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This article isn’t talking about individuals, though. What would be the disincentive to retail stores reporting theft? There are presumably insurance benefits e

This article isn’t talking about individuals, though. What would be the disincentive to retail stores reporting theft? There are presumably insurance benefits even if they don’t think the police will recover it or apprehend someone.

toast0 4y ago
Reporting comes at a cost to the store. They've got to have their personnel working on it, possibly managerial staff, and they've got a lot of other things to do, and staffing shortages, etc. If reporting doesn't result in police actions that reduce future theft, it seems like it's a waste. If retail theft is as endemic as reporting would seem to indicate, I don't know how they could get insurance for 'petty' theft anyway, so a police report isn't likely to be useful. Likely their business insurance has higher deductibles anyway, so it's more useful for major theft or damage, not for smaller claims.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
For general retail, there is no point to insurance for predictable recurring costs. If you get robbed for 1000 a week, you just add it to your budget. This is differ if you have rare theft of high price items.
Ekaros 4y ago
And if retail theft was daily occurrence, how much would you charge as insurer to insure against it? Less than the damages? I think if you started to offer that sort of business there would be lot and lot of takers.
lazide 4y ago
Retail stores generally were the first to give up: 1) reporting takes time at the staff level, significant time. Which they have to pay for, compounding the losses. I’ve seen security footage, and in some cases it was literally constant. They’d need full time staff just to call the police and report, assuming the cops would even show up if they did that. 2) they can write off the stolen inventory at 100% anyway, and most of them are self insured against this stuff. ‘Shrinkage’ is a normal business operating cost anyway, it’s the scale of it at some of these locations that is nuts. 3) a number of larger chains just gave up and pulled out of the worse areas, and made very public statements about it and why. [https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/wireStory/theft-plagued-walgreens-closing-san-francisco-stores-80550211 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/wireStory/theft-plagued-walgre...] Anecdotally, I was at a Best Buy in the east bay picking someone up. Not a bad area. And one of the fire alarms went off on an emergency exit and I saw someone dart out with something. The staff member just reset the alarm, sighed, and continued helping me. No attempt to do anything else. I asked what was going on and they said shoplifting, and that it happens all the time. Last year I was picking up a small generator at a Home Depot in San Jose - not a bad area - and they had to go into a locked area to get it - they said that was because people would load up a cart with generators and tools and just walk out with them. Nothing they could do, and it was a daily occurrence so now they keep things locked up. Pretty sad frankly.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  Re: 3, Walgreens’ claim that they closed the stores in San Francisco due to shoplifting is famously a lie: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/walgreens-to-shut-200-stores-nationwide-to-trim-costs/ https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/walgreens-to-shut-200-s...
- simoncion 4y ago
  > The staff member just reset the alarm, sighed, and continued helping me. No attempt to do anything else. It has been my understanding that for like at _least_ fifteen, twenty years major retailers have had a "Do not attempt to physically stop shoplifters." policy. The opinions I heard were split on whether it was to protect against an injury suit file by the thief if he were injured during the detention, or having to pay a _ton_ if an employee got seriously injured during the detention. (Source: talking to friends who worked on the floor for major retailers at the start of the century.) TBH, it smells like both to me. Anyway, all this is to say that retailers haven't been _physically_ restraining thieves walking out of their stores for quite some time... but that doesn't _necessarily_ mean that they've stopped reporting the thefts. (Indeed, the SF Mayor's Office's crowing about retrieving items from Retail Theft Rings suggests that -at minimum- a subset of the affected retailers _do_ report thefts.)

toast0 4y ago

Reporting comes at a cost to the store. They've got to have their personnel working on it, possibly managerial staff, and they've got a lot of other things to do, and staffing shortages, etc. If reporting doesn't result in police actions that reduce future theft, it seems like it's a waste. If retail theft is as endemic as reporting would seem to indicate, I don't know how they could get insurance for 'petty' theft anyway, so a police report isn't likely to be useful. Likely their business insurance has higher deductibles anyway, so it's more useful for major theft or damage, not for smaller claims.

s1artibartfast 4y ago

For general retail, there is no point to insurance for predictable recurring costs. If you get robbed for 1000 a week, you just add it to your budget. This is differ if you have rare theft of high price items.

Ekaros 4y ago

And if retail theft was daily occurrence, how much would you charge as insurer to insure against it? Less than the damages? I think if you started to offer that sort of business there would be lot and lot of takers.

lazide 4y ago

Retail stores generally were the first to give up: 1) reporting takes time at the staff level, significant time. Which they have to pay for, compounding the losses. I’ve seen security footage, and in some cases it was literally constant. They’d need full time staff just to call the police and report, assuming the cops would even show up if they did that. 2) they can write off the stolen inventory at 100% anyway, and most of them are self insured against this stuff. ‘Shrinkage’ is a normal business operating cost anyway, it’s the scale of it at some of these locations that is nuts. 3) a number of larger chains just gave up and pulled out of the worse areas, and made very public statements about it and why. [https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/wireStory/theft-plagued-walgreens-closing-san-francisco-stores-80550211 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/wireStory/theft-plagued-walgre...] Anecdotally, I was at a Best Buy in the east bay picking someone up. Not a bad area. And one of the fire alarms went off on an emergency exit and I saw someone dart out with something. The staff member just reset the alarm, sighed, and continued helping me. No attempt to do anything else. I asked what was going on and they said shoplifting, and that it happens all the time. Last year I was picking up a small generator at a Home Depot in San Jose - not a bad area - and they had to go into a locked area to get it - they said that was because people would load up a cart with generators and tools and just walk out with them. Nothing they could do, and it was a daily occurrence so now they keep things locked up. Pretty sad frankly.

jakelazaroff 4y ago
Re: 3, Walgreens’ claim that they closed the stores in San Francisco due to shoplifting is famously a lie: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/walgreens-to-shut-200-stores-nationwide-to-trim-costs/ https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/walgreens-to-shut-200-s...
simoncion 4y ago
> The staff member just reset the alarm, sighed, and continued helping me. No attempt to do anything else. It has been my understanding that for like at _least_ fifteen, twenty years major retailers have had a "Do not attempt to physically stop shoplifters." policy. The opinions I heard were split on whether it was to protect against an injury suit file by the thief if he were injured during the detention, or having to pay a _ton_ if an employee got seriously injured during the detention. (Source: talking to friends who worked on the floor for major retailers at the start of the century.) TBH, it smells like both to me. Anyway, all this is to say that retailers haven't been _physically_ restraining thieves walking out of their stores for quite some time... but that doesn't _necessarily_ mean that they've stopped reporting the thefts. (Indeed, the SF Mayor's Office's crowing about retrieving items from Retail Theft Rings suggests that -at minimum- a subset of the affected retailers _do_ report thefts.)