Someone who works at Home Depot has told me that they are actually checking the checkers not the customers. Apparently someone was running a scam where the checker would not ring up a bunch of items and their confederate would walk out with the stuff. I always walk past them because I don’t want to help them police their employees.
As soon as I posted that, I was waiting for someone to say this. If I’m caught because the DVD has a chip inside the box that sets off an alarm, then my brilliant plan was foiled by the alarm system, not receipt-checking, so the latter remains worthless.
Even if they only check my receipt after I set off the alarm (at which point it does make some sense to do), it still doesn’t help them, because while they may be able to determine that none of the items a) on the receipt, or b) in the bag caused the alarm to go off, they still don’t know what DID until they search me for whatever set off the alarm.
While my “brilliant plan” would most probably fail in a real-world scenario, it wouldn’t be the least bit thwarted by receipt-checking, which was my entire point.
Without receipt checking, who’s going to stop you? I’ve walked out of stores with the alarms blaring, when the checker failed to deactivate the chip, and nobody’s ever given me a second look.
You want to restrict this concept to being valid only for the crimes it can detect and stop directly, but it’s more than just comparing receipt to bag. It’s putting a body at the exit, in full view of the entrances. It’s giving the store a security presence. It’s telling shoplifters that they have to get past two layers of security (checkout and exit) instead of one. It’s not supposed to stop all theft, just one more thing for thieves to worry about.
Nope, just a woody.
I never said stores shouldn’t have a security officer, nor that that person shouldn’t be visibly present at the front door. The store across the street from me hires a rent-a-cop to do little more than stand next to the door and scowl (until someone sets off the alarm). From what the store manager (a friend of mine) tells me, that alone has dramatically reduced shoplifting losses.
So, assuming we have a security officer, and we make sure he/she is positioned at the front door, the only thing accomplished by having that person check everyone’s receipt is that honest, paying customers get to be annoyed, be embarrassed, and feel that our store is treating them like criminals. Look at it this way: suppose, instead of an alarm system and a security officer who checks everyone’s receipt, we have an alarm system and a security officer who shines a flashlight into each customer’s eyes as they leave. We have all the elements required to stop me if I try to smuggle a DVD out of the store in my pants – the alarm system to sound the alert and the security officer to detain me and prevent me from stealing it – but, in the meantime, he’s doing something highly annoying to all of our customers that accomplishes precisely zip in the way of preventing theft. That’s pretty much what receipt checking equates to in my mind. Why piss off your customers with superfluous actions that prevent nothing further than the measures you already have?
Also, “they’re doing it, so it must ultimately be beneficial” is not an argument. Not every move made by a major corporation is a smart one (I’m sure they wish this were the case), especially when it comes to matters that aren’t directly quantifiable, such as customer service satisfaction. If receipt-checking were practiced universally among all major retailers, I might consider that as evidence toward an argument…but it isn’t. Not even close. I honestly can’t remember the last time I had a receipt checked, and in the last year, I’ve shopped at (off the top of my head) Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Dillard’s, B&N, CompUSA, Target, Borders, Sam’s, Sears, Circuit City and Home Depot. Clearly, at the very least, experts disagree on the matter.
Yeah, they make that $5 DVD-rip in an easy-open case with all the FBI warnings and non-skippable adverts deleted look REALLY REALLY tempting.
I order all my DVDs off the net so the stickers aren’t an issue, but having to sit through all the crap telling me it’s illegal to publicly show the movie in a prison or oil rig and then adverts for shitty c-grade movies I’ll never watch, thta really grates. If I’d wanted crappy trailers I’d have gone to the cinema!