In article ,
Koz wrote:

Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:

Today I was in Home Depot, standing in line to pay for a couple rolls of
hardware cloth. In front of me was a gentleman, and I use that term
loosely, that had placed on the counter six one inch electrical PVC ells,
along with six couplings, each of which was attached to the ells. The
ells had their UPC stamped on them, but the connectors had a stick-on label.
To a woman clerk, that may or may not be wise to how such things look and
are used, it was very easy for the items to be scanned by the label only,
considering the UPC on the ells blended well with the other data printed
thereon.

That's what happened. The buyer paid with a credit card, the total coming
to under $3. It was obvious to me that he had placed the connectors on the
ells intentionally, likely thinking they would get scanned just as they did.
I did more than nothing, but I'm interested in hearing what others might
think would have been a good course of action to take. When I've heard
various opinions, I'll describe what I did, and why I did it.

Comments?

Harold




Can't speak for home Depot, but my daughter spent many years as a Lowes
cashier. At Lowes, they periodically have cashier tests to help train
cashiers to catch such things. Basically, they bring a shopping cart to
them full of goods with a couple of "tricks" that need to be caught.
Although the cashier has a "heads up" as to their being stuff to watch
for, the kinds of things are pretty sneaky. You get a score at the end
of the test based on what you find or miss.

That being said, the real problem at the box stores is low wages (danged
low). The result is high turnover, employees who don't really give a
crap, and hiring bottom of the barrel people to do what should be one of
the most important jobs in the store. If the store puts so little
importance on their staff that they hire bottom of the barrel scrapings,
feel that these employees are disposable, and treat em generally as
liabilities rather than assets, it's the store's problem when a crook
gets away with something like this.

Yea, the buyer made an effort to conceal that the parts were supposed to
be priced seperately in hopes of cheating the system but it was the
CLERK that didn't give a rat or wasn't trained enough or was simply too
lousy a worker to do a proper job. The buyer didn't actually (by the
description) steal or conceal the parts, he just tried to fool the clerk
witha simple and (VERY!) common trick. The fooling happened due to the
store's negligence.

Koz


Yep...

Of course, there are the REALLY weird situations...

Was in a farm-supply outfit (name forgotten now - I think it might've
been Fisko's) after these aluminum gizmos used to stiffen up T-post
fences. To be useful, you needed a "collar", a "wedge", and one or more
"brackets", in various angles. The collars were like 85 cents each, the
wedges were something like 40 cents each, and the various brackets
ranged from a quarter to 60 cents each. One "assembly" (and for most
purposes, you needed two "equal but opposite" assemblies to make it
work) could easily hit 3-6 dollars or more, depending on exactly what
you needed to make it work for what you were doing.

So I'm "building" the fence,I'm going to put up with these things in tie
aisle, grabbing pieces as needed to make my corners and such, putting
them together so that I know I've got exactly what I need to get the job
done. I get it fully "constructed", and gather up the 20 or 30
assemblies of multiple pieces to head for the counter. Clerk looks at
one of the assemblies, counts the rest, scans the one, and comes up with
this ridiculously low number for a total.
"Uh..." sez I, "I thought those sold by the part?"
She replies "They do. That'll be whatever the total was - Something
under $20"
"But each part is a different price?"
"Nah, all this fence junk is the same price"
"So why do they have individual price stickers on each part?"
"Those are just the inventory numbers, not prices."

I shrugged, paid what she asked, and left. What the heck - You try three
times to point out the fact that they're undercharging you, and get told
you're wrong all three times, wuddaya gonna do? Stand there and argue
about it? Not unless you're nuts - you take it at the price they
obviously want to sell it to you for.

Totalled it up when I got home - She'd rung me out with about $85 worth
of these widgets (going with the prices on individual stickers on each
piece, which had matched nicely with the prices on the tags below each
different box) for under 20 bucks. Oh well...

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