We also have a couple of traditional malls with traditional department stores. But yeah, the march of the big boxes has largely done for the Bloomingales & the Macy’s and the Sears type of “department store” you and I grew up with.
My closest hardware store is a very traditional Ace. But HD & Lowes are not very much farther.
And yes, fundamentally the big box concept was reduced prices in exchange for reduced customer service. Some of the price/customer service tradeoff is a reasonable bargain, but anything can be carried too far. Costco & similar “warehouse stores” just grabbed that ball and ran all the way to the next county with it.
When I moved here 6 years ago I went to the local Costco midweek midday. I got the “go look see” day pass and was appalled to see hordes of people waiting in line 20 minutes to check out. Haven’t been back since. IMO warehouse stores are a bridge too far. I have choices; I’ll use them.
As we all should, in whatever way makes us happiest. Ideally without vandalizing the choices of the others while doing so.
It must be area-specific or something. It’s been many years since I’ve had to wait more than 5 or at most 10 minutes in line. Even when lines look long, they move fast. And now they’ve added self checkout that actually works well.
Another view: I live within 5 miles of a Walmart and have never been in the place. I don’t know what I would need there. I get my groceries at a grocery store (we have several with a 10 mile radius. I go to Lowe’s and Home Depot as necessary. We have a Costco nearby. I’m not boycotting Walmart, but it would never occur to me to visit the place.
Back to the topic at hand. I don’t mind getting my Costco receipt checked, but at our store, they are definitely not counting or checking. They glance at our overflowing cart and mark the receipt. Takes about 3 seconds.
Living in a suburb of a decent sized city near a significant outdoor mall, closer than the nearest Walmart are two Targets, a dozen grocery stores, bunch of pharmacies, two thrift stores, two large sporting goods stores, bunch of clothing stores, bunch of shoe stores, and a bunch more. I mainly would end up shopping at the Walmart if I happened to be near it for other reasons, so skipping it isn’t me making some great sacrifice or even a tough decision. EDIT: There’s also a Lowe’s and Home Depot and a couple of local hardware stores, plus an Agri-Supply superstore, if it’s tools and such.
You get the feeling that if a store decided to do a random pat-down of exiting customers to supplement store security and discourage shoplifting, some posters here wouldn’t have a problem with it.
Why protest - it’s just a minute or two out of your life, it keeps prices down and it could happen to you at the airport anyway.
I’ve seen various sites over the years which claimed that the primary reason Costco checks receipts is to make sure you’ve not been charged too many times for the same item. (Presumably this would tick off the customers and also tie up the customer service people.) E.g. When Costco checks your receipt, it’s not because they think you stole something
I think it’s pretty different. I wear a mask because I might be contagious. I’m quite sure I’m not a shoplifter, so I don’t have to take precautions like having my receipt checked to prevent my accidentally shoplifting something. Shoplifting isn’t a collective action problem the way that public health is.
The argument that failing to stop for receipt checks emboldens shoplifters seems pretty flawed to me. Shoplifters aren’t brazenly walking past employees asking them to stop.
People make many demands on my time and attention. I get to decide which ones are interesting or important enough to accept. Businesses, in particular, are adept at figuring out little ways they can make all of us waste just a tiny bit of time in order to increase their bottom line by 0.002%. Remember when you could buy groceries without being asked to donate to a charity (that presumably gives the grocery store enough of a kickback to slow down all their customers).
It’s not that any one of these things is a huge burden. But the collective impact is large and unpleasant. And I don’t think we are honor bound to go along with it.
I always say “No thank you.” Empathy requires kindness and politeness to other people, but it does not require doing what they ask.
I get that this is sort of a silly place to draw a line in the sand, but I also think that we all get to draw these lines where we choose, and that I have considered the issue, not knee-jerked my way into generic opposition.
This article’s reasoning is flawed. Costco’s receipt checks catch relatively few attempted thefts because people whose thefts would be noticed by a receipt check mostly aren’t dumb enough to attempt them when they know receipts will be checked. The point is that the receipt checks deter thefts. Once that’s done, all that’s left to find are clerical errors.
Keep in mind that everything has a cost. If stores didn’t employ loss-prevention measures, the price of everything would go up. If they were to staff up to prevent any line waiting, the price of everything would go up.
It’s clear that American consumers as a whole will reward those businesses that have lower prices. So these choices are being made to serve the market. They’re not doing it because they’re rude or inconsiderate.
What it all comes down to is what are people as a whole willing to pay for.
Costco and Sams Club are membership stores, and you agree to the receipt check as part of your membership.
Walmart or Best Buy would get a “no thank you” as I proceed out the door with my freshly-purchased merchandise. Our transaction concludes at the register.
@nelliebly I just read your cite, and I fail to see where in that news article it claims that that stores set prices based on shrinkage at all. Stores set prices to maximize revenue, using a variety of models. AFAIK, none of those models have anything to do with shrinkage, which when compared to labour, rent, and cost of goods sold is only a tiny percentage of a retail stores expenses.
Have you ever seen a store advertise a sale because a recent heat wave has dramatically lowered their heating bill and they are now passing those savings unto consumers? I haven’t. That is why I don’t agree with you that I have a moral obligation to comply with a stores security policies if I am not legally obligated to.
More on topic, I once dated a dude who worked at Costco, and according to him, they trained him to primarily look for four things:
The code at the top and bottom, which changes daily
The item count on the bottom
High end items, which are printed differently
Physically large items, which are also printed differently
This is why they can do it so quickly. If it’s a receipt from today, and you didn’t buy anything expensive or bulky, all that is required is to highlight the receipt and do a quick peek at the cart to see if the item count is reasonable.
Do you really think that stores don’t set their prices based on what their costs are? If they have to buy 120 of something in order to sell 100 of them, that is absolutely a factor that goes into the cost.
Econ 101 says that in an efficient market higher costs are borne both by businesses and by consumers. The supply curve shifts left, which raises the equilibrium cost. Retail stores are pretty efficient as markets go, so it’s pretty likely that the economists are right about this one.
The reason we haven’t seen “heat wave” sales is that stores generally don’t design marketing pitches based on that reality, nor due they generally set prices based on known short-term events like temporary weather patterns.
Remember also that in a Costco-type store you probably have a lot of people putting items on the bottom shelf of the cart. If a lazy cashier decides not to bend over and scan those items for a full shift that could be a five-digit loss, easily. Receipt checking also nips that in the bud as soon as it starts.
Costco is one of the most successful companies in America and has gotten to that position with a stellar reputation - probably the most admired large company in terms of both customer service and employee working conditions. My presumption is that they know what they are doing until proven otherwise.
I think I’ve abandoned my cart exactly once and it was because of an emergency and I felt bad about it knowing I was adding to someone’s workload. Sometimes, despite the best efforts of management, they don’t have enough people to assist all their customers in a timely manner. I generally suck it up and just continue with my shopping knowing I’ll be in line longer than I want to be.
It bothers me that you might have to worry about your safety simply because of your race, gender, sexual orientation, or some other trait and I hope the situation improves for you and everyone else as quickly as possible.
When the self-bagging area fails, and the self-check-out refuses to complete the transaction, and the staff member is busy fixing the same problem on another station – that’s when I walk out.
And if the price rises to cover the extra staff member to put my stuff back puts the store at a competitive disadvantage — looks like a win to me.
When I leave my Costco, the exit person glances at my cart, draws a line on the receipt, and thanks me. There is no serious check. I think the only time they actually checked was when I bought a TV.
Well, that’s a little “inside baseball” that’s interesting. That may explain a lot.
The traffic flow is such that it would be very difficult to load a TV in a cart, and get it to the exit without going through a checkout line. I’m not saying there is no way to steal stuff, but it is hard to begin with.
OTOH I use the portable scanner at my grocery store–you scan each item as it goes into your cart, right into a bag. Then to checkout you just pay and go. They randomly select people to audit at checkout–they take my scanner and scan 8 random items in my cart. If I forgot to scan a can of Spam they catch it. Not sure what the point is other than to possibly discourage petty theft; my grocery store doesn’t sell TVs or computers. (However, they seem to do no such thing for people who scan everything at the checkout point.)