Retail theft claims overblown?

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Retail theft claims overblown?

Post by veteran+ »

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business ... index.html

Interesting that a corporation would back track a little on this.........................

Also, police reports do not match reasons for closing a store.
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Re: Retail theft claims overblown?

Post by ClownLoach »

First off, 2.5% shrink is still nothing to be proud of. Second, they already closed the highest shrink stores everywhere. Third, nobody in real life bothers calling the police to report shoplifting because the police won't even come out to take a report. Last time we needed to make a report we were asked to assemble paperwork that would take 12 hours or more to put together plus documentation that would be impossible to gather and were told to come to Police Headquarters to file the report.
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Re: Retail theft claims overblown?

Post by Alpha8472 »

Walgreens is panicking. Their investors have seen the videos of people stealing from the stores. Walgreens is seen as a bad investment. Investors are avoiding Walgreens.

Now this executive is saying shoplifting is not bad at all, buy our stock.

Shoplifting is high at Walgreens in many areas and that is why Walgreens is closing stores. Trying to prevent shoplifting is more difficult than ever due to lack of enforcement, prosecution, and local laws that favor criminals.

Unless you turn the Walgreens into a secured bank building with a metal detector mantrap at the door, you will never stop the shoplifters.
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Re: Retail theft claims overblown?

Post by ClownLoach »

Alpha8472 wrote: January 6th, 2023, 11:43 am Walgreens is panicking. Their investors have seen the videos of people stealing from the stores. Walgreens is seen as a bad investment. Investors are avoiding Walgreens.

Now this executive is saying shoplifting is not bad at all, buy our stock.

Shoplifting is high at Walgreens in many areas and that is why Walgreens is closing stores. Trying to prevent shoplifting is more difficult than ever due to lack of enforcement, prosecution, and local laws that favor criminals.

Unless you turn the Walgreens into a secured bank building with a metal detector mantrap at the door, you will never stop the shoplifters.
I wonder if we will see Walgreens move to post signage banning photography and videography on their private property, then try to get their guards to enforce the policy. Because otherwise when these videos keep coming out daily of shoplifters looting their stores and flipping off the security guard at the door these investors are going to have a lot of questions. Having said that - the stores that were really being looted daily are gone, and I suspect that some of them were so bad that they were in the high double digits for shrink percentage. It doesn't take long for outliers like that to really screw up the entire company shrink line. Nor does it take long for the entire company to drastically improve once those stores were purged.

Also there are a lot of really crafty ways to manipulate year over year shrink numbers. One easy one is to change the inventory dates. Lock down the bad stores for a few months and take a second inventory then use that as the shrink rate. Or push the inventory date out and ride with a 18 month inventory that conveniently has two peak seasons covered to manipulate the overall shrink percentage of sales. I do not believe that Walgreens lowered shrink from over 3% to 2% in a year. That is not normal in any retailer to swing so wildly from year to year. And yes I'm making some pretty outlandish accusations with absolutely zero facts to back then up, and such inventory games are perfectly legal. But that doesn't make it right.
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Re: Retail theft claims overblown?

Post by storewanderer »

veteran+ wrote: January 6th, 2023, 10:55 am https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business ... index.html

Interesting that a corporation would back track a little on this.........................

Also, police reports do not match reasons for closing a store.
Same corporation that refused to install a security guard overnight in a 24 hour store in Reno that experienced armed robberies multiple times back in the 2007-2010 period, saying the cost was too much for a security guard. The store is no longer 24 hours now so they did finally "get it." It was not unusual for the store to operate overnight with 1 assistant manager on self serve and 1 pharmacist, since that was 2 employees total, that met the corporate minimum staffing requirement. The other 24 hour store in Reno (still 24 hours), which was higher traffic but in a worse but far busier area, always had security guard overnight plus minimum 2 employees in pharmacy and minimum 2 employees in self serve- really scary place, and tons of shoplifting occurred but it was small stupid shoplifting like open packages of random OTC items thrown here and there with the contents missing. No shelf wipe outs, back then. Now it feels like 40% of the shelves in that store are locked up (including the whole cosmetics wall, and even parts of the candy aisle).

Also not sure 2.5% shrink is something to be proud of. I also think they addressed this in part by not stocking as many high shrink items. They also have implemented a program where if someone shoplifts the employees are to file an incident report in the store computer where they provide physical description, time, vehicle description, license plate, and other information about the theft, and then it goes to some database and some contractor works with their loss prevention. It is possible the theft rings have been made aware of this system and they may be avoiding Walgreens now because this is the type of system that can be used to build cases against thieves who hit multiple stores over time in the same chain and prosecute even in places like CA (ask Target how that is accomplished, they are the pros at it).

So it is possible part of why shrink is down is due to their new procedure for tracking shoplifters.
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Re: Retail theft claims overblown?

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: January 6th, 2023, 9:36 pm

I wonder if we will see Walgreens move to post signage banning photography and videography on their private property, then try to get their guards to enforce the policy. Because otherwise when these videos keep coming out daily of shoplifters looting their stores and flipping off the security guard at the door these investors are going to have a lot of questions. Having said that - the stores that were really being looted daily are gone, and I suspect that some of them were so bad that they were in the high double digits for shrink percentage. It doesn't take long for outliers like that to really screw up the entire company shrink line. Nor does it take long for the entire company to drastically improve once those stores were purged.

Also there are a lot of really crafty ways to manipulate year over year shrink numbers. One easy one is to change the inventory dates. Lock down the bad stores for a few months and take a second inventory then use that as the shrink rate. Or push the inventory date out and ride with a 18 month inventory that conveniently has two peak seasons covered to manipulate the overall shrink percentage of sales. I do not believe that Walgreens lowered shrink from over 3% to 2% in a year. That is not normal in any retailer to swing so wildly from year to year. And yes I'm making some pretty outlandish accusations with absolutely zero facts to back then up, and such inventory games are perfectly legal. But that doesn't make it right.
It would be funny if they banned photography and video on property and trespassed people off the property for engaging in photography and video. Their employees are not allowed to call the police on shoplifters, all they can do is go into the system I described above and file an incident report. So how would they enforce a no photography policy? I don't think they would.
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Re: Retail theft claims overblown?

Post by veteran+ »

My point in posting was that "theft" is the go to excuse (real, not real or exaggerated) for evey company to use to cover up or diguise their incompetence. It is the juicy narrative (like people slowing down to view the gore of a traffic accident) that the "media" and the trade organizations love to cover (especially with "certain" cities, ad nauseum).

Yet, this company seemed to walk that back? Hmmmmm..............interesting.

🤷🤷🤷
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Re: Retail theft claims overblown?

Post by pseudo3d »

veteran+ wrote: January 7th, 2023, 6:31 am My point in posting was that "theft" is the go to excuse (real, not real or exaggerated) for evey company to use to cover up or diguise their incompetence. It is the juicy narrative (like people slowing down to view the gore of a traffic accident) that the "media" and the trade organizations love to cover (especially with "certain" cities, ad nauseum).

Yet, this company seemed to walk that back? Hmmmmm..............interesting.

🤷🤷🤷
I don't think Sears, Bed Bath & Beyond, or any failing company blames theft for the reason they close stores. It's the same with video games, no legitimate developer will blame piracy for their inability to sell copies.

In San Francisco, theft and other petty crimes were getting out of control because the DA basically refused to prosecute or punish criminals for anything, and things got bad enough it led to a recall election, which was largely funded by and voted by Democrat voters.

What then, was Walgreens expected to do? Hire above-the-law goons to beat shoplifters to a pulp?
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Re: Retail theft claims overblown?

Post by veteran+ »

Well, I'm gonna disagree with just about everything you said and leave it at that.

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Re: Retail theft claims overblown?

Post by storewanderer »

At least we should be able to take this to assume we will not see Walgreens claim they are closing any more stores due to theft reasons during 2023... right?

I guess we will see what happens.
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