I knew shop lifting was a problem but I didn't imagine it was like this..

[SunShow]

DS is working in a Tesco Express. He personally makes around 8 shop lifting reports every day. Obviously these are just the one he sees.

I imagined that shoplifting was kids/teens stealing a chocolate bar or desperate people stealing food and that does happen, but most of it is much larger scale. Yesterday he had people arrive with rucksacks and literally sweep the contents of a shelf into their bags.

Staff are taught not to confront them (good as far as his mother is concerned!) and police take no action even when there is good CCTV.

This is a small supermarket in the nicer bit of a perfectly pleasant suburban town.

Does this mean that Ocado have a massive advantage, because they have no physical access for shoppers to their warehouses? They only do deliveries. I would have thought that the online retailers would all have a big advantage in this like chemist direct and amazon.

@complicated2I think we’ll see a lot more physical retailers closing down. A pp mentioned a few pages ago that Wilko were losing loads in thefts. Not sure if that contributed to them closing down?

That’s outrageous. I hope you gave them a bollocking??

The near constant videos of people doing this, on social media is partially to blame.

These people see others helping themselves to armfuls of expensive things and think ‘if they can get away with it, so can i’.

I had some fruit at Tesco scan and shop the wouldn’t scan after multiple attempts so I left it and got some chocolate instead. This scanned as unusual behaviour and I was selected for a random shop scan - fair enough

they didn’t ask me about other purchases and I myself forgot I’d purchase something separately from the store pharmacy that I had to pay for separately. As soon as she picked it up I told her but she scanned it anyway even though I had my receipt

I was named and shamed in Tesco computer since then, all eyes on me and stopped for full scan every time for about 12 months

in the same store people are just pushing through the barriers with rucksacks and baskets of stuff

It’s a weird world we live in. Asked my 16 yr old DS to do me a favour while he was in town today -to get me a couple of pots of Longley Farm cottage cheese from Poundland. DS said the security guard at the checkout thanked him …”for not stealing it”
🤷🏼‍♀️🙃

Poundland sells Longley Farm? Well colour me shocked.

Sadly, that is true. When I was sat in Greggs seeing people just treat it like a pantry at home, I saw two young boys come in who had been watching for a while and decided to give it a go themselves. I pretended to film them on my phone, and it seemed to put them off.

Happens in our local coop car park too and they aren’t even discrete anymore

We have those face scanning gates at the exit of our supermarkets in Australia. It only opens if you have paid for your shopping. But have the supermarkets passed on their shoplifting cost savings in the form of lower prices? No!
They are already saving massively on labour costs by making us scan our own shopping instead of the employees, so I am not very sympathetic to them. They make huge profits.

Friend worked in Debenhams. Organised gangs would come in clear the beauty department out. One brazen lot wheeled out two rails of women's designer coats.

I've reported three shoplifters at our local co-op. Nothing happens to them.

It's a nice quiet village.

Last month a gang came in and robbed a lot of small co-op shops in the evening. Only school kids on at this time.

In a Sainsbury’s that i pop into at least 3 times a week, i forgot to scan the carrier bag, and the member of staff came storming over to me to check my receipt.

I said to her, ‘for Christ’s sake. The amount of money I spend in here, and the amount of stuff that’s stolen every day, and you’re giving me a hard time about a poxy carrier bag’.

I have the scan ticket to release the exit door at my local Sainsbury’s in Wiltshire Bloody exhausting when I’ve walked round the shop and just wanted to get home.
i use a walker and have set gas alarms off my reaching forward to scan the bloody receipt
I think cusomers should get a percentage discount if they’re forced to do the working ab employee but I’m old, knackered and grumpy

We were in Liverpool about 6 months ago and this random couple approached me and Dh and our 3 dc trying to sell us steaks 🤣 seemed weird at the time but makes sense now!

obviously we didn’t buy any!

So you're ok with stealing as the supermarkets deserve to lose money?

In b and q recently me and my children witnessed two guys work together - a guy walked out of the store with a huge trolley full of dulux paint whilst his mate distracted the self serve staff. I tried desperately to explain it was happening and she kept pushing me off to say she was busy (with the distraction guy! 🙈)
Honestly must have been close on a grands worth of paint

That was a trend involving luxury retailers.

The reason for certain items being kept locked up in many Walgreens, Walmarts, etc, is petty theft. One of the first items to be kept locked away, iirc (this was many years ago) was infant formula.

I’ve done this too. My local Lidl is always being ransacked for those little cocktail cans by teenagers. I forgot to scan a carrier bag once! (I promise that I do always pay for a bag if I don’t have one on me) I got to the exit and was stopped, frogmarched back to the self checkout area and made to wait in the queue to pay for a bag.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I must just look like a wrongen, I now make sure I get my receipt and pay for the carrier bag

And to add, in the US, Walmart will call police for items valued at $25 or over.

It's very short sighted to turn a blind eye to shoplifting. People start to feel a deep sense of unfairness, seeing scofflaws get away with crime while they feel they are squeezed financially doing the right thing. There's a loss of confidence in the police and in the power of the law. People feel they're living in a lawless society. Eventually all respect for the law breaks doen when there's a strong perception of laws with no teeth and police who won't act. It's extremely corrosive.

There should be zero tolerance.

When you have to scan a receipt to get out of a shop - what happens if you didn't buy anything?

I'm also confused about those shops that automatically charge your card. Can you not take something off the shelf to have a look at it, then put it back?

I don't think either of these approaches would do anything to limit rush-and-grab robberies, anyway.

When you have to scan a receipt to get out of a shop - what happens if you didn't buy anything?

Well, always someone with a receipt to open the gate. You exit with them.

Thanks. So, tailgate them like a robber? 😂

What did you think a supermarket security guard in a supermarket would do about this? I'd have called the police.

So you're entitled to freebies?

Prison isn’t just for rehabilitation, it’s for punishment and deterrence mainly. The government know this. That is why they ordered those arrested during the riots last year to be quickly processed and they got unusually long sentences. Lo and behold the rioting stopped. It would only need a few high profile prosecutions for people to stop doing it, knowing they risk serious jail time. At the moment there are zero consequences and the rest of us are paying for it.

The state is failing if the reason we can’t punish offenders is because we can’t afford to house them in prison. This is the same reason given for all the men prosecuted for possession of child sexual abuse material who serve no jail time as there is no space. We need more prisons. I already have one in my backyard thanks and would 100% support its expansion.