I like Costco but it’s just dumb to check receipts. Most of the time they just glance at my cart but sometimes they don’t even do that. they normally have 2 people doing this now so it goes fast. Given their sales I guess 2 people doing this is like a few pennies to them. Does Best Buy still check receipts? Any other stores?
Sam’s Club also checks receipts
I find it insulting… not to me , but to their own staff.
It’s not like it’d be easy to shoplift something between the checkout and the door. And even if I’d gone through the checkout with rolls of aluminum foil up the arms of my coat, why would I then put it in the cart before I reached the checker? In that situation, I’d just keep moving my arms robot-style until I was out the door.
So my assumption’s always been that it’s to check whether everything in the cart got scanned, or if the checker was crooked or stupid enough to miss items.
Why do I have to show my receipt at the door?
It is standard practice at all our warehouse locations to verify purchase receipts when customers exit our buildings.
We do this to double-check that the items purchased have been correctly processed by our cashiers. It’s our most effective method of maintaining accuracy in inventory control, and it’s also a good way to ensure that our members have been charged properly for their purchases.
Yes, we’ve all seen the explanatory signs, but is there any actual research that shows it to be a cost-effective loss-prevention/inventory control measure?
I would find it hard to believe that Costco(or any company) hasn’t done the research to determine if it’s cost effective.
It even says it’s their most effective inventory control.
Walmart is starting up that crap again.
One thing they do is simply mark the receipt with a felt-tip marker. Otherwise, the crook walks the same receipt back into the store and grabs a second whatever-it-is. When caught walking out the door, the crook would then able to show that crook has a receipt for the second item.
There might be other ways to catch the crook, but this is pretty easy.
In these COVID days, they can also scan the receipt into their system (touchless, you know), then let the crook try to explain why the same receipt is walking out the door a second time.
And the best system is one that prevents shoplifting, so you can’t ever be certain if it really worked or whether people just suddenly got more honesty.
Sure, it’s intuitive that research has been done, but I’m wondering if there are various iterations of it, or if some places adopt the practice in a one-size-fits-all approach.
I agree it is a waste of my time, but I was never planning to shoplift anything. The practice presumably gives pause to the small number of folks that might.
As running_coach said, it seems very unlikely that they wouldn’t have done the research. Shrinkage and loss prevention is such a huge cost that Target and Walmart have their own crime labs (Target has 2 of them now). Considering the high cost of staffing the exit with 2 employees, there must be a calculated cost benefit to it. The largest percentage of theft losses to businesses come from employees, not shoplifters.
It’s trivially easy for a checker not to scan one of a multi-item purchase of an accomplice. Or for a non-accomplice. The receipt-checkers verify whether special-item cash-equivalent purchases such as discount tickets or postage stamps were actually received. Otherwise, they’d have to refund every shopper who claims they didn’t receive the $400 discounted annual health club membership they paid for.
I cannot see how it is effective. I walk up to the checker with boxes full of crap and glances over what he can see and marks the receipt as read. He doesn’t reinvetory those boxes, maybe fumbles through one once.
Would the membership stores revoke your membership for refusing to show it? If I’m rushing in and out of Walmart or somewhere and am approached for a receipt I’ve been known to either keep walking right past them or hand them the receipt and walk off depending on if I need it.
It’s part of your membership agreement when you join.
I suspect the receipt checker is not verifying each item in the three seconds they spend. They are presumably (1) looking for big ticket items on the receipt (2) checking the number of items corresponds to the approximate volume in the cart (3) looking at the reactions of people to the check (4) marking the receipt in a specific colour to diminish fraudulent returns (5) attempting a customer-Borg mind meld to convince you to stock up on enormous quantities of unhealthy items next visit.
I agree that simply having a receipt checker is probably a fair deterrent for some types of theft? and as mentioned up thread marking them probably prevents a different type of theft.
2 employees times $10/hr wages * 1.5 for overhead and benefits is $30/hour. A big box on a weekend can move $10K of merchandise in an hour. If they stop, or more accurately, deter a single $30 theft the store is money ahead.
As @Civil_Guy said, the fact they’ve all taken to marker-ing the receipt indicates the real plot they’re foiling is reusing the same receipt to make multiple trips out the door each time carrying another of something they only bought once.
- Your numbers are way off.
$300 per shopper12 shoppers/hr10 checkstands = $36,000 per hour
- They are counting items on receipt vs. cart
That way the pond-scum can’t go back and say–“oh, I left the prime filet’s at the check stand”
At my Costco they actually count the items, but not the kind or price of items. If you’re over or under, they definitely let you know, and the receipt is marked so it can’t be reused.
You might find it wholly inadequate. Sure, sometimes they don’t check thoroughly. Sure, you could straw-buy a cheap item and surreptitiously swap it out for something bigger after you’ve got your receipt.
But just ask yourself… knowing that someone will be counting your stuff, are you more likely to shoplift, or less likely? Shoplifters aren’t aggressive or violent or bold. It doesn’t take a big threat of accountability to spook them.
That’s really the punchline. All Target cares about is that you shoplift next door at Hobby Lobby instead.
So by erecting barriers, even very porous barriers, they filter out some fraction of the shoplifters. As long as the barrier doesn’t cost more than the thefts prevented, or the incremental harm to honest customer goodwill, they’re money ahead.
The whole thing is no deeper than that.