Shoplifting is a daily occurrence in most stores, and it’s almost impossible to catch every thief that walks through your door. One way to increase your chances of catching the bad guys is teaching your team what to look for, and be aware of their surroundings while they are working. Even if you are lucky enough to have loss prevention personnel in your store, it helps to have the rest of your team keeping their eyes open for any suspicious activity. Employees should understand that it is everyone’s job to do whatever they can to stop shoplifting from occurring at your store.
There have been many times that employees I worked with should have noticed some of the shoplifters I later apprehended. Let your team know how shoplifting affects the business, and why it is important that they stay aware of customer activity in their departments. Some employees don’t understand just how much of a loss shoplifters can cause, and some just don’t care. The goal is to try to get them excited about helping out the store. For a small business, retail theft prevention could be critical to your success. You have to think of every way possible to keep costs down, and profits climbing. Shoplifters could put a huge dent in the profit that belongs in your pocket.
I remember a shoplifting case years ago, when I watched a guy pick up about ten DVDs and go around the wall into a different department. I watched as he placed all of the DVDs on a shelf behind some other merchandise. He did this a couple of times and then left the store empty handed. This is something I had seen in the past, and it’s called staging. Staging is when someone sets up merchandise to come back and get it later.
I had one of my co-workers keep an eye on the doors to see if he came back into the store. We didn’t have to wait very long, because he came back about 30 minutes later. This time, he was carrying an empty duffel bag. Of course, he went straight to the area where he left the DVDs. Once he was in the aisle, he put the bag on the shelf and started walking around other aisles in the area to see if anyone was around. He then grabbed the DVDs, concealed them into the duffel bag, and then headed out the exit doors.
Fortunately, I was watching this all unfold while covertly following him around the store. I stopped him when he exited with the bag and was able to retrieve the DVDs for the store. Once again, the awareness needed to stop shoplifting was not present. During this entire incident, the shoplifter walked by several employees, who had no idea of what was happening. Also, not one of them greeted or asked him if he needed assistance finding anything.
Employees should make contact with every customer that comes into the store. This is a strong tool in regard to retail theft prevention, and it will go a long way with helping to stop shoplifting. The last thing a shoplifter wants is for employees to notice them and ask them if they need help. They want to be left alone so they can commit their theft undetected.
For more information contact us: (Stop Shoplifting) or call 1.770.426.0547
Shoplifting is a daily occurrence in most stores, and it’s almost impossible to catch every thief that walks through your door. One way to increase your chances of catching the bad guys is teaching your team what to look for, and be aware of their surroundings while they are working. Even if you are lucky enough to have loss prevention personnel in your store, it helps to have the rest of your team keeping their eyes open for any suspicious activity. Employees should understand that it is everyone’s job to do whatever they can to stop shoplifting from occurring at your store.
There have been many times that employees I worked with should have noticed some of the shoplifters I later apprehended. Let your team know how shoplifting affects the business, and why it is important that they stay aware of customer activity in their departments. Some employees don’t understand just how much of a loss shoplifters can cause, and some just don’t care. The goal is to try to get them excited about helping out the store. For a small business, retail theft prevention could be critical to your success. You have to think of every way possible to keep costs down, and profits climbing. Shoplifters could put a huge dent in the profit that belongs in your pocket.
I remember a shoplifting case years ago, when I watched a guy pick up about ten DVDs and go around the wall into a different department. I watched as he placed all of the DVDs on a shelf behind some other merchandise. He did this a couple of times and then left the store empty handed. This is something I had seen in the past, and it’s called staging. Staging is when someone sets up merchandise to come back and get it later.
I had one of my co-workers keep an eye on the doors to see if he came back into the store. We didn’t have to wait very long, because he came back about 30 minutes later. This time, he was carrying an empty duffel bag. Of course, he went straight to the area where he left the DVDs. Once he was in the aisle, he put the bag on the shelf and started walking around other aisles in the area to see if anyone was around. He then grabbed the DVDs, concealed them into the duffel bag, and then headed out the exit doors.
Fortunately, I was watching this all unfold while covertly following him around the store. I stopped him when he exited with the bag and was able to retrieve the DVDs for the store. Once again, the awareness needed to stop shoplifting was not present. During this entire incident, the shoplifter walked by several employees, who had no idea of what was happening. Also, not one of them greeted or asked him if he needed assistance finding anything.
Employees should make contact with every customer that comes into the store. This is a strong tool in regard to retail theft prevention, and it will go a long way with helping to stop shoplifting. The last thing a shoplifter wants is for employees to notice them and ask them if they need help. They want to be left alone so they can commit their theft undetected.
For more information contact us: Stop Shoplifting or call 1.770.426.0547
The holidays are upon us, and it’s the busiest time of year for loss prevention. It’s that time of year when some employees get that stealing feeling. It is inevitable that your losses due to employee theft are going to increase, but you don’t have to sit back and let it happen. If you take steps to conduct proactive investigations, you may be able to limit the amount of loss you will suffer.
In my experience, most internal theft and dishonesty cases happen in the last few months of the year. There are several reasons for employee theft activity to increase during this time. Some of the reasons for this are: increased employee financial burden, new seasonal employees and reduced overall supervision.
One cause of an increase in employee theft is the simple fact that, it’s the holidays. Everyone has more stress and financial burden during the holidays. For example, if you have an employee that has to somehow come up with extra money to buy gifts for their family and they are short on cash, they may find themselves tempted by the register full of cash or merchandise on your shelves. When people hit hard times, they do things that they would not normally do. It could be someone you think that would never steal from the company.
Another reason is that many businesses hire seasonal employees to help out with the added workload during the holidays. Hiring seasonal workers is good for having the extra help around when you need it most, and sometimes you might find people that you may want to keep on the payroll after the holidays. The downside is that they are not the normal trusted workers that you are used to dealing with on a regular basis. Unfortunately, a large portion internal theft and workplace accidents that occur during the holidays are caused by seasonal workers.
Finally, less supervision and more confusion creates greater opportunity for theft. With the increase in customer traffic and sales, comes the increase in employee theft. Sometimes managers don’t have as much time as they would normally have to supervise their employees. This creates the opportunity for employees to cause a loss without their boss looking over their shoulder every few minutes. The confusion causes some workers to bend the rules as well, and not follow procedures that are in place to protect the company’s assets.
For instance, if a cashier is normally required to have someone accompany them when they turn in the cash from their register, the increased store traffic may create a need for the extra person to help out elsewhere. Although this should never happen, it is common for workers to feel overwhelmed and unsure what to do in high pressure situations, therefore making bad decisions in the process.
The best way to combat this is to keep everyone on your team on task, and establish guidelines as to what they should be completing. Also, all employees should know that the company policies are in place for a reason, and no deviations will be tolerated due to the store being busier than normal. This will keep your team active, thus reducing confusion and decreasing the chance of internal theft opportunities.
For more information contact us: (Employee Theft) or call 1.770.426.0547
The holidays are upon us, and it’s the busiest time of year for loss prevention. It’s that time of year when some employees get that stealing feeling. It is inevitable that your losses due to employee theft are going to increase, but you don’t have to sit back and let it happen. If you take steps to conduct proactive investigations, you may be able to limit the amount of loss you will suffer.
In my experience, most internal theft and dishonesty cases happen in the last few months of the year. There are several reasons for employee theft activity to increase during this time. Some of the reasons for this are: increased employee financial burden, new seasonal employees and reduced overall supervision.
One cause of an increase in employee theft is the simple fact that, it’s the holidays. Everyone has more stress and financial burden during the holidays. For example, if you have an employee that has to somehow come up with extra money to buy gifts for their family and they are short on cash, they may find themselves tempted by the register full of cash or merchandise on your shelves. When people hit hard times, they do things that they would not normally do. It could be someone you think that would never steal from the company.
Another reason is that many businesses hire seasonal employees to help out with the added workload during the holidays. Hiring seasonal workers is good for having the extra help around when you need it most, and sometimes you might find people that you may want to keep on the payroll after the holidays. The downside is that they are not the normal trusted workers that you are used to dealing with on a regular basis. Unfortunately, a large portion internal theft and workplace accidents that occur during the holidays are caused by seasonal workers.
Finally, less supervision and more confusion creates greater opportunity for theft. With the increase in customer traffic and sales, comes the increase in employee theft. Sometimes managers don’t have as much time as they would normally have to supervise their employees. This creates the opportunity for employees to cause a loss without their boss looking over their shoulder every few minutes. The confusion causes some workers to bend the rules as well, and not follow procedures that are in place to protect the company’s assets.
For instance, if a cashier is normally required to have someone accompany them when they turn in the cash from their register, the increased store traffic may create a need for the extra person to help out elsewhere. Although this should never happen, it is common for workers to feel overwhelmed and unsure what to do in high pressure situations, therefore making bad decisions in the process.
The best way to combat this is to keep everyone on your team on task, and establish guidelines as to what they should be completing. Also, all employees should know that the company policies are in place for a reason, and no deviations will be tolerated due to the store being busier than normal. This will keep your team active, thus reducing confusion and decreasing the chance of internal theft opportunities.
For more information contact us: Employee Theft or call 1.770.426.0547
It is an unfortunate circumstance that retail stores of all shapes and sizes must deal with the task of securing their assets from thieves who would desire to take their hard-earned work and merchandise from them. Luckily, there are a couple of important tenets of how to prevent shoplifting that will help save your bottom line, and keep that margin as wide as possible. These two fundamental principles are: first, merchandise protection and second, employee awareness. Combining these two goals will decrease the amount of shrink due to shoplifting in a very meaningful and valuable way.
Merchandise protection is probably the single most important way to prevent theft. By this I mean physically protecting merchandise with various forms of security devices and checkpoint tags. From small retail stores, to large big-box companies, protecting the merchandise in the store is the first and most important line of defense and it takes care of several things.
First, it acts as a terrific deterrent. Most commonly, shoplifters are the types of criminals who will do anything to avoid being noticed or discovered. The shoplifters have the ability to “shop around” for the easiest target location. More often than not, if they determine that all of your merchandise is adequately protected, they will move on to another store.
Secondly, they often times will damage any merchandise from which they are removed improperly. Now, this may at first sound like a bad thing but it will make the shoplifter think twice about trying to defeat the device, and send them on their way. In the cases of alarming cables or spider-wrap devices, even if they do not damage the merchandise while being removed, they will make it very obvious to everyone around that someone is attempting to steal. This will scare off just about any shoplifter.
When employee awareness is added into the mix, you have a recipe for a great, foundational theft prevention system. It is important to train your associates on what behaviors are abnormal from shoppers. There are various telling behaviors, known as red flags or alert signals, that can tip off store associates that something isn’t right.
These behaviors can be anything from carrying a large, empty purse or bag to looking around suspiciously, as if they are watching out for employees or other customers. These two examples might be considered ‘soft’ alert signals – they indicate that this shopper may not be a normal shopper, but they may also still be legitimate. But looking up at the ceiling for cameras or selecting merchandise without any concern for the price or style are what might be considered ‘hard’ alert behaviors – they are very indicative of someone’s intention to steal. Combine soft alert behaviors with hard alert behaviors and you have a pretty safe bet that someone is intending to steal.
I can recall countless times where, as a loss prevention detective, I was able to identify an individual attempting to shoplift solely based upon the fact that they were attempting to remove merchandise security devices. I was able to prevent shoplifting and recover the merchandise because the shoplifter had to get through the security device.
When your store’s merchandise is secured with protective devices, and your employees are trained to recognize odd behavior, your store is well insulated from theft. It is likely that shoplifters desperate enough to attempt to defeat the security devices will be noticed by store employees and, when confronted or even just provided with great customer service, will leave without any merchandise.
For more information contact us: Prevent Shoplifting or call 1.770.426.0547
It is an unfortunate circumstance that retail stores of all shapes and sizes must deal with the task of securing their assets from thieves who would desire to take their hard-earned work and merchandise from them. Luckily, there are a couple of important tenets of how to prevent shoplifting that will help save your bottom line, and keep that margin as wide as possible. These two fundamental principles are: first, merchandise protection and second, employee awareness. Combining these two goals will decrease the amount of shrink due to shoplifting in a very meaningful and valuable way.
Merchandise protection is probably the single most important way to prevent theft. By this I mean physically protecting merchandise with various forms of security devices and checkpoint tags. From small retail stores, to large big-box companies, protecting the merchandise in the store is the first and most important line of defense and it takes care of several things.
First, it acts as a terrific deterrent. Most commonly, shoplifters are the types of criminals who will do anything to avoid being noticed or discovered. The shoplifters have the ability to “shop around” for the easiest target location. More often than not, if they determine that all of your merchandise is adequately protected, they will move on to another store.
Secondly, they often times will damage any merchandise from which they are removed improperly. Now, this may at first sound like a bad thing but it will make the shoplifter think twice about trying to defeat the device, and send them on their way. In the cases of alarming cables or spider-wrap devices, even if they do not damage the merchandise while being removed, they will make it very obvious to everyone around that someone is attempting to steal. This will scare off just about any shoplifter.
When employee awareness is added into the mix, you have a recipe for a great, foundational theft prevention system. It is important to train your associates on what behaviors are abnormal from shoppers. There are various telling behaviors, known as red flags or alert signals, that can tip off store associates that something isn’t right.
These behaviors can be anything from carrying a large, empty purse or bag to looking around suspiciously, as if they are watching out for employees or other customers. These two examples might be considered ‘soft’ alert signals – they indicate that this shopper may not be a normal shopper, but they may also still be legitimate. But looking up at the ceiling for cameras or selecting merchandise without any concern for the price or style are what might be considered ‘hard’ alert behaviors – they are very indicative of someone’s intention to steal. Combine soft alert behaviors with hard alert behaviors and you have a pretty safe bet that someone is intending to steal.
I can recall countless times where, as a loss prevention detective, I was able to identify an individual attempting to shoplift solely based upon the fact that they were attempting to remove merchandise security devices. I was able to prevent shoplifting and recover the merchandise because the shoplifter had to get through the security device.
When your store’s merchandise is secured with protective devices, and your employees are trained to recognize odd behavior, your store is well insulated from theft. It is likely that shoplifters desperate enough to attempt to defeat the security devices will be noticed by store employees and, when confronted or even just provided with great customer service, will leave without any merchandise.
For more information contact us at Prevent Shoplifting or call 1.770.426.0547
Most stores have a logbook of all packages sent using a traceable mail service. The most common reason for a store to send out a traceable package is when merchandise is returned to a vendor due to damage, recall, or other vendor initiated buy back. Having a tracking system on these packages insures that the stores know where their merchandise is in transit, and there is a third party accountable for the package’s arrival. Upon arrival at the vendor’s destination, the vendor will take accountability of the merchandise and give the store back its appropriate credits.
For stores that do a larger quantity of packages sent to multiple vendors, there is an increased chance that an employee will use this mailing system to send out stolen merchandise to their own house or to a friend or family’s address. Stores that do not send out packages frequently are not at as much risk. The reason being it is much more obvious if a tracking number has been used when a store only uses one or two a month. Compared to a store that uses tens or maybe even a hundred package sends in a month, an extra package can be slipped into a pile with much less risk of obvious detection.
Here is how an employee can take advantage of a logbook to help facilitate their employee theft. Any time an employee is trying to steal merchandise from their store, they must find a way to get it out of the building. Some employees try to conceal the merchandise in a bag or purse and walk it right out the front door. Others will conceal the product in another purchase, much like a shoplifter’s box stuff method. Some decide that the path of least resistance is through the back door.
When an employee has access to the logbook, they have access to the peel and stick labels provided by the mail carrier, that gives the store their tracking number for the package. Since these log books are designed to be billed only when a number is used, the store will receive a group bill for all of the numbers used during that month.
An employee who mails out their own package does not have to worry about individual shipping charges, and can slip a package in with the regular outgoing packages.
There are two ways to self-audit this process to reduce the risk of employee theft. The first is to spot check packages and corresponding paper work on a daily or weekly basis. This provides a fear that employees who are trying to send their own package can potentially be caught at any point due to an unexpected audit.
The second way is to audit the actual logbook. In the logbook, the “send to” address should be notated. If one is left off, that should send up a red flag that that package needs to be investigated further. If the package is being sent to a residential address, an investigation should be conducted. If the address is an employee’s home address, the employee most definitely needs to have an employee theft investigation opened on them.
By shipping a package of stolen merchandise directly to the employee’s home address, the employee can easily bypass EAS alarms, bag checks, and having to physically carry the product out of the store. If no one audits the logbooks to find out where packages are being mailed to, employees can easily create multiple thefts without being detected.
For more information on employee theft, employee theft investigation or internal theft contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 – Atlanta Georgia
Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase CCTV Systems that can help you stop Employee Theft and Internal Theft problems and help with your Employee Theft Investigation.
Most stores have a logbook of all packages sent using a traceable mail service. The most common reason for a store to send out a traceable package is when merchandise is returned to a vendor due to damage, recall, or other vendor initiated buy back. Having a tracking system on these packages insures that the stores know where their merchandise is in transit, and there is a third party accountable for the package’s arrival. Upon arrival at the vendor’s destination, the vendor will take accountability of the merchandise and give the store back its appropriate credits.
For stores that do a larger quantity of packages sent to multiple vendors, there is an increased chance that an employee will use this mailing system to send out stolen merchandise to their own house or to a friend or family’s address. Stores that do not send out packages frequently are not at as much risk. The reason being it is much more obvious if a tracking number has been used when a store only uses one or two a month. Compared to a store that uses tens or maybe even a hundred packages sends in a month, an extra package can be slipped into a pile with much less risk of obvious detection.
Here is how an employee can take advantage of a logbook to help facilitate their employee theft. Any time an employee is trying to steal merchandise from their store, they must find a way to get it out of the building. Some employees try to conceal the merchandise in a bag or purse and walk it right out the front door. Others will conceal the product in another purchase, much like a shoplifter’s box stuff method. Some decide that the path of least resistance is through the back door.
When an employee has access to the logbook, they have access to the peel and stick labels provided by the mail carrier, that gives the store their tracking number for the package. Since these log books are designed to be billed only when a number is used, the store will receive a group bill for all of the numbers used during that month.
An employee who mails out their own package does not have to worry about individual shipping charges, and can slip a package in with the regular outgoing packages.
There are two ways to self-audit this process to reduce the risk of employee theft. The first is to spot check packages and corresponding paper work on a daily or weekly basis. This provides a fear that employees who are trying to send their own package can potentially be caught at any point due to an unexpected audit.
The second way is to audit the actual logbook. In the logbook, the “send to” address should be notated. If one is left off, that should send up a red flag that that package needs to be investigated further. If the package is being sent to a residential address, an investigation should be conducted. If the address is an employee’s home address, the employee most definitely needs to have an employee theft investigation opened on them.
By shipping a package of stolen merchandise directly to the employee’s home address, the employee can easily bypass EAS alarms, bag checks, and having to physically carry the product out of the store. If no one audits the logbooks to find out where packages are being mailed to, employees can easily create multiple thefts without being detected.
For more information on employee theft, employee theft investigation or internal theft contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 – Atlanta Georgia
Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase CCTV Systems that can help you stop Employee Theft and Internal Theft problems and help with your Employee Theft Investigation.
Most people practice what they are going to say in a job interview. They come up with the likely questions and prepare their answers accordingly. You just have to make the best choice with the information you have available. You may or may not pick the right person. At first most new hires are great because they come to work when they’re scheduled, they stay over when you need them, and they seem to live and breathe to make your business successful. Unfortunately you likely won’t find out until it’s too late if you have gotten yourself a bad apple. Out of all the steps you take to pick the right person for the job, one of the most important is the background check.
You should still perform the obligatory employment history verification and check their references, of course. As far as employment history, most companies have now instated policies forbidding store level management from giving any information about former employees. You are likely to only get them to tell you whether or not the person did indeed work there. Reference checks can be helpful, but only to a short extent. I know the people on my own reference list are notified ahead of any possible calls, and they know the drill: make me sound awesome. If you are stopping after these steps, you may be setting yourself up for more work and effort in finding another employee sooner than you had hoped.
The company I work for does include a background check in the application process. I hired a young lady a few years ago, and she seemed ideal. She was well liked among her peers and the customers. She really did a great job and I was pleased with her work. Then she started having a lot of refunds on her shifts. I figured it was just a training issue, since in most cases there was a receipt for the merchandise. The refunds continued so I began to monitor her closely. I discovered she was keeping customers receipts when they didn’t take them, and in some cases she was actually getting them out of the day shift trash when she came in for the night shift. She would just wait until no one was around and take that merchandise off the sales floor and refund it with the receipt. After some investigation, she was interviewed and admitted to taking about $700 over a three month period. She was terminated and charged with embezzlement.
About a year later, I went to dinner with my family at a local steakhouse. There was a memo posted at the front desk advising recent customers to check their credit card statements. They had discovered a waitress adding major gratuities to her credit card slips at closing. Customers were finding the charges later when their statements came. The memo named the waitress and it was the very young lady I had terminated for refund fraud.
This was a large popular restaurant chain. Had they done a background check on this person, they could have possibly avoided the whole fiasco. Her refund fraud only affected our store, but her criminal activity with people’s credit cards touched their business and disturbed the trust of their customers.
Don’t let the lack of information on a potential new hire affect your bottom line. Look into getting background checks added to your to-do list. This simple step may save you a lot of trouble in the future.
For more information contact us: Backgroundcheckexperts.net or call 1.770.426.0547
Most people practice what they are going to say in a job interview. They come up with the likely questions and prepare their answers accordingly. You just have to make the best choice with the information you have available. You may or may not pick the right person. At first most new hires are great because they come to work when they’re scheduled, they stay over when you need them, and they seem to live and breathe to make your business successful. Unfortunately you likely won’t find out until it’s too late if you have gotten yourself a bad apple. Out of all the steps you take to pick the right person for the job, one of the most important is the background check.
You should still perform the obligatory employment history verification and check their references, of course. As far as employment history, most companies have now instated policies forbidding store level management from giving any information about former employees. You are likely to only get them to tell you whether or not the person did indeed work there. Reference checks can be helpful, but only to a short extent. I know the people on my own reference list are notified ahead of any possible calls, and they know the drill: make me sound awesome. If you are stopping after these steps, you may be setting yourself up for more work and effort in finding another employee sooner than you had hoped.
The company I work for does include a background check in the application process. I hired a young lady a few years ago, and she seemed ideal. She was well liked among her peers and the customers. She really did a great job and I was pleased with her work. Then she started having a lot of refunds on her shifts. I figured it was just a training issue, since in most cases there was a receipt for the merchandise. The refunds continued so I began to monitor her closely. I discovered she was keeping customers receipts when they didn’t take them, and in some cases she was actually getting them out of the day shift trash when she came in for the night shift. She would just wait until no one was around and take that merchandise off the sales floor and refund it with the receipt. After some investigation, she was interviewed and admitted to taking about $700 over a three month period. She was terminated and charged with embezzlement.
About a year later, I went to dinner with my family at a local steakhouse. There was a memo posted at the front desk advising recent customers to check their credit card statements. They had discovered a waitress adding major gratuities to her credit card slips at closing. Customers were finding the charges later when their statements came. The memo named the waitress and it was the very young lady I had terminated for refund fraud.
This was a large popular restaurant chain. Had they done a background check on this person, they could have possibly avoided the whole fiasco. Her refund fraud only affected our store, but her criminal activity with people’s credit cards touched their business and disturbed the trust of their customers.
Don’t let the lack of information on a potential new hire affect your bottom line. Look into getting background checks added to your to-do list. This simple step may save you a lot of trouble in the future.
For more information contact us: Backgroundcheckexperts.net or call 1.770.426.0547
There’s not a month that passes where I don’t find myself in the middle of some type of external investigation. One of the most common and popular areas of my store for shoplifters is our apparel section. Generally speaking, the bulk of our merchandise does not have a clothing security tag affixed to them. We reserved the tags for merchandise above a certain dollar limit. This helps us reduce shrink on low margin items, as well as reducing the security budget, which ultimately eats into your gross margin anyway.
The great thing about the clothing security tags is that you can identity your product very easily from a CCTV monitor. An often overlooked theft scheme in some retailers is the “price-swap”. It’s a very simple scan and is easily conducted with apparel merchandise, since the barcodes are usually held in place with a simple plastic thread. A thief will remove the higher priced barcode and replace it with the barcode of a lesser priced item. If your cashier isn’t trained to spot the difference, or is just inattentive, a thief can buy higher dollars items at quite a bargain!
A while back I was researching some suspicious refund transactions by this individual, we’ll call Bob. Bob, over the course of 3 weeks had made several returns at various store locations of high priced camouflaged pants. These particular pants retailed for $149. The company I worked for carried a wide selection of hunting apparel, so at first a few returns didn’t really raise any red flags. Over time, though, we started to see a pattern with Bob. He would return the expensive stuff, then use the store credit to purchase the cheaper brands. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me, since there was a pattern to his actions. I began looking into Bob a little further and realized he was price switching the pants.
I don’t care who you are, or how much of an expert you think you are on a product line, but it is near impossible to tell one pair of camouflaged pants from another when looking at the CCTV on a register. I needed to prove what he was doing, but was having some difficulty isolating when a theft had occurred. I asked a colleague of mind for assistance, since he had a great deal more experienced than I had at the time. After reviewing a few of Bob’s purchases, my colleague pointed out the checkpoint tag on a pair of pants during one of Bob’s purchases. Those checkpoint tags were reserved for items over $99. After looking at the receipt, I saw where Bob had only paid $12.99 for the pants. I was pretty excited that I was able to make my case. I was able to prove that my shoplifter was purchasing the items at a lesser price, then returning them for full value.
While the clothing alarm device didn’t stop Bob from stealing the pants, it did assist me in my investigation. Without the tags, I would have never been able to make this case and ultimately have Bob arrested. It was a lesson I learned early on in my career, and is still a training tool I use today when speaking with cashiers.
For more information, contact us: Clothing Security, or call 1.770.426.0547
There’s not a month that passes where I don’t find myself in the middle of some type of external investigation. One of the most common and popular areas of my store for shoplifters is our apparel section. Generally speaking, the bulk of our merchandise does not have a clothing security tag affixed to them. We reserved the tags for merchandise above a certain dollar limit. This helps us reduce shrink on low margin items, as well as reducing the security budget, which ultimately eats into your gross margin anyway.
The great thing about the clothing security tags is that you can identify your product very easily from a CCTV monitor. An often overlooked theft scheme in some retailers is the “price-swap”. It’s a very simple scam and is easily conducted with apparel merchandise, since the barcodes are usually held in place with a simple plastic thread. A thief will remove the higher priced barcode and replace it with the barcode of a lesser priced item. If your cashier isn’t trained to spot the difference, or is just inattentive, a thief can buy higher dollars items at quite a bargain!
A while back I was researching some suspicious refund transactions by this individual, we’ll call Bob. Bob, over the course of 3 weeks had made several returns at various store locations of high priced camouflaged pants. These particular pants retailed for $149. The company I worked for carried a wide selection of hunting apparel, so at first a few returns didn’t really raise any red flags. Over time, though, we started to see a pattern with Bob. He would return the expensive stuff, then use the store credit to purchase the cheaper brands. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me, since there was a pattern to his actions. I began looking into Bob a little further and realized he was price switching the pants.
I don’t care who you are, or how much of an expert you think you are on a product line, but it is near impossible to tell one pair of camouflaged pants from another when looking at the CCTV on a register. I needed to prove what he was doing, but was having some difficulty isolating when a theft had occurred. I asked a colleague of mine for assistance, since he had a great deal more experience than I had at the time. After reviewing a few of Bob’s purchases, my colleague pointed out the Checkpoint Tag on a pair of pants during one of Bob’s purchases. Those Checkpoint Tags were reserved for items over $99. After looking at the receipt, I saw where Bob had only paid $12.99 for the pants. I was pretty excited that I was able to make my case. I was able to prove that my shoplifter was purchasing the items at a lesser price, then returning them for full value.
While the clothing alarm device didn’t stop Bob from stealing the pants, it did assist me in my investigation. Without the tags, I would have never been able to make this case and ultimately have Bob arrested. It was a lesson I learned early on in my career, and is still a training tool I use today when speaking with cashiers.
For more information, contact us: Clothing Security, or call 1.770.426.0547
