Retail theft

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veteran+
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Retail theft

Post by veteran+ »

Interesting...........................

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/ ... crime-rate

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/arch ... ic/621108/


Reducing shrink by excellent customer service is the key. But you have to find better C-Suite folks to make that happen.

More payroll (and better management)might be cheaper than shrink.

But all that does not provide juicey headlines and corporate alibis to cover up their greed and incompetence.

"It’s also easier for companies and the public to blame theft for store closures and retail struggles than admit stores’ over-expansion, strategy mistakes and customers abandoning stores for online shopping, said Jonathan Simon, a criminal justice professor at UC Berkeley School of Law.

“It’s much more convenient if we can blame it on people we already consider reprehensible,” he said."
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Re: Retail theft

Post by pseudo3d »

Just glancing over, they seem to play by the rules with "crime isn't reported === no crime is committed" line of thinking. It makes numbers look nicer but it doesn't change reality.
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Re: Retail theft

Post by ClownLoach »

pseudo3d wrote: January 18th, 2023, 9:06 am Just glancing over, they seem to play by the rules with "crime isn't reported === no crime is committed" line of thinking. It makes numbers look nicer but it doesn't change reality.
I'll say it again: the police make it impossible to report theft. It is deliberate. They don't want to do the work, they basically will only prosecute if you do all the detective work for them and even then they will poke holes in what you provide them.

Here is what they ask for, much of which is impossible to provide:

1) an exact listing of every single individual unit stolen, with its cost, full retail price, and average price sold (to factor in sale prices). If you're dealing with the typical situation of a whole rack cleared or shelves emptied you must magically be able to prove exactly how many units of each SKU, by exact SKU, were present at the moment of theft or you have no case

2) an exact date and time each individual unit of merchandise was physically received in the store (obviously not going to be accurate)

3) a listing of all of the dates each item was inventoried or verified to be present (who has this? No one)

4) video by SKU of every individual item being stolen, from concealment to exit of the building

5) written sworn statements from employees and customers who witnessed the thefts; statements must be from every employee clocked in at the time of loss regardless of whether or not they saw the theft. Of course the more that say they didn't see it the more likely they will not prosecute because "too many people didn't see it happen"

6) documentation by SKU from the last year of any other known or unknown loss of each item being reported stolen, basically an audit trail of each individual item and once you present it then you're told it is going to be used to discount the overall prosecution amount because if anything ever went missing then it must be presumed the accused (if ever caught) didn't steal that item.

7) more useless and impossible to generate documents that I don't recall at the time, but I do remember that truck bill of lading documents and receiving manifests were requested. Basically they wanted information and paperwork that most retailers stopped generating decades ago as every process was digitized, maybe they consulted with Kmart, Sears and Montgomery Ward to write their policies?

Needless to say it is damned near impossible to put together such records for any theft without spending hundreds of hours assembling the documents that even exist. We were questioned as to why we do not have a paper record showing that an employee physically verified the receipt of each individual piece of merchandise. Nobody does this in the age of distribution centers except maybe for high shrink items at certain companies, you unload the truck and stock it immediately. Basically it is impossible to report shoplifting thefts, at least in California.
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