Supermarket abuse of pricing?

[Richie]

I always use self checkouts and very, very rarely do I have a problem with it.

Their policy of not removing security tags on alcohol until you've paid is fair enough but they authorise then sod off before staking 10 mins to come back whereas, if they waited 10 secs, you'd have paid at that point.

I've started just going upto them as I am leaving with receipt in hand and asking them to remove it.

The proactive ones, when they see alcohol, sometimes jump in and authorise as you are mid checkout so it doesn't need authorised at the end.

 

[fez]

I only ever have issues with the local co-ops checkouts. They are bloody awful. Constantly getting confused with items.

 

[cheesefest]

I'm not sure if anyone else can try and explain this. If they paid cash right at the beginning... how have they not paid? Who is pressing cancel payment? It's not on the card reader as the customer has apparently handed over cash already. Why would you put £20 in? Where does £20 spit out from? IF somehow they didn't pay cash at the beginning, like you said they already had, why would the cashier hand the bottles over if payment hasn't been taken?

I'm very confused.

When you put cash into the self scan which is below the cost of shopping, there is a cancel payment button. Select that and money you paid will be given back to you

 

[cheesefest]

Surely self checkouts should be designed that to cancel a staff member has to input authorisation?

Some supermarkets do, some don’t

 

[MikeTimbers]

All the fraud/theft that happens at the self-checkouts is well understood by the stores. They factor this into their efficiency models for the reduced labour and have decided that it is cheaper to have the self-checkouts. The staff that "patrol" the self-checkouts are told not to intervene if they spot theft and also have no means to easily notify the security guards. The stores would rather lose a bottle or two of JD than have a violent altercation near other customers.

Theft is one element of what is known as "shrink". This is losses from unexplained stock disappearance, ie theft or incorrect pricing. "Waste" is spoiled or returned or out of date product.

In my days with JS, the largest contribution to shrink by a single item was not theft of JD or any kind of theft but in fact caused by the weigh scales at the tills being ever so slightly too small to easily weigh loose leeks meaning that sometimes on end was on the surround of the scales meaning the full weight was not recorded and the customer undercharged. Supermarkets are strange places .

 

[Itc]

All the fraud/theft that happens at the self-checkouts is well understood by the stores. They factor this into their efficiency models for the reduced labour and have decided that it is cheaper to have the self-checkouts. The staff that "patrol" the self-checkouts are told not to intervene if they spot theft and also have no means to easily notify the security guards. The stores would rather lose a bottle or two of JD than have a violent altercation near other customers.

Good to know...wink wink

 

[Hotwired]

Good to know...wink wink

You do not go to jail and stay there even if your entire life is spent thieving in broad daylight.

Oh there's laws. But the shop has to give a **** about compiling evidence, then the police has to give a **** about making an effort then the CPS has to give a **** about prosecuting and if at any point the give a **** threshold isn't met it stops and even resets.

The thieves are right when they say they're being badly treated, how are they even meant to remember the exact instance of thieving they're being done for when it's so rare and difficult and protracted to get them to court for a specific instance and as long as they only thieve a few hundred per instance it's hard to justify the effort.

 

[ubersonic]

Thoughts?

I doubt anything can be done as the supermarkets/tabloids hold too hard a grip over the general public.

I.E the other year or so the government planned to finally crack down on supermarket meal deal scams, the tabloids managed to convince the public that this was bad and that being scammed by supermarkets is a good thing because it's called a deal, the government had to scrap the crackdown and supermarkets are still scamming/gouging customers >.>

 

[AndyCr15]

The staff that "patrol" the self-checkouts are told not to intervene if they spot theft and also have no means to easily notify the security guards. The stores would rather lose a bottle or two of JD than have a violent altercation near other customers.

I can tell you this isn't the case for all Supermarket chains. Whilst there is waste planned into the budget, that doesn't mean you just accept it. You still want it as small as possible. It's not uncommon to get physical in the attempts to keep hold of your stock... you don't just shrug and say 'oh well, there goes another £100 of stock...'

Also, headsets used in a lot of stores now make communication with the security guards very easy.

**EDIT** Mind you, you're right in that procedure would dictate you should only ever intervene if you can do so safely. Reality is, in some stores it's taken quite personally and staff will actually go to quite some lengths to stop these... people... getting away with it, on principal.

 

[dlockers]

They factor this into their efficiency models for the reduced labour and have decided that it is cheaper to have the self-checkouts.

This is how I justify my 5 finger discounts at SS.

 

[tom_e]

**EDIT** Mind you, you're right in that procedure would dictate you should only ever intervene if you can do so safely. Reality is, in some stores it's taken quite personally and staff will actually go to quite some lengths to stop these... people... getting away with it, on principal.

On more than one occasion I have seen a group of staff tearing across the carpark after a scumbag, generally in the smaller stores as as you say it becomes more personal.

 

[cheesefest]

All the fraud/theft that happens at the self-checkouts is well understood by the stores. They factor this into their efficiency models for the reduced labour and have decided that it is cheaper to have the self-checkouts. The staff that "patrol" the self-checkouts are told not to intervene if they spot theft and also have no means to easily notify the security guards. The stores would rather lose a bottle or two of JD than have a violent altercation near other customers.

Theft is one element of what is known as "shrink". This is losses from unexplained stock disappearance, ie theft or incorrect pricing. "Waste" is spoiled or returned or out of date product.

In my days with JS, the largest contribution to shrink by a single item was not theft of JD or any kind of theft but in fact caused by the weigh scales at the tills being ever so slightly too small to easily weigh loose leeks meaning that sometimes on end was on the surround of the scales meaning the full weight was not recorded and the customer undercharged. Supermarkets are strange places .

Also supermarket self scans have stuff on the fruit, veg categories which they don’t sell. There was a bloke in London putting his stuff through the self scans in both Tesco Metro and Sainsburys Local as loose potatoes. He got caught as the shops don’t sell anything loose produce bought by weight. Think they sold produce sold by unit - peppers, lemons, avocados etc.

Supermarkets should be able to customise their own menus of non barcoded items.

We only sell one type of butternut squash at my store. Customers weigh them as the organic or the other type which are more expensive than the one we sell. Waste time getting refunds on these. If we had only one butternut squash option- there would be no refunds. There will be customers who are unbeknown to pay for the wrong type of BNS or can’t be bothered in getting a refund.

 

[cheesefest]

I caught a customer weighing a joint of beef as carrots. “Funny looking carrot” I commented. I voided off the ‘carrot’ and scanned the beef joint. The customer did pay for the joint. Which was £12-14 more than the carrots. Took a copy of the receipt to the managers.

 

[Tykey]

I only use Aldi. Daily or two daily shop, one carrier bag and four pints of milk on the back of my bicycle.
It is always a pleasant experience, I know most of the checkout staff to say hello too and waiting is never usually more than five minutes.

i usually don't buy much at Aldi whereas from what i've seen most Aldi shoppers buy a fair bit each time. *Everytime* i've been there and had to queue up behind other shoppers with full trolleys they have said "is that all you've got? go on go ahead me" etc, i might just be getting lucky but i've not consistently encountered at that at other supermarkets.

 

[cheesefest]

On more than one occasion I have seen a group of staff tearing across the carpark after a scumbag, generally in the smaller stores as as you say it becomes more personal.

I am part of the group that blocks the exits if we see a shop lifter. They aren’t bright as always wear black, charcoal and navy clothing with hoodie hood up, even when we had that hot weather last month and 38c in August last year. Stick out like a sore thumb. Come in with an empty bag.

Earlier this year, a shop lifter came in and raided the steaks chiller. I was following him with a manager. He tripped over on his untied shoelace which made him lose grip on the bag with steaks in. Manager grabbed the bag.

As well as leaving empty handed, he lost his dignity.

There was £400 of steaks in the bag!

 

[MikeTimbers]

My wife was a self-checkout supervisor at a huge JS where there was a good thirty yards from the self-checkouts to the exit. She was given no headset and told never to leave the checkouts so how was she supposed to tell the security at the exits that someone hasn't paid properly? The management did not care. All the other colleagues who she worked with told her to never try to intervene.

My point about "shrink" is that theft is not a big problem generally in the big supermarkets.

 

[Chris Wilson]

All the fraud/theft that happens at the self-checkouts is well understood by the stores. They factor this into their efficiency models for the reduced labour and have decided that it is cheaper to have the self-checkouts. The staff that "patrol" the self-checkouts are told not to intervene if they spot theft and also have no means to easily notify the security guards. The stores would rather lose a bottle or two of JD than have a violent altercation near other customers.

Theft is one element of what is known as "shrink". This is losses from unexplained stock disappearance, ie theft or incorrect pricing. "Waste" is spoiled or returned or out of date product.

In my days with JS, the largest contribution to shrink by a single item was not theft of JD or any kind of theft but in fact caused by the weigh scales at the tills being ever so slightly too small to easily weigh loose leeks meaning that sometimes on end was on the surround of the scales meaning the full weight was not recorded and the customer undercharged. Supermarkets are strange places .

Shouldn't that be called leekage?

 

[b0rn2sk8]

My wife was a self-checkout supervisor at a huge JS where there was a good thirty yards from the self-checkouts to the exit. She was given no headset and told never to leave the checkouts so how was she supposed to tell the security at the exits that someone hasn't paid properly? The management did not care. All the other colleagues who she worked with told her to never try to intervene.

My point about "shrink" is that theft is not a big problem generally in the big supermarkets.

I ultimately wouldn’t intervene so I wouldn’t expect others to either.

The logical fallacy behind the argument that ‘the labour saving is more than the shrinkage’ is that the shrinkage was happening long before self checkouts became a thing, particularly of high value items like alcohol and oddly enough chewing gum.

What self checkouts have probably shown is that those who were stealing from supermarkets were probably nicking it already anyway so the introduction of self checkouts probably had a negligible impact on it even if they sell more loose carrots than they buy in now.

 

[K.C. Leblanc]

I only ever have issues with the local co-ops checkouts. They are bloody awful. Constantly getting confused with items.

Yeah. I visit a lot of Coops and I find they frequently won't give receipts and when you ask for help the staff can't resolve the issue.

Also loyalty cards are a massive faff with Coop. Since some are owned by the Coop group and other are owned by regional societies and have different loyalty cards. I won't be bothered by like Tesco their discounts are now conditional on having a loyalty card.

 

[cheesefest]

One problem is customers don't look at the display on the chip n pin machine. They scan their card hear a bleep and think it has gone through. Not all of the time. Plus a double bleep means it hasn't gone through. We have asked customers that their payment hasn't gone through "I heard it beep". Banks, NOT supermarkets or other retailers do random spot checks on every now and then, a payment must be done by chip n pin. Get customers having a go at us because they don't know their PIN. Hopefully they don't make a payment of over £100.

People think they have to use the PIN allocated to them by their bank. You don't. Go to any ATM, put in existing PIN once card is inserted. Select PIN Services and there you can change your PIN. Don't go for 1234 or 1111. Think some ATMs don't allow those PINs. Or don't go for your last 4 numbers on (current) phone number.