Scam averted...again

[Dreamstalker]

What is it with scammers trying to go through the SCO right where I'm standing?

The other night, someone scanned in two reduced packs of hotdog rolls and twelve cents worth of bananas. Except what came down the belt was a jar of expensive natural peanut butter, bag of red grapes, and bag of expensive apples. The apples (which had the banana sticker) kept getting sent back as the weight obviously wasn't correct.

Why did the first two items actually go through? I don't think reduced items use weight at all. Two 'reduced bakery' stickers had been peeled off their original items intact (I didn't know that was possible) and the one on the jar had been carefully reapplied over the original barcode. The grapes MIGHT have gone undetected if not for the not-quite-sticky-enough bright yellow sticker on the jar leading me to check each item.

I don't know if the customer was the one who switched the tags, but she actually asked me "How do you know these aren't that price?" Um, because the TAG says "8pk hotdog rolls" and what's in front of me are not hotdog rolls? (I just said that they weren't ringing up properly)

She says "Oh, I'll just get something else." and leaves. I void the transaction (taking everything with me of course), confiscate the wrong tags and alert ASM2 that someone is removing reduced tags and sticking them on fullprice items. I don't see that customer again, at least not through SCO.

[Enjis]

It was, of course, the Reduced Price Sticker Fairy who goes around taking tags off expensive items and replacing them with clearance tags, then putting those items back on the racks for lucky shoppers to find.
Happens all the time.
Because the person trying to buy the mis-tagged items is NEVER the one who switched tickets...! What do you think they are...thieves??

[taxguykarl]

She says "Oh, I'll just get something else." and leaves.

She'll show you!!! She just take her business elsewhere. [/End Sarcasm].

[Draco]

Honestly, I'll never understand why people think it's automatically easier to steal through the self-checkout. Many of their attempts (especially mislabeling things) would likely go unnoticed through a normal register, but with the only weight sensitive system in the store? No.

[Tama]

And it's people like that back in 2007 that are the reason why you could not buy the then-new Harry Potter book in a SCO. At midnight.

The poor cashiers.

[raudf]

Seeing a customer with a wrong upc product once is "shit happens." To have it happen twice? That's special. Third time is extremely stupid.

Just wait, $150 pair of Bose speakers for $4? Oh and look, it rings up as a set of mixing bowls! Do you still want it? No? Oooookkkaaayyyy. (Obvious tampering was obvious.) Week later, more Bose speakers, same blue eyes, line next to my register. This time, it's a $1.50 travel mug. Umm... right. CSM is flagged and she calls the assistant store manager. If I recall, this time, he had to buy them because his girlfriend was with him.

Assistant Store Manager tells me he'll pull the tapes and no, I didn't hear back from that. I didn't expect to. We did have a meeting covering checking the screen as we scan, as we had a "person of interest" swapping UPCs on expensive electronics.

And people say being a cashier isn't hard work...

[Dreamstalker]

I've caught the 'banana scam' quite a few times. How dumb do you have to be to assume that I won't notice bags of shrimp being keyed in as fruit? Yes, the belt is sending it back. NO, I will not let it go. Reach for the keypad again (when the assistant card has been scanned, anything will go through) and I will break at least one finger.

Our reduced-grocery stickers are scored crosswise so the best removal outcome is mangling the barcode. They're virtually impossible to take off of cardboard and paper labels...well, you could, but the sticker is in no shape to be stuck on anything else.

The reduced bake shop stickers (which is what we should be using on commercial bakery items) are designed to stick very well to plastic and my assumption is you can't remove them without making it very obvious.

[BearLeeBadenaugh]

This reminds me of a scammer I encountered a few years back, when I was working for a POS company installing registers, cash lanes and the like.

I was onsite at a store in MN, upgrading them from their old(might as well call it antique, they typed in prices!) system to a new computerized POS. It was the first day of the new system being active, the store's inventory crew and I had pulled an all-nighter getting shelf tags up and making sure everything was in the database. There were signs up all over the place, stating that the store was upgrading, asking for patience while the cashiers learn the system, etc.


I was sitting in the office, watching the server side of things. Had the exceptions and errors report up and was just waiting for where I was needed. One of the lanes started showing multiple price corrections, piquing my curiosity. Shouldn't be anything like that going on, so I pulled up the camera over the register. Recognized some of the items going through, knew that I had verified the price and their UPC.

Called the manager to the office and showed him what was going on. It turned out that the customer and her niece(the cashier) had a nice little scheme going. Customer had brought in her own pricing gun and was making new price tags for items.

Nobody was sure just how long it had been going on, but since we had installed the camera a month before, I got the lovely job of scanning a months worth of security footage of cashiers register and tallying up the losses. Months total worked out to just under $5,000. This one customer accounted for slightly over 75% of their shrink.

Kinda wonder what happened with that situation, I know the cops were called and both custy and cashier were arrested at the time, but I left the company before that case made it to trial.

Whole situation did really give me vindication on having gotten that sale, as one of my big promises to them was that I'd help reduce their shrink and fix their inventory problem.

[Dreamstalker]

I've started keeping the voided-transaction receipts and writing the actual item next to what was scanned...receipt says "Bananas 12c", actual item was asparagus (or whatever). One day I plan to show them to SM as a sort of "this is what happens on SCO and here's what I stopped from walking out". Not expecting to get anything out of it when I do, it would be more of a concrete example of what happens.

My mom suggested photographing the scammers, but I have no way of doing it covertly. (well, they do make spy cameras that could be hidden on my lanyard, but they likely cost upwards of a years wages and even if I was in LP it would never be approved)

[Kittish]

My mom suggested photographing the scammers, but I have no way of doing it covertly. (well, they do make spy cameras that could be hidden on my lanyard, but they likely cost upwards of a years wages and even if I was in LP it would never be approved)

You've probably already got the next best thing. If you're keeping receipts from failed attempts at price changing, you have time stamps that should be able to be used to pull up security camera footage.

[taxguykarl]

Why did the first two items actually go through? I don't think reduced items use weight at all. Two 'reduced bakery' stickers had been peeled off their original items intact (I didn't know that was possible) and the one on the jar had been carefully reapplied over the original barcode. The grapes MIGHT have gone undetected if not for the not-quite-sticky-enough bright yellow sticker on the jar leading me to check each item.

Kind of brings to mind this classic, doesn't it?

[MelindaJoy77]

Scamming and probably the lack of...customer intelligence, shall we say...are exactly why our store will most likely never have SCO's. The new HellMart across town has a few of them, but their customer base is a little more upscale. I like being able to use them myself if I just have a few items, but I'd go through a regular line with a cashier if my cart were full. I remember trying to use an SCO some years ago when they were first introduced but there were a lot of errors and we had to wait for an attendant anyway.

[Seanette]

I'm generally pretty good with tech, but cannot deal with SCOs. They never seem to scan stuff right, have tizzies about the bagging area for no reason I can see, I always need help anyway, and they're too LOUD (people three lanes away really don't need to hear it talking to me, and it's annoying to try to sort out several of them shouting at their users at once).

Faster and easier on my patience to just go to a cashier.

[Captain Trips]

I wish more people would go to a regular lane - would mean less wait for me at the SCO. (I'm one of the rare people that knows how to use one.)

[sstabeler]

I'm pretty good at using them- to date, the only time i've had an issue has been a fault with the SCO itself.