4 ms·

Anytime corpos blame theft there’s always another reason. I wonder what the real reason they’re doing this is; are the automated checkout companies increasing p

by ok_dad 3y ago

Anytime corpos blame theft there’s always another reason. I wonder what the real reason they’re doing this is; are the automated checkout companies increasing prices or perhaps they’re charging a percentage of the items that go through their machines? It’s never theft, just like a failing economy isn’t on the millennials, and you can’t personally save the environment through recycling and using less gas in your car. The real problems are only covered up by blaming individuals, specifically it ends up being something like “our stores are costing because of downtown theft” then you find out it’s because downtown stores are doing half the business as before the pandemic and it was never theft. Edit: this comment has some links showing I’m correct, theft is a scapegoat: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39740436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39740436

3D39739091 3y ago
Bro, it really is that simple. Literally everyone (except apparently you) is stealing from these retailers. The shrink rate is an order of magnitude higher on self checkout compared to a cashier lane with a human.
- erkt 3y ago
  Some people feel a moral imperative to try to steal from these stores.
- maximus-decimus 3y ago
  > Literally everyone (except apparently you) is stealing from these retailers I guess that's why I can't have nice things. What really bothers me is people who scam insurance and then boast to me about it as if I'm gonna tap them on the back for "sticking it to the man" when they're stealing money away from me by causing my insurance primes to increase but are too stupid to realize it.
  - Sayrus 3y ago
    While I don't support that, that argument only works if your insurance is truly a nonprofit. If profit is involved, they can increase your primes even without people stealing simply for the sake of profit.
    - maximus-decimus 3y ago
      They'll increase it even further when people ask for pay outs.
      - willcipriano 3y ago
        The investors are always asking for pay outs.
- diymaker 3y ago
  The data does not back up this claim, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data...
  - 3D39739091 3y ago
    https://progressivegrocer.com/shrink-self-checkout-lanes-worse-grocers-think#:~:text=According%20to%20research%20from%20Grabango,loss%20than%20traditional%20cashier%20lanes https://progressivegrocer.com/shrink-self-checkout-lanes-wor.... > That analysis showed that self-checkout led to a shrink rate more than 16 times higher than traditional cashier lines. Nearly 7% of self-checkout transactions had at least some amount of partial shrink, compared to 0.32% with cashiers. The analysis also suggested a shrink rate of 3.5% for self-checkout machines, while conventional cashiers only saw a 0.21% shrink rate.
    - ok_dad 3y ago
      > For its study, the company used computer vision to analyze nearly 5,000 retail transactions, comparing items the shoppers picked up during their shopping trip with transaction data to see what was actually purchased Then > According to Grabango, checkout-free technology powered by computer vision can help eliminate self-checkout shrink by tracking what shoppers pick up and charging them exactly what they owe. The company also stressed that average supermarkets could increase bottom-line profits by more than 50% per year by eliminating partial shrink from self-checkout alone. First, I don’t trust a company selling something to say they did a study, literally using that product, and the result of the study was to sell you something new. Not only that, but everyone knows computer vision isn’t always perfect, it’s similar to LLM AI in that when it works it’s amazing but it’s hard to get working. For this study it seems like they trusted their CV product to be perfect and compared it to the human scanned item list and assumed that was inaccurate. This article is literally just an ad, not a reliable source!
- ok_dad 3y ago
  What’s the evidence other than from corpo press releases? They haven’t shown numbers or evidence that’s the real reason, and you can’t trust a corpo to tell the whole truth.
gruez 3y ago
>are the automated checkout companies increasing prices How would this work? The items have price tags on shelves. You can't arbitrarily jack up prices without attracting consumer outrage and/or regulatory scrutiny. >perhaps they’re charging a percentage of the items that go through their machines That wouldn't affect the raw sales data, which is how "shrink" is determined (ie. goods you've bought - goods you've sold) >It’s never theft What makes you so sure of this? Theft is a real phenomenon, so it's at least somewhat plausible that it's affecting stuff. You'd have to have pretty good exculpatory evidence to assert it's "never theft". >specifically it ends up being something like “our stores are costing because of downtown theft” then you find out it’s because downtown stores are doing half the business as before the pandemic and it was never theft. Source?
- ok_dad 3y ago
  https://sfist.com/2023/12/22/sure-enough-shoplifting-was-not-the-reason-for-closure-of-target-at-folsom-and-13th-streets/ https://sfist.com/2023/12/22/sure-enough-shoplifting-was-not... Edit: this one from further down the thread too: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data... For the first point, I usually assume the checkouts are run by third party vendors and charge a fee for the automated systems. I was saying that perhaps those third parties have started to raise prices for the operation of the checkout machines because it’s harder to find cheap labor, so now that corpos have gone all in on automated jobs they’re in a hard place. Maybe not, but I wasn’t saying the checked out item prices were being changed, that’d be stupid.
  - gruez 3y ago
    >Edit: this one from further down the thread too: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data... Your own source admits it's real, albeit limited to certain cities "But the increase in shoplifting appears to be limited to a few cities, rather than being truly national. In most of the country, retail theft has been lower this year than it was a few years ago, according to police data. There are some exceptions, particularly New York City, where shoplifting has spiked. But outside New York, shoplifting incidents in major cities have fallen 7 percent since 2019, before the Covid pandemic." That's hardly enough to support the claim it's "never shoplifting". >https://sfist.com/2023/12/22/sure-enough-shoplifting-was-not https://sfist.com/2023/12/22/sure-enough-shoplifting-was-not... The CNBC investigation this story was based on uses official crime statistics. Seems reasonable, until you realize that if officials aren't responding to crime reports (eg. lenient DAs), stores might not bother reporting, which makes it seem like crime is going down when it really isn't. You can see this in the nytimes article, which has both reported crime data as well as retailers' inventory ("shrink") data. The latter is obviously less susceptible to this effect, and we see that even though the reported crime rates were down 14% (45.1 -> 38.6), shrink was only down 3% (1.62 -> 1.57). The two above combined makes the exculpatory evidence for "it's never theft" to be pretty weak.

by ok_dad 3y ago

3D39739091 3y ago

Bro, it really is that simple. Literally everyone (except apparently you) is stealing from these retailers. The shrink rate is an order of magnitude higher on self checkout compared to a cashier lane with a human.

erkt 3y ago
Some people feel a moral imperative to try to steal from these stores.
maximus-decimus 3y ago
> Literally everyone (except apparently you) is stealing from these retailers I guess that's why I can't have nice things. What really bothers me is people who scam insurance and then boast to me about it as if I'm gonna tap them on the back for "sticking it to the man" when they're stealing money away from me by causing my insurance primes to increase but are too stupid to realize it.
- Sayrus 3y ago
  While I don't support that, that argument only works if your insurance is truly a nonprofit. If profit is involved, they can increase your primes even without people stealing simply for the sake of profit.
  - maximus-decimus 3y ago
    They'll increase it even further when people ask for pay outs.
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      The investors are always asking for pay outs.
diymaker 3y ago
The data does not back up this claim, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data...
- 3D39739091 3y ago
  https://progressivegrocer.com/shrink-self-checkout-lanes-worse-grocers-think#:~:text=According%20to%20research%20from%20Grabango,loss%20than%20traditional%20cashier%20lanes https://progressivegrocer.com/shrink-self-checkout-lanes-wor.... > That analysis showed that self-checkout led to a shrink rate more than 16 times higher than traditional cashier lines. Nearly 7% of self-checkout transactions had at least some amount of partial shrink, compared to 0.32% with cashiers. The analysis also suggested a shrink rate of 3.5% for self-checkout machines, while conventional cashiers only saw a 0.21% shrink rate.
  - ok_dad 3y ago
    > For its study, the company used computer vision to analyze nearly 5,000 retail transactions, comparing items the shoppers picked up during their shopping trip with transaction data to see what was actually purchased Then > According to Grabango, checkout-free technology powered by computer vision can help eliminate self-checkout shrink by tracking what shoppers pick up and charging them exactly what they owe. The company also stressed that average supermarkets could increase bottom-line profits by more than 50% per year by eliminating partial shrink from self-checkout alone. First, I don’t trust a company selling something to say they did a study, literally using that product, and the result of the study was to sell you something new. Not only that, but everyone knows computer vision isn’t always perfect, it’s similar to LLM AI in that when it works it’s amazing but it’s hard to get working. For this study it seems like they trusted their CV product to be perfect and compared it to the human scanned item list and assumed that was inaccurate. This article is literally just an ad, not a reliable source!
ok_dad 3y ago
What’s the evidence other than from corpo press releases? They haven’t shown numbers or evidence that’s the real reason, and you can’t trust a corpo to tell the whole truth.

gruez 3y ago

>are the automated checkout companies increasing prices How would this work? The items have price tags on shelves. You can't arbitrarily jack up prices without attracting consumer outrage and/or regulatory scrutiny. >perhaps they’re charging a percentage of the items that go through their machines That wouldn't affect the raw sales data, which is how "shrink" is determined (ie. goods you've bought - goods you've sold) >It’s never theft What makes you so sure of this? Theft is a real phenomenon, so it's at least somewhat plausible that it's affecting stuff. You'd have to have pretty good exculpatory evidence to assert it's "never theft". >specifically it ends up being something like “our stores are costing because of downtown theft” then you find out it’s because downtown stores are doing half the business as before the pandemic and it was never theft. Source?

ok_dad 3y ago
https://sfist.com/2023/12/22/sure-enough-shoplifting-was-not-the-reason-for-closure-of-target-at-folsom-and-13th-streets/ https://sfist.com/2023/12/22/sure-enough-shoplifting-was-not... Edit: this one from further down the thread too: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data... For the first point, I usually assume the checkouts are run by third party vendors and charge a fee for the automated systems. I was saying that perhaps those third parties have started to raise prices for the operation of the checkout machines because it’s harder to find cheap labor, so now that corpos have gone all in on automated jobs they’re in a hard place. Maybe not, but I wasn’t saying the checked out item prices were being changed, that’d be stupid.
- gruez 3y ago
  >Edit: this one from further down the thread too: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data... Your own source admits it's real, albeit limited to certain cities "But the increase in shoplifting appears to be limited to a few cities, rather than being truly national. In most of the country, retail theft has been lower this year than it was a few years ago, according to police data. There are some exceptions, particularly New York City, where shoplifting has spiked. But outside New York, shoplifting incidents in major cities have fallen 7 percent since 2019, before the Covid pandemic." That's hardly enough to support the claim it's "never shoplifting". >https://sfist.com/2023/12/22/sure-enough-shoplifting-was-not https://sfist.com/2023/12/22/sure-enough-shoplifting-was-not... The CNBC investigation this story was based on uses official crime statistics. Seems reasonable, until you realize that if officials aren't responding to crime reports (eg. lenient DAs), stores might not bother reporting, which makes it seem like crime is going down when it really isn't. You can see this in the nytimes article, which has both reported crime data as well as retailers' inventory ("shrink") data. The latter is obviously less susceptible to this effect, and we see that even though the reported crime rates were down 14% (45.1 -> 38.6), shrink was only down 3% (1.62 -> 1.57). The two above combined makes the exculpatory evidence for "it's never theft" to be pretty weak.