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I couldn't help while reading this thinking 'Security is in charge of Customer Experience'. Obviously theft is a serious problem for the likes of retail -- and

• dtjb 5y ago
  If Home Depot could somehow extend this anti-theft protection to the original purchaser, that would be a huge positive to customer experience. Tool theft at job sites is a massive problem, especially because most workers are responsible for providing their own tools.
  • ianhawes 5y ago
    This. I was excited seeing the headline, but disappointed it only applied to purchasing from Home Depot.
  • giantg2 5y ago
    The easiest way would be to implement the smart gun tech for tools. Keep the paired bracelet at the counter, then the user can wear it when using it. If the bracelet isn't in range, then the tool won't work. I'm guessing people wouldn't be very happy with this user experience though. Cost for biometric implementation would likely be cost prohibitive.
    • fuzzer37 5y ago
      why does it have to be biometric at all? Just make it 2FA. Make it so that the bracelet and the tool have to be within, say, 1m of each other and that seems like a viable solution (And obviously have the ability to disable this feature if the user wishes)
      • giantg2 5y ago
        "(And obviously have the ability to disable this feature if the user wishes)" True, that didn't really come to mind since they don't generally talk about allowing that for guns. The best thing is probably using one's phone as the token since the phone has bluetooth and this article mentions that the tools are unlocked with that. The reason I brought up biometrics is that the unlocking 'token' is less likely to get lost than the bracelet, etc. But that does bring up another good point, that some of the common biometrics like fingerprints wouldn't work since many people wear work gloves. Although, it would provide a good large-scale proof of concept for smart gun tech if it worked the same as the proposed smart gun tech.
        • JKCalhoun 5y ago
          "Lost my phone and now I can't use my power tools...." — Future internet of shit post
          • giantg2 5y ago
            Not if it's using an app that stores the info in some manufacturers database (just imagine the marketing goldmine of tracking users usage).
  • EvanAnderson 5y ago
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Power tool DRM would, inevitably, be used in an anti-consumer fashion.
    • eurasiantiger 5y ago
      Looks like Right to Repair has a loophole :-)
    • whymauri 5y ago
      "Firmware Error: this Ryobi drill will automatically turn off and stay off until security patch 11.045. Please connect to a stable Internet connection and set up your Home Depot Builders(TM) account to use your drill." Watch pre-DRM and 'jailbroken' power tools become highly sought after, lol.
      • spartas 5y ago
        Yup. Just watch what happens when the tools reach end-of-life. No more security patches and they will stop working, like all of those early smart TV apps that have been unsupported for years. You could buy a third-party manufacturer's tools because they're cheaper, but when they can't keep the lights on and they shut off the authentication servers, well you're SOL
      • baybal2 5y ago
        Sounds laughable, but I'm already on, I think, 5th such "Product as a Service" contraption, and refused a 6th one because of client's business model been extremely unethical, and borderline fraud: A WiFi MP3 player with "unlimited music through life" and few paid premium tracks, which the client planned to suddenly switch into not so unlimited, and subscription only in the course of 2-3 years through the power of fine print, and legalese. Bait, and switch. Stuff like DRMed consumables for water filters, coffee machine capsules, subscription only air fresheners, and DRMed packed fresh food! is already a reality. And if you don't believe about microchipped, DRMed food, here it is: https://ibb.co/b65kHfY https://ibb.co/b65kHfY https://ibb.co/19L9fw3 https://ibb.co/19L9fw3 https://ibb.co/bvD7NcJ https://ibb.co/bvD7NcJ
  • marcus0x62 5y ago
    The toolmakers have already done this: https://onekeysupport.milwaukeetool.com/en/knowledge/ios-tool-lockout https://onekeysupport.milwaukeetool.com/en/knowledge/ios-too...
    • moftz 5y ago
      That's a neat system. Looks like it works by allowing any phone with the Milwaukee app to identify a nearby tracked tool regardless of who actually owns it. You'd really only be able to keep using a stolen tool as long as the lock-out time is still active and no one with the app comes in range. I wonder if they are able to integrate it with Apple Airtags to at least provide location data.
  • flareback 5y ago
    Future Headline "Construction halted across US as hackers prevent power tool usage"
  • alistairSH 5y ago
    Honest question - where do professional tradesmen buy their tools? Mechanics (auto, airline) don't normally go to HD or Lowes - they buy from SnapOn, Cromwell, or Mac - all three send salespeople in large box trucks full of tools to work site. And all three offer credit and payment plans. And when tools break, those trucks come by with replacements.
    • wastedhours 5y ago
      Depends on the tool and the usecase - our contractors always had proper pro-level drills and powertools, but their handtools (especially more consumable ones that get lost during day to days when they're mobile, like screwdrivers and stuff) looked to be from DIY stores.
    • reportingsjr 5y ago
      My brother and father are high end renovation carpenter's, as far as I'm aware they typically get tools at Home Depot or similar places.
    • namelessoracle 5y ago
      When tools break and they need them today (because the job needs to be finished today because there isnt time on the schedule next week to go back to this job site, also most customers get upset if you leave their home in a state of disrepair....), they DO go to HD or Lowes.
    • 0xffff2 5y ago
      I can't speak for other trades, but I have enough experience doing carpentry (mostly on the side, but paid) to say that Home Depot/Lowes/Local equivalent building supply stores are where carpenters and general contractors buy their tools, or at least that we're buying the same models that are available at Home Depot regardless of source.
      • alistairSH 5y ago
        Interesting. In my limited experience with pneumatic tools, SnapOn is much higher quality than the brands available at big box stores. Probably not worth it for typical homeowners, but my old roommate ran a SnapOn truck.
  • caf 5y ago
    Reading the headline, that's actually what I thought it was going to be.
  • nimbius 5y ago
    i wrench in a shop all day long, and let me tell you what works. Pink tools. My pocket knife is hot pink, my socket wrenches are dipped pink, and most of my powertools have a flair of pink somewhere from a can of Krylon. Pink is natures danger color for the average nail swatter pounding monster energy and fried cake from the 7-11 at 4 AM. my job boxes are covered in unicorn stickers and rainbows.
    • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      That only works because the people who'd steal your tools would steal them to use themselves. There's a reason every large facility that provides its own tools has a tool crib where they track who checked out what.
      • jacquesm 5y ago
        And not just the tools, also the consumables. Endmills and such grow little legs as soon as they're out of the central depot. And that stuff really adds up.
    • brk 5y ago
      I used to do a lot of product demos that involved network equipment. All the patch cables I carried were either pink or purple. They were never confused with customer cables, and I do not ever recall one of them being stolen.
    • analog31 5y ago
      I'm a musician. I make my own cables, all green.
    • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      I’ve heard that pink cars are the least likely to be stolen.
  • sethammons 5y ago
    That's what I thought the title was referring to and my initial thought was it would be brilliant to "lojack" your power tools.
  • moftz 5y ago
    My Makita batteries have an anti-theft feature built-in that offers a way to disable the battery after a certain date or number of hours or days. You have to plug the battery back into a special terminal to "recharge" the day or hour timer or to set a new lockout with a PIN. It comes with warning stickers you can put on your batteries. The system is mostly just meant to prevent workers from borrowing equipment for weekend side jobs or keeping batteries after the job is finished. It doesn't actually stop someone from stealing them (or even the tool the battery goes with) but hopefully they read the sticker and realize that it's not worth stealing what will soon be a worthless battery. I've never used this feature but it's a neat system. Sometimes the tools themselves have anti-theft tags inside that will set off sensors but I don't know if anyone actually uses that outside of the store you bought the tool from.
    • toxik 5y ago
      I’m pretty sure you can just open the battery pack up and disconnect whatever circuit lives in there. The batteries are just packs of chemicals.
      • snypher 5y ago
        Maybe some time ago. Now the tool+battery has handshakes and all that; https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/products/power/battery-management/DS2703.html https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/products/power/battery-ma...
        • nebula8804 5y ago
          I have read about the coming cryptographically signed video cameras to prevent deep fakes. Now we have have signed battery packs. I can't wait to solder in mod-chips into my batteries like the good old days of game consoles. It has become a lot of fun to strip DRM from anything I own. This feeling of freedom that I have that most consumers don't is exhilarating and sad at the same time. We are still in the "good old days" where we can still choose to live most of life without DRM but I know the end will be coming one day. I guess I can prolong it by maintaining my good makita tools, keep my N64 in tip top shape and take good care of whatever else I think will be DRM'ed in the future.
  • soneil 5y ago
    I was actually relieved to find the opposite, that this only concerns the store until it goes out of the door. There was a story the other day that Office 2010 was no longer activating in some regions because the activation servers just aren't there anymore. The downside of having an iphone-esque "activation lock" is that you could be left with a 10yo drill that isn't permitted to turn on because the activation servers have been abandoned - and any sensible workaround negates its use as a theft deterrent.
• speedgoose 5y ago
  In my opinion, the alarms at the doors are there to dissuade non experienced thiefs.
  • kmlx 5y ago
    it's not only your opinion, it's an actual fact. these are called deterrents. same as cctv and other tech. they're not bulletproof, their aim is to make life harder for the perp.
  • letitbeirie 5y ago
    If the alarm goes off just hold up any piece of paper that looks like a receipt and keep walking. That's what I do when I'm not stealing anything at least, but nobody's ever stopped me to find out.
    • jaywalk 5y ago
      There's no reason to even bother holding something up. Just keep walking. It's what I've always done, and it's never once caused an issue even if there's somebody at the door.
      • speedgoose 5y ago
        If you are a dad with blond hair and blue eyes, that may help.
• kiba 5y ago
  In some of my encounter with alarm systems at door, there was a gap in which a person can just walk through and not trigger any alarm.
• tpxl 5y ago
  > For example, we've all encountered those silly alarm systems at the doors. As I've never been a shoplifter, I've never had those go off on me except in error. When I worked at CompUSA for 5 years, we had a greeter at the door who told me "they've never once, in 15 years, caught a shoplifter". They went off several times a day, so the only people being stopped at the door were people who had purchased their goods being treated like a shoplifter. A cashier once forgot to remove the alarm thing on an item I purchased after checking me out. The alarm went off about 20 feet before I was at the sensor, by the time another group was passing through. The security guard checked them and their receipts and let them go. When I passed through no alarm went off.
  • moftz 5y ago
    I used to wear a fleece-lined sweatshirt that would set off the sensors at Barnes and Noble every time. I checked all over for the anti-theft sticker and had washed it multiple times but it must have been inside the jacket.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• ancientworldnow 5y ago
  The simple way already effectively used by companies like B&H is that for high price items or things easily shop lifted, you take a ticket for the item, it's brought to checkout by employees or in b&h's system conveyor belts, and then you purchase it and they hand it to you. This is a solved problem without need for complicated and expensive solutions like yours (which cuts out people paying in cash which is a lot of home depot) or this new solve.
  • minikites 5y ago
    >and they hand it to you This involves paying someone to be the "they" to hand it to you and companies don't want to pay employees if they can possibly avoid it.
    • bradfa 5y ago
      Locally, right now, it's hard to find ANYONE in the local Home Depot or Lowe's stores who actually works there. The registers have a skeleton crew, there's basically no one "helping" in the aisles, and usually only 1 or 2 people at the customer service and online order pickup desk. The people you are able to find seem to be brand new at the job and are basically useless, even for simple things like getting the right online order picked from the shelf behind them as they have no idea what the organizational system is. It's not just that you have to pay someone to do this, you have to be able to simply hire a warm body, and right now that seems horribly hard in retail where I am.
      • lief79 5y ago
        No surprise there, construction is booming ... why take a low paying side job when you can make more doing what you know.
    • colejohnson66 5y ago
      Costco manages it just fine. Want an iPad or iMac? Take the cardboard sheet and hand it to the cashier. Granted, Costco is always staffed, but it is possible.
  • 5y ago
• tomjen3 5y ago
  My mum worked in an upscale retail store back in the day when they introduced the first version of that system. As you say they went of on customers all the time, so she or a coworker would be ready with a box chocolates and an apology. This wasn't cheap at all, but it was still worth it because it prevented so much theft. I don't know if that is still the case, or it is just that thieves go for the easy stores that don't have any security. Back before reddit banned r/shoplifting I lurked there out of curiosity, and it seemed that those who posted there had pretty good ways around that security.
  • nybble41 5y ago
    > As you say they went of on customers all the time, so she or a coworker would be ready with a box chocolates and an apology. You have been randomly selected to receive a door prize! We just need to confirm your receipt first…
• Spooky23 5y ago
  That’s an effective deterrent from a certain type of theft. Mostly casual/thrill seeking thieves. CompUSAs big shrink issues were more organized criminals popping boxes open or flooding the store. I worked at one that was hit by a crime bus — 50 mostly non-English speaking Asians would occupy every employee and loot the place. (They hit all of the big box retailers in our area). The biggest issue was internal fraud.
  • cto_of_antifa 5y ago
    That’s awesome
  • mdip 5y ago
    What you're describing sounds awfully familiar, except for the "loot the place", our store was in Madison Heights, MI, which had/has a large Korean population nearby so it wasn't unusual to have days where it felt like we were being "mobbed by non-English speaking Asians[0]", but I'm not aware of that being used as a distraction at the store I worked at in the 90s -- interesting. Internal fraud was incredible. One day just about the entire warehouse staff and I want to say a third of the floor staff was fired. If memory serves, the warehouse manager discovered that a large number of specialty "Made for Compaq/Dell" RAM by one of the major RAM vendors had its "COST" value set very wrong (to like $5.00 or something like that). The price paid by employees was whatever IMS said "COST" was. So a $350 memory chip could be purchased for $5.00 by an employee. After figuring it out, of course, he shared the knowledge with other members of staff who participated, as well. Dad always said "if it seems too good to be true, it is", so that -- alone -- was enough to keep me from making that mistake. The other scam I recall them running was taking items home that were supposed to be destroyed per agreement with the manufacturer. It was very strange coming to work one day and finding out about half of the staff I used to work with was let go for fraud... [0] We had this one local gentleman who was notoriously frustrating to handle. He'd come in with a million questions, spoke very poor English very quickly and became frustrated to the point of yelling, I think, "F** YOU" at me/storming off when I told him I was having a difficult time understanding ... due to an ear ache (didn't even mention said English; I was pretty good at understanding thick accents, normally). [1] Not as great as it sounds -- I doubt it was "invoice cost", but if it was a PC/laptop/anything terribly expensive, it was frequently higher than the price of the item.
• ancient_art 5y ago
  Not being treated like a potential shoplifter would be nice! A friend of mine and I had these door alarm systems go off while ENTERING a store. We (around 13 or 14 at that time) had to take off most of our clothes in front of other customers (in the middle of the entry next to the registers) until the "store detective" found out it was my friends cap, wet from the rain that day, that triggered the system. Never told anyone because we were ashamed af.
• JKCalhoun 5y ago
  > I fill a cart, walk through the gate out the door and receive a total, passing my card/phone over a sensor to pay. More technology? Maybe the wrong direction. Oldest "hack" in modern shoplifting is to swap the contents of the boxes. You open two boxes on the floor, swap tools, get the better tool charged for the lesser-priced tool. Or as you suggest, merely remove the identification tag so it is not charged at all. Maybe just bring back cashiers to ring people up?
• mannerheim 5y ago
  > but if I got my tool home and it simply didn't work I have bought items without the anti-theft devices being removed, everything from guns to booze. In the latter case, on one of the occasions when that happened, it was possible albeit slightly challenging to simply wriggle the anti-theft device off. In other cases, though, I had to return to the store.
  • s5fs 5y ago
    A few years back I purchased a deer rifle from a local sporting goods store and when I got home I realized they had forgotten to remove their trigger lock. It was about a 30min drive back to the store so I just picked the lock and tossed it aside. Naturally, the next day the store calls looking for their lock and they are very adamant I should return their equipment, but they were less inclined to actually drive over to my place and pick it up.
• somenewaccount1 5y ago
  they are not really meant to catch shop lifters, they are meant to deter shoplifting. And to that extent, they likely work. Maybe not from "professionals", but from little smart ass tikes whom would otherwise think to be 'clever'. Source: I used to shoplift as a kid. Don't grab the shit with buzzers.
• Closi 5y ago
  > I couldn't help while reading this thinking 'Security is in charge of Customer Experience'. O > The alternative is to turn the whole thing upside down. Change the way shopping is done so that shoplifting doesn't work. I fill a cart, walk through the gate out the door and receive a total, passing my card/phone over a sensor to pay. Your post seemed to start with criticising security being in charge of customer experience, and seemed to end with proposing changing the entire shopping experience to avoid theft.
  • yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    Sure? The problem isn't that security is integrated into the way the store works, the problem is that security is making things harder for the customer. The proposed solution reworks the store, true, but it does so in order to maximize convenience for the customer.
• jacquesm 5y ago
  I suspect that those beepers do work: they discourage actual shoplifters to the point that they don't catch them anymore because those shoplifters will move on to stores that don't have the beepers or they successfully lose the tags because they know that they are going to shoplift. And then there are these thingies: https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-security-tag-detector.html https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-security-tag-detector...
• oarsinsync 5y ago
  > Change the way shopping is done so that shoplifting doesn't work. I fill a cart, walk through the gate out the door and receive a total, passing my card/phone over a sensor to pay. Of course, this means it's on Home Depot to get it right and I'm sure there will be ways to defeat the system. This sounds an awful lot like how the Amazon retail / grocery stores work. You arrive, scan a QR code at a gate as you walk in. You take whatever you want, and then leave without dealing with anyone. A bit later, you receive a bill in your email and a charge is made to your card. It's seamless and super convenient. It's also super creepy once you think about how it must work. I don't think I'd go back after that one visit.
• ineedasername 5y ago
  I remember that, shopping at CompUSA. Even more annoying we're alarms in items themselves, display items. Turn the item around to look at it and the alarm could go off, and take a staff member 5 minutes to walk over and deactivate it. Then a few minutes later it would happen again with a different product.
  • mdip 5y ago
    We used to attach the little tags to people's clothing, especially customers who were very difficult[0]. I'm not sure who pointed it out, but we learned that simply pushing on the top of the "tag" would keep it from triggering the alarm. A few years later, the boxes started showing up with the tags on the inside (that was nice; we no longer had to tag those boxes before stocking them). I still wonder, though, if they served any purpose outside of frustrating legitimate customers. I get that they are supposed to serve as a deterrent to casual theft, but when the cameras came in and we started bringing the cops by almost every day for theft, it was clear that the alarm system was serving very little useful purpose. [0] I was 16 at the time!
• madeofpalk 5y ago
  Security is always a trade off with user/customer experience. It's much more convenient to just not have a door or always leave it unlocked.
• dwater 5y ago
  When I worked at CompUSA, our door greeter did pursue a shoplifter who pushed him down on the way out, resulting in a sprained wrist. They ended up firing him because the explicit policy was not to pursue shoplifters for the very reason that risk of injury is too high. I learned a lot of basic retail stuff at that job, like the fact that, for emergencies, all automatic sliding doors have to be capable of being pushed open. It seems like all the shoplifters knew it, there were a few times I saw someone bang straight on through them.
  • mdip 5y ago
    That's funny when putting it through the lens of the store I worked at. Our door greeter was a 70 year old frail woman who was a little out-spoken. I can actually see her running out the door after a shop-lifter, but I can't see it end well. (I'm just not sure for whom)
• basseq 5y ago
  We're all playing armchair strategist here, but I really don't understand the thinking or the decision here. I mean, they kind of thought about CX! They didn't want to go with locked containers because they "don't want to affect the 99.5% of our customers who are just there to pick up their hammers and nails". Those 99.5% of customers who would see (not interact with—just see!) said locked container. Then they go with this complex supply chain solutions that requires additional complexity (e.g., bluetooth technology) to be incorporated at the design step with vendors to make it all work. That has to be multitudes more expensive than security tags and gates. What's the error rate on that process? How many legitimate customers are going to be negatively affected by a miss in the "tool activation" step? And think about it: you're not going to figure out that they missed a step until you get home. Not like the alarm going off when you try to walk out the door before they forgot to remove it. Annoying, but at least you're still at the store! All this in the name of deterrence. Those "silly alarm systems" aren't designed to catch shoplifters... they're to discourage people from shoplifting. Same thing here. After all, it's not like the shoplifters are going to return the tools that don't work!
• callesgg 5y ago
  You dont have to go to prison for prison to have an effect on your mind. Do you get the analogy?