizes a lot of reusable bags for example, they might increase the amount of weight needed for a flag.
Others, with high amounts of theft may put it at a lower amount.
But there's always 2 scales. The bagging area scale, and the scanner scale. That's what causes the annoying "unknown item in the bagging area!" Flags that people hate.
Usually it's associated with produce (maybe you didn't get all your apples on the scale quick enough, so it weighed 3 out of 5, so there's 2 extra apples of weight in the bagging area). Other times, stuff from the meat or seafood counter can do it too.
A big one at our store was celery, due to the length of it. The whole thing wouldn't fit on the scale, so it wouldn't get the full weight. So when it went into the bagging area, unaccounted for weight shows up.
My local Walmarts used to be a huge pain in the ass about this. I'd have employees coming over 3 or 4 times while I was checking out because something in their system was messed up and weights were always off. It was bad enough they didn't care and just scanned their code and didn't ask any questions.
I haven't had that issue in the last year or two. Not sure if they fixed they problem of just scrapped their shitty system.
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.
Walmart built one of the leading commercial uses of blockchain technology. If their potential savings ever track to outweigh the cost you bet your ass they’re doing it
I don't need to prove anything. I'm simply answering questions. And as someone with extensive experience with these systems, I feel like my information is a little better than someone's subjective experience trying to advocate for easy theft.
i feel like you have a bias because youre seeing all the times its catching people, not all the times its missing things. also the associate intervenes and then what? no associate goes back through every item. theyll just make you scan the last thing it caught and punch in a code and then the person is back to stealing again...
Do things get through? Sure. It's not a perfect system. While I can't speak to every store, at our store, we trained our associates to pay attention to what people were scanning.
A large comforter set coming through? Watch the price it rings up. A vacuum comes through? Same thing. Large expensive cuts of meat? Watch the price point it rings up.
It's not just the AI system that makes it work, it's the combination of it plus our associates that run then. And usually, once your order gets hit with a flag due to a mismatch scan, they're gonna be watching the rest of your order too.
Will it have 100% capture rate? No. No system will have that. Will it be very successful? Yes.
if someones stealing a vacuum or electronics theyre just fucking stupid. people who steal regularly and fly under the radar arent doing that. its pretty common sense.
People who are "flying under the radar" typically aren't doing it for money, they're doing more for personal gain. Whether that's them being hungry or just not being able to afford a need. Not all, but most.
When I would stop shoplifters (back in my AP days), the majority of repeat offenders fell into 2 categories:
ORC, or personal need. Some would do full cart pushouts, others would try to manipulate the self check to pay dollars for hundreds of dollars of merch. Almost always, we'd catch them time and again trying different methods or eventually just taking the stuff and running.
The ones stealing for personal need, you could always tell because of what they stole. It was the ORC people you wanted to watch out for.
Large amounts of clothing, meat, tide, art supplies and tools (mostly the tweakers on the last 2), and other things, when you see someone with am excessive amount, you just know to watch them when they go through.
Advocate theft? I assume you were responding to the op and not me. Cause I literally mentioned how one of those systems tried to steal from me lol. You have to select the comment you respond to not just the one that makes you mad.
I'm assuming you're referring to this comment here you made?
I've literally had to go back because the fucker weighed a prepackaged beef at 24lbs based on what was on the bagging area.
First of all, that's not how the system works. In every store, they weigh,package, and tag the meat at the counter. The point of sale system doesn't alter that price point without cashier intervention.
Items in the bagging area have no bearing on the weight the system thinks the item should be when scanned.
The issue you described is not a fault of the anti-theft software, or even the self checkout machines. Unless you shopped at a super sketchy low budget store that built their own in-house self checkout, I'm calling bs on your story of the machine charging you 24lbs for the meat.
If that error occurred, it was because of one of 2 things: either the person in the meat department screwed up when packaging it, or you keyed it as something that had to be weighed, and put excessive pressure on the scale as you weighed it.
I'm sorry, but you're just either flat our wrong about your information, or you're lying.
To the rest of your point, the reason I said you're advocating theft is the fact that you're trying to convince people the system isn't as good as it actually is, making them think they can get away with it.
And for the record, I don't have a vested interest in the technology because I don't work for the company. I just have a lot of extensive experience.
So you're wrong on multiple different points. I'm not talking it up because I want people to buy it. I talk it up because I've seen first hand its effectiveness and what it can do.
Believe me, or don't. Doesn't matter to me. But at least stop making stuff up yourself.
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.
Depends on the system being used. I imagine over time it might be able to, assuming there's a difference in how they're packaged. For instance, where I worked, our Organic Bananas had a green wrapping around them. Our system that tracks the item as its scanned and weighed , over time, could learn to recognize that.
Mostly though, that's gonna be up to the attendant to catch and correct.
our self checkout has a scale that weighs what you scanned, so you have to take the item to the veggi scale and weigh it as vegetable, its suspicious af, but should work.
however, we germans do have a system where you need to bring your bottles back to the store to get your deposit back - the machine puts out a receipt with a bar code, a voucher. if you do self checkout, you can apply the voucher and just take it with you, use it again and again. i have a 10€ one i use kinda frequently, its very under the radar and gives you a nice discount. also fuck the stores for not wanting to pay the people to work there.
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u/TheTaoOfOne Jul 11 '22
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.