We used to have a problem with people trying to return cameras. Saying the wrong one was in the box....or it was missing a piece. Now any camera sold is opened and checked for all parts and to make sure it's the right one before it is rung up.

I think that is a great idea Lil.... but.. at my store they don't do that... we have had people return pools... telling us that its damaged.. so instead of looking inside the box... they take it back.  Come to find out later that the box was filled with piece of blacktop and rocks.  

I think that anything expensive should be opened right then and there for the customer to see... but that doesn't really mean anything anyways.. as they will always be allowed to return stuff.

When we sell cameras we open the box and show the people all the items in the box and what they are for.  I had one guy on Friday that wanted a camera.  He asked me to show him how to use it, I did, one of the buttons was marked diffrently and I was not sure what it was for.  He asked for someone else, I said I am the only one for now.  He was too freaking lazy to read the instruction book.  He said he does not like to read.  This was a younger guy in his mid to late 20's.  I weep for the future.

One time I bought a camera, and ended up not opening the box for a couple of weeks.  When I did open it, I found out that apparently it had been returned with a used/bent lense.  It took me a long time to convince the person at the service desk (a mgr, not an assoc) that they owed me a refind.  I guess they decided that I would have just returned it, without telling them that the lens (or rather, the metal casing that encased the lenses), was bent.  I think it turned out that it was another brand of lens too.

At $450, I was FREAKIN'!

 

Mad

People who steal for a living will allways be a step ahead of any store security.

In our store thies would take a 19" LCD tv bring it over to hardware and put it in a boxfan box ring the boxfan up and pay for it at the selfcheckouts. It happend plenty of times.

Another thing the thives are doing is go to hardware get some boxcutterblades open the package and take one blade head to electronics and have a field day opening dvd and cd cases and fill there pockets with them. Then throw the blade in between some cds so when you zone the cds and dvds you have to really check so there is no blades that will cut you. Just waiting for a lawsuit from someone getting cut by a blade left by a thieve.

Sometimes I wonder if there is some assosicates in the store that is helping others to get things out. For instance one evening all the blueray players (300 to 450 dollars per player) have spiderwraps on them the next morning there would be one bluerayplayer box without a spiderwrap and no spiderwrap to be found on the shelfes and the box for the blueray player was  not destroyed or anything just sitting on the shelf with the spiderwrap taken off.

 

Just tired of seeing some people have to steal for a living and a big shrink area like electronics not having a way of stoping it like some other stores where you have to be let but at the gates to the deparment. One store in our area you can not get out off until the person at the register hits a button to open the automatic door.

 

The "MAD"Swede

I believe some of the theft we have going on is an inside job. An associate tells their buddy when security is there, what they look like and what time people in that area take breaks and lunches and when there is little coverage.

We had a clearance digital camera spiderwraped on our sale table and we found the empty box but now spiderwrap.  That has happened twice in the last week.  I just don't understand people.  Today we found 2 packages from micro sd cards sliced open and the micro card that goes in  a cell phone was gone from both packages.  I know times are kinda tough and gas prices are really high but I don't want anything I can't pay for.  It is not worth going to jail for. 

Every Monday I count the fish, so that I can compare that count to what the system says we have.  Since many of the dead fish are never recorded when I'm not there, this ensures that the onhands in the sytem are not way out of line.  I turn in a sheet that shows how many fish need to be marked down to zero, and Claims enters those figures.

Most of the time, the counts in the system show more fish than I have.  Monday, it showed I had a lot LESS fish than I actually had.  Out of about 40 SKU's, I had to add onhands to about 35 of them.  In some cases, the difference was over 20 fish.

I have a file box under my sink, that has sheets of sticky labels for each type of fish.  If the assoc helping the customer doesn't have a marker, they can stick a label on the bag, and the cashier can scan it.  Everybody loves the convenience.  I write on the bags. 

I'm wondering if while I was gone, people started using these labels to buy things that were not fish.  If the assoc and a cashier teamed together, it would be fairly easy to buy all kinds of stuff, without looking suspicious.  At my store, the greeters are told to check the date on the receipt.  They don't check for  every item; just the larger ticket ones.

I plan to talk to LP about this.

 

Mad

I have suggested that we use some of the area at the bullpen for stocking our formula. Have the customers buy it through that registar only. Was told it is an inconvience to the customer. IMO those who are honestly buying the stuff for their child and not stealing or buying it all up for whatever else aren't going to put up much of a fuss. They would be happy to finally be able to buy it when they come to get it.

I used to work in Photo too. We had so much stolen after it was locked up that we finally stopped letting our stuff get mixed in with electronics get in the morning. Pretty soon we had to have one of us there at 5 a.m to get it out of the cage after a manager took it off the truck and locked them in a cage. Yes, a mnger was made to escort all photo and high end electronics! Lol.Then we resorted to having to sign in and out our keys at the end of our shift so we could keep track of who had them. Your shift over, call mngr, they assign them to the next person so that a photo closer had them then they had to lock them up with a mngr at the end of each night. As for sale merchandise, it was kept on a fold out table behind the counter and was to my back when I used the register so customers would have to ask me to show the items. Customers were never left with an item to look at. Then at the point of sale we would go through the box with the customer and then SIGN the inside flap and date it too! To push sales we would have one associate set up a table up front and sell certain cameras etc. on the weekends and never leave the table for a second. I suggested that we keep all of the extra memory cards in the lab too but they said not enough room Lol!

But they sure bitch about profit when we were getting our asses stolen off and told to push sales. Well if they would do a few simple things we would have been able to make a good profit!

I never understood how they can tell us we aren't selling enough when we all know darn well its the shrink that is killing us. I gave up and quit! Lol!

We have some digital cameras on locking peg hooks.  These cameras are usually very poor quality.  We had to put pictures of the product on the peg board and have them on locking peg hooks in the lab and we get them for customers when they want them.  We have also had to resort to people paying for the items at the photo lab or the associate has to take it to the cashier for them. 

Even though our electronics dept improved their shrink by $100,000, they are still planning to close it in again.  I can't imagine how they did so much better than last year, when a lot of depts did worse, or not much better than last year.  Still, we all know that there's theft in D5.  I wish there was a way to reduce the opening at the front of the dept too, because even if they can't get out of the dept from the back aisle, they'll still steal a lot of stuff by walking past the registers with it--just like they used to, just like they probably still do.

I think with the economy as it is, any store that doesn't shrink out, will be accused of padding their inventory.

That is sad and scarey, to me.

 

Mad

My store will do the little table with the clearance items on it from time to time as well. They just leave the empty boxes out there and keep the product locked up behind the counter.  At least someone had one good idea LOL

We have a CSM that takes back Play Stations that are a year old and lies on the return slips that a manager approved it when she made the decision and walks around bragging about how she can do anything because she's a SUPERVISOR.  "What can they do when it's a done deal?"  How about FIRE her!