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U.S. retailers admit they lied about shoplifting, retail crime again
(boingboing.net)
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this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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Wait are you telling me insurance is a scam because if you ever need to use it it'll cost more money? That's crazy dude, I feel so awful for the massive multimillion dollar companies that are forced to pay for it...
Enjoy paying higher prices for everything and having to track down every time you want to purchase an item when they lock all the shelves.
Not sure where you live but it's getting really old seeing toothpaste and basic necessities getting locked up like video games in the 90s.
I mean as you yourself noted they are already locking up stupid shit like toothpaste. Nobody is fuckn stealing enough toothpaste to effect profits. Hell I'm not sure who would even bother stealing toothpaste, it's not exactly expensive. Saving yourself like a buck at most by not buying the cheap (just as effective) stuff.
And I'm not advocating for theft sheesh. I just think it's funny that the oh so wonderfully for profit insurance companies fuck over retailers too. I was trying to comment about how insurance is maybe kind of a scam...
I'll also note that there isn't actually a widespread theft problem. Stores aren't locking up toothpaste because people are stealing it more than they used to. There were a few places, notably New York which did some really stupid shit with petty crime essentially just publicly saying they weren't gonna deal with it that caused a lot of problems but by and large toothpaste isn't locked up because people are stealing it. The company is just a dick
It's not that the toothpaste itself is the high theft item, it's just easier to lock the whole shelf rather than specific items. Notably items like Razor blades have crazy high theft rates and are usually near the toothpaste, causing them both to be locked up.
Check out some metropolitan areas for a preview of what's coming to a store near you. Denver has been locking stuff up for years already.
"I hate Amazon and Jeff Bezos! Anyway, watch me steal from this store."
Why wouldn't I steal petty shit from a large chain store like Walmart? They stole living wages from workers in many communities, they stole the diversity of local businesses that used to be in many communities, most importantly they steal from every single one of us by not paying a genuinely fair share back to the society they profit off of in terms of taxes. Sorry, not gonna feel bad for stealing some toothpaste, especially when it is a store that fired all the cashiers and has one person frantically running around helping people in a sea of obnoxious self checkout machines that all blare the same audio loop out over and over and over again.
Drives prices up for other people on your community
At first they thought at first it was greedflation, that it was the 1% siphoning off all the profits from the economy to shareholders, they thought it was massive corporations hedging families out of the housing market, austerity and lack of social safety net.... but the whole time it was ME stealing toothpaste from walmart, slowly undercutting the heart of america. They didn't realize until it was too late, I had become too powerful. I have a whole bathroom full of stolen toothpaste tubes and I am ready.
If you think shoplifting doesn't cause prices to go up, you're just wrong, man. Yes, there can be, and are, other factors, too.
Me, I prefer to not contribute to the problem.
It literally doesn't, that is the whole point of this discussion? I am telling you, there is zero mathematical/economic evidence that shoplifting even registers as a problem worth investing time and energy into for massive corporations. They do invest time and energy, but it is because the narrative is useful to them. That is what this is about, it is about a story. Not economics, not math, not hard cold reality, it is about a narrative that emotionally engages you and gets you upset. It is about a story that rationalizes the world for you in a way that directs your anxiety and fear. There is zero scientific grounding in your beliefs about shoplifting, it might as well be a spiritual or religious belief you hold and just the way people will try to take advantage of you by preying upon your spiritual beliefs, so will corporations and politicians try to take advantage of you by preying upon your belief that shoplifting actually matters to economic behemoths that shape and undermine our entire economy.
Literally THE ENTIRE point of being a massive chain is that random noise like shoplifting disappears into the overwhelming roar of economies of scale.
Well, ease of regulatory capture is another bonus but that just strengthens my argument...
Stores invest millions in anti-theft security, in technical, logistical, and physical ways. All of those things cost money.
Stores make money by selling things.
That's not the entire point of it at all. Efficiency is.
Also: https://blog.gitnux.com/walmart-shrinkage-statistics/
You are making a clear logical fallacy by acting like this proves shoplifting must actually significantly impact their bottom line. Further there is abundant evidence that corporations invest massive amounts of money into things that don't actually help them economically. Don't tell me you also believe the narrative that markets are magically always rational??
You don't seem to be able to understand this isn't about numbers, it is about narratives.
If they invest the money, the money is spent, thus affecting the bottom line
Not sure why you're trying to argue this so hard, but there is no percent chance you will be correct here. Costs are indeed passed forward onto customers.
The efficacy is completely irrelevant. What's relevant is the costs induced. You are correct that people are irrational. That doesn't change the fact that the irrationality costs them money, which they make back via pricing.
Also I assure you that Wal-Mart has a very large team whose only goal is to measure the cost/benefit analysis of decisions like these - and those teams also cost money. Even the concept existing at all raises prices.
ahahahaha so now you are blaming me for the irrational economic behavior of corporations? I feel so powerful now, thank you.
Yes I am blaming the cause for the effect. You are correct.
Bro just say you're a thief and you don't give a shit. You don't need to do all the gymnastics. You can just be a thief.
Just admit you are an idiot conservative who doesn't actually care about facts, numbers or reality, all you care about is a good morality story.
Man you're stealing all the irony too lol
“Companies say these incidents have led to a spike in merchandise losses, known as shrink. The metric incorporates inventory losses caused by external theft, including organized retail crime, employee theft, human errors, vendor fraud, damaged or mismarked items and other losses.
But the retail industry’s own figures on shrink cast doubt on their claim that the problem is ballooning. Researchers say retailers may be blaming theft for losses when they don’t actually know the cause.
Shrink is an “issue where you’ve got a problem, but there’s no way to know exactly where the losses are coming from,” said Richard Hollinger, a retired professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Florida, who studies retail losses and launched the retail industry’s first annual security survey in the early 1990s.
According to the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual survey of around 60 retail member companies, shrink is a “rapidly ballooning issue.” In 2021, retail shrink hit $94.5 billion, up only 4% from 2020 but a 53% jump from 2019.
But, in fact, the average shrink rate as a percentage of sales dropped to 1.4% in 2021 from 1.6% in 2020, according to the latest NRF survey. That number has hovered around 1.4% for more than a decade.“
Ok ok so the concern for shoplifting from Random’s doesn’t even warrant tracking as a separate stat (it is no more important than workers occasionally misplacing boxes in the supply chain??), we are talking about <1% of sales. Sorry not going to lose sleep over that?
How about those organized shoplifting sprees that we keep hearing about? What does the national Retail Foundation, the group that is going to be the most concerned about this out of any?
“The NRF estimates that organized retail crime costs companies an average of just 7 cents for every $100 in sales.”
sigh y’all are full of shit and I am tired of it
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/01/18/business/retail-shoplifting-shrink-walgreens/index.html
Man you're really passionate about trying to justify your stealing lol