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Self-checkout theft causing problems for retailers — and shoppers who despise receipt checks (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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I started using grocery self-checkouts during COVID, but I've kept using them because there's rarely a line (and I'm a misanthrope). I'd probably go back to using regular human checkouts if I had to dig through all my crap to prove what I bought.

Having said that, I've noticed myself making mistakes. I've accidentally failed to scan an item, and I've accidentally entered incorrect codes for produce. When I notice, I fix them, but I've probably missed a few.

I guess the easiest answer is for grocery chains to reinvest some of those windfall profits and hire more cashiers.

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[–] 5 points 3 years ago (3 children)

I have a friend who works at a shoppers, and she was saying even at it's height, theft is like .001% of daily sales. You'd have to steal a bunch of electronics to even make a dent.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    This isn't true for everything across the board however, and the number of .001% is a bit of hyperbole. The driving force behind theft is multifaceted but the biggest ones are probably a mix of resell value, time to flip, and ease of access. Most items not from grocery stores are fenced through oh say Offer Up.

    I worked for a major retailer as a mix of boots on the ground and investigative loss prevention and I will say theft is far more common than people give it credit and that mostly stems from how damn easy it is. Pre-Covid theft only loss were probably about .8-1.5% depending on the location and during/after was around 2-4% these numbers are for my state only though.

    Now of course this is still a drop in bucket and corporation are still horribly, horrifically greedy which is why I had to get out and now get to relax working from home. I just wanted to frame the numbers a little better since I had to live and breathe this shit for years.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    Even this corporate shill website lists 'high' amounts of theft with "According to some industry data" as "an average-sized food retail store in Canada can have between $2,000 and $5,000 worth of groceries stolen per week"

    So not only are those inflated numbers, that's still a tiny number. There are about 15,000-16,000 grocery stores in Canada. Even if every single one of those lost 5000 per week, that's 3,900,000,000 per year. They make over 9,000,000,000 per month - or 108,000,000,000 per year.

    Even at their highest possible (and likely lying) numbers, that's 0.0361111111111111 % lost to theft.

    Sure, some hyberbole, but barely. (And I worked at Costco and saw their theft numbers, and even they have laughably low ones.)

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