Home Depot is introducing power tools that won’t work if they’re stolen

https://www.businessinsider.com/home-depot-fights-shoplifters-special-power-tools-2021-7

by nbernard • 5 years ago

198 531 5 years ago

Home Depot near me has all Milwaukee M12 and M18 tools locked up. When the Milwaukee rep was getting something out of the case for me, I mentioned how unfortunate it is that they have to do this. He said they lost over $700k in Milwaukee tools alone in that store last year. Quite amazing and almost hard to believe. I feel sorry for these stores trying to walk the line between respecting your customers and not being robbed blind.

DavidPeiffer• 5 years ago

I wonder if it was 700k retail or wholesale? Regardless, it was a big enough problem across the chain to justify adding complexity and cost to the product.

Retailers are allergic to price increases and manufacturers tend to shy away from anything that increases the cost without being a marketable benefit or cost savings, so no doubt Home Depot recognizing the size of the problem and initiating a solution made it happen.

np_tedious2• 5 years ago

Crimes (theft, drug seizures, whatever) usually reported in largest possible numbers. So likely retail

ethbr013• 5 years ago

The power tool market is likely more responsive than your average supplier.

They sell a huge volume through a limited number of retailers (Home Depot & Lowes), and there are a limited number of manufacturers [0].

So if retail says there's a problem, it becomes a problem for them.

The other side of this is professional customers, who will probably use the same technology. A tool that doesn't work if it's stolen off a job site is a big value add to professional contractors.

[0] https://pressurewashr.com/tool-industry-behemoths/

social_quotient• 5 years ago

I wonder if this has increased from/due to self checkout?

ceejayoz3• 5 years ago

My grocery store has an app that lets me scan as I go through the store, then just pay in about 10 seconds at the self-checkout. I'd love to know what that has done to shrink numbers.

zf00002• 5 years ago

My local Costco has finally added self-checkout registers. I noticed that the receipt is a different color than the ones you would normally get if you went to a cashier. I assume the exit people who check your receipt look more closely when it's a self-checkout one.

handrous4• 5 years ago

I'd expect pretty much any move to make the customers do work that paid employees used to, increases customer theft (which, as noted elsewhere in this thread, is far from the only threat—employees, including managers and security, steal lots).

I mean, consider a classic old-school store (talking pre-supermarkets and pre-big-box stores) where a clerk would fetch what you wanted. Much harder to steal there. Save money by not paying enough clerks to handle that and making customers pick out their own stuff, and now customers can/do steal more.

Same with stuff like self-checkout, I'd expect. Might also increase the rate of honest mistakes resulting in accidental theft, though I've seen so damn many of those errors from paid clerks that I wouldn't bet on it.

eplanit2• 5 years ago

In the bay area and California in general, they've been basically been told that they're on their own regarding thefts. One can simply walk in and take hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise and leave, because the DA will not prosecute. Security guards won't intervene, and the thieves know all this. It has become a spectacle.

Between online sales and this, I sympathize with anyone in brick and mortar retail sales.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Prop-47-which-reduc...

https://news.yahoo.com/looters-ransack-san-francisco-neiman-...

peter422• 5 years ago

I’ve spent a lot of time at Bay Area Home Depots, and I’ve only seen blatant theft once, and the security guards did attempt to intervene.

What is the support for your statement?

Also “the DA” is a ton of different people throughout the Bay Area, and the DA that everybody complains about has exactly 0 HDs in his jurisdiction.

AlexandrB3• 5 years ago

This is mostly bullshit. Crime rates in California and SF are comparable to the rest of the country. However there seems to be a concerted effort to push back on any reductions in moronic "tough on crime" policies from the 80s and 90s. Thefts under $1k should be a misdemeanor. How the hell were they ever a felony? In Canada theft under $5k is punishable by a maximum of 2 years in jail (with most people getting a lot less) and retailers seem to be doing ok.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/14/bogus-bac...

Edit: The media seems to be in a real crime frenzy right now. Exhibit A is this bullshit graph that swaps the x axis to make it look like crime is rising: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/06/24/cnn-chart-crime

TuringNYC• 5 years ago

I've heard of the Walgreens issues, the topic, and am not doubting you -- however, i'm curious what is stopping more widespread theft. Given the no-prosecution stance, I can even imagine theft-tourism where people come from other cities and states to steal. Recalling NYC in the 1980s, people would even reach arms through and under metal hoods to steal, I could only imagine what happens if it can be done w/o consequence.

What is preventing that? Is it human good nature or is there some understanding that blatant/planned cases will indeed be pursued?

Kye4• 5 years ago

This sounds more like a tough-on-crime type fever dream than a representative reality. How much does this actually happen? Is it more of a harm to society than the harsh sentences people were getting for minor thefts? Civilization is a compromise between conflicting interests.

Nieman Marcus and Home Depot are still making plenty of profit despite this law changing 7 years ago. Is putting someone in prison for 8 years and giving them a permanent black mark that prevents them from voting and harms employment prospects over $200 really worth improving Home Depot's bottom line? That's the real question here.

adolph2• 5 years ago

Security guards won't intervene

Weird. Makes me wonder why the guards exist.

theyellowkid• 5 years ago

In a world of small margins, it's just another small advantage that goes to Amazon.

That all assumes that UPS drivers are honest and that Amazon 'fulfillment' employees get their daily cavity search of course.

nyjah• 5 years ago

At the home depot near me if you move the set of sockets an alarm will start beeping.

Recently I bought a pressure washer. When I got home I realized the hose was missing. When I got to home depot to return it I realized that it wasn't even the right pressure washer in the box. Clearly someone had bought a new one and then put their old on in the box and returned it as new. Home Depot took care of me no questions and it made me feel like they must see kind of thing a lot.

ethbr013• 5 years ago

Returns are a huge source of fraud.

And it's difficult to solve, for the same reasons listed in this article: any solution (e.g. checking items fully) results in a worse customer experience (longer lines and delays).

So, you try and pick a sweet spot along the curve, where you prevent the worst excesses but are still able to keep your (non-thieving) customers happy.

matheweis3• 5 years ago

I went to a Home Depot in Seattle a couple of days ago looking for an electric chainsaw (not a Milwaukee). It’s a bit of a drive and I wanted a particular model, so I checked the site for stock before going .. they had eight so off I went.

When I showed up the chainsaw was nowhere to be found, and after looking high and low and triple checking their inventories, the rep said he figured they must have walked. He mentioned a similar figure saying that over $800k of merchandise had disappeared from that aisle (yard equipment) in the last year.

I think it’s real. After the experience repeated itself at a second store, I looked on OfferUp and found the exact chainsaw “new and unopened” at about half the retail price.

I ended up going to a third store before finding one that actually had the tool in stock. That one had installed a makeshift rig of steel bars in front of their stock, and a rep had to physically follow me to the register and watch me pay for it.

There are videos in the Seattle reddits of brazen thieves going into stores and walking off with whatever they like.

It’s bad enough for the big box stores, imagine being a small business trying to survive that environment!

mschuster912• 5 years ago

It’s bad enough for the big box stores, imagine being a small business trying to survive that environment!

I'd guess that small businesses aren't as targeted by organized thieves as "big box" stores are:

1) They're smaller in size which means the likelihood of getting spotted by a staff member during a theft is higher

2) The amount (and diversity) of available goods to steal is lower

3) "Big box" stores don't have people carrying guns, their staff has a "don't intervene, we're insured anyway" policy drilled into them, and this is known. A small shopkeeper however? A thief can't reasonably know if the shop owner has a firearm under their desk or will get confrontational if stopped.

After the experience repeated itself at a second store, I looked on OfferUp and found the exact chainsaw “new and unopened” at about half the retail price.

The really interesting thing is: why does the police not "follow the money" and take out those advertising likely-stolen tools for sale in the open?

sandworm1018• 5 years ago

It sounds like that store has deeper problems. They aren't checking thier stock and so do not notice a theft when it happens. That has insurance implications. Also, it suggests inside jobs. If the staff are turning a blind eye to theft, not reporting missing stock, there is a reasonable chance that the staff are involved.

bhance• 5 years ago

A seriously large amount of the goods on Offerup are stolen. It's insane.

hellbannedguy• 5 years ago

I used to be a state security guard. I was required to go to a security convention once a year.

Everyone of these talks stressed that employee internal theft is bigger than customer theft on the whole.

So managment steals the most, followed by the rest of the employees.

This was in the 90's so things might have changed.

Different entities gave the talks.

I don't doubt that 800k number, but I wouldn't rule out the reoresenative of Milwaukee, or the closing managers, or security guards themselfs.

Everytme I was told about employees theft, they said it's retail security's big secret.

Personally, if they treated employees better, internal theft might come down!

When I go into HD, and am being filmed at least 10-15 times before leaving the store; their us a part of me that feels like not paying for that M8 bolt.

mynameisash• 5 years ago

imagine being a small business trying to survive that environment!

I was just at McLendon's yesterday outside Seattle, and while I was waiting to ask an employee a question, over the PA a came a message like, "need help up front. A couple just left the store with a bunch of stolen merchandise." So the dude bolted for the entrance.

It surprised me that the announcement wasn't coded in some way (eg, "code 9 at checkout").

It made me feel quite sad, as McLendon's is pretty awesome, and I'd hate for them to disappear.

cptskippy• 5 years ago

When I showed up the chainsaw was nowhere to be found, and after looking high and low and triple checking their inventories, the rep said he figured they must have walked.

I've always chalked this up to poor inventory management practices. I've gone to Home Depot for first aid kits, counter tops, smoke alarms, pipe fittings, etc and had the same experience. They show X in stock but none can be found.

We had similar issues when I worked at Office Max in high school, it was usually someone putting overhead stock in the wrong location because they just couldn't be bothered.

rootsudo• 5 years ago

The Aurora store is such a blast too, the area is something to witness right around sunset.

pvarangot3• 5 years ago

I've talked about this with some liquor store owners in SF and also a couple that has a "cute things for your home" store. For small stores it's easier to deal with this because they, let's say, try to proactively stop theft. Big chain stores just usually have some kind of dumb policy to not do anything even though they are legally allowed even in cities like San Francisco that are notoriously anti-big-bussiness in the street. The word spreads around.

For example the spike in theft on Wallgrees in SF did start when they changed their policy about a year ago. Before they changed it I saw the store manager in the Wallgreens on 23rd and Mission literally kick the shit out of people that were trying to walk out with merchandise without paying.

scruple2• 5 years ago

That one had installed a makeshift rig of steel bars in front of their stock, and a rep had to physically follow me to the register and watch me pay for it.

Had a similar experience recently in a Home Depot when buying a power drill. The rep took the drill and handed it to the cashier and I didn't physically touch it until it was paid for.

rambojazz2• 5 years ago

How does one rob a chainsaw without anyone noticing?

TheHypnotist2• 5 years ago

It's a MAJOR issue. Most hardware stores now lock them, have cameras, and every time you walk by it makes some obnoxious noise.

spiderice• 5 years ago

I hate that noise. Especially since they place them on aisles with expensive items, which are the same aisles I end up spending the most time comparing the different tools. Make me feel like I can't move for fear of being beeped at.

Makes sense that they do it if shop lifting is as big of a problem as this article suggests.

somenewaccount14• 5 years ago

Assuming an average price of $330, that would be 2000 devices. Or ~6 items a day, every single day of the year. that's not from shop lifters, that's from the employees out the back door.

axaxs2• 5 years ago

Yeah, I just returned hundreds of dollars of power tools to Lowes because of them locking stuff up. I buy into an ecosystem based on how easy I can get items.

Lowes has most of their power tools in cages. But, they don't hire people to actually man the area. Last time I needed an impact, I had to search to find someone. That person told me they can't open it, but would find someone. Five minutes later I left empty-handed, and returned the rest of the tools and batteries I'd bought recently that week.

Point being: Their 'security' is driving away paying customers.

bombcar2• 5 years ago

The stores in "bad parts" of town have the cages, and sometimes service to match.

The "good parts" of town - no cages in sight and you can grab what you need.

It's sad.

oliwarner• 5 years ago

I wonder why they don't just warehouse the stock, leave demo models on the floor and only get out the real one once you've paid for it.

A couple of staff to power this has got to be cheaper than $700kpa in high value theft.

But I also would have thought it'd be comically easy to surveil the power tool area and see who comes in lots but never seems to buy a power tool.

prawn• 5 years ago

I wonder at what point the insurance cost starts to outweigh just paying for more staff to provide a higher-touch experience for certain categories.

But then, I get the impression that supermarkets are saving on staff by using self-checkout, at the risk of increased casual theft.

Would be nice to see more jobs rather than more insurance pay-outs though.

chipsa• 5 years ago

The entire store is the warehouse. There’s nowhere for them to put it that’s easily accessible to the staff but not to customers, except maybe in a locked cage on the floor.

munificent3• 5 years ago

I look at this as yet another consequence of increasing economic inequality.

When you have more and more people keenly aware of the unfair distance between their economic station and that of others, they're going to realize the system isn't working. And once that realization kicks in, there is little moral incentive to follow the rules. If you can get away with stealing from a giant corporation, why not? They are arguably stealing even more from you in terms of manipulating the larger economic systems of the country.

cafard• 5 years ago

You never knew any middle class or upper middle class kids who shoplifted?

readflaggedcomm• 5 years ago

This reduces poverty to greed, which is insulting to those in need, rather than helpful or hopeful that there are solutions other than blind levelling.

celeritascelery• 5 years ago

“organized retail crime” cost retailers $719,548 per $1 billion dollars in revenue.

So less then 1%. With all the extra inconvenience they put on paying customers to combat this, I thought this was a much bigger issue.

throwaway0a5e11• 5 years ago

A huge fraction of that 1% is probably concentrated in a few locales that have some nonstandard law enforcement policies enable repetitive shop lifting to be a viable source of income for the low level people in the scheme that actually take the stuff so while it may be a small percentage overall it likely makes a large impact on the viability of the many stores in those areas.

Their power tools are probably an outsize contributor to their overall profit margin so if there's something they really don't want being stolen it's those.

blacktriangle• 5 years ago

So California

chadash• 5 years ago

Home depot has an 11% profit margin. It's not a Google (30% profit margin) or an Apple (26.7%) that prints money. So it cuts into 9% of profits, which is pretty significant.

Kye4• 5 years ago

~$3 million out of ~$4 billion profit just in the first quarter of 2021 is still not worth this.

jrm4• 5 years ago

One wonders if "plans to" is simply "plans to?" It would be really cheap to just sponsor this article and then just not do it; like putting the alarm system stickers on your house, but not actually getting the system...

dangrover• 5 years ago

Margins can be low in some kinds of retail. Not sure how it stacks up for Home Depot

three14• 5 years ago

Without the (old) extra inconvenience, it would probably be higher than 1%. Also, it could be that this mechanism substitutes for some of the previous anti-theft measures, so it's hard to use the $719,548 figure to conclude anything about whether this would be cost effective.

dugmartin• 5 years ago

When I read the headline I thought it meant stolen post-purchase. When I lived in Chicago in the '90s I heard stories (never validated) that contractors would show up at the Maxwell Street Market on the weekend to re-purchase the tools that were stolen from their jobsites during the week. I can validate there were a lot of really, really used power tools for sale there.

dnautics• 5 years ago

It would be huge if they gave the customers the ability to use the same tech.

newsclues2• 5 years ago

Almost certainly it will, likely starting with the high end contractor line of tools.

wirthjason2• 5 years ago

Did they get them with mustard and onions? As a fellow Chicagoan I went to know.

h2odragon• 5 years ago

It wasn't quite that bad; but yeah there were some places in the Chicago area where you could go and be likely to find anything you'd come up missing. It was cool to see what was "OK" for those markets and what they wouldn't buy and sell; police mobile radios should've been a lot more valuable than that.

z3ugma• 5 years ago

Even in the mid 2010s I saw some questionable power tools at Maxwell Street Market that "fell off a truck". I have a specific memory of a hammer drill that had splatters of very-fresh cement on it.

dec0dedab0de2• 5 years ago

Next thing you know they'll turn themselves off if you don't renew your support contract, or try to use unsupported screws.

junon• 5 years ago

I get where you're coming from but that's a bit extreme. It's pretty clear Home Depot doesn't like doing this.

sneak• 5 years ago

They already don't mechanically fit any batteries but the OEM's.

The lock-in is real.

gabereiser• 5 years ago

lol, I came here to say the same thing. John Deere style. Or K-Cup authorization. It's only a matter of time.

TeMPOraL9• 5 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if "unsupported screws" was already a thing with some high-end products.

I've once had in hands an advanced automatic torque wrench that had a built-in barcode scanner in front - ostensibly so that it could tell what part of an assembly you're screwing in, so it can pick the correct torque settings from a pre-programmed database. But it's a short hop from there to verifying you're using fasteners up to spec, and this can be trivially extended to ensuring you're using the right fasteners :).

TheHypnotist2• 5 years ago

I get the impression there might be a hurdle with building regulations.

d0gsg0w00f• 5 years ago

The industry standard for this is manufacturers of siding/windows/etc calling out that improper installation can void the product warranty.

sircastor2• 5 years ago

That’s the (adjacent) premise of Cory Doctorow’s “Unauthorized Bread”

TeMPOraL9• 5 years ago

It's an obvious idea so there must be a reason it's not implemented - I'm curious what that reason is though, so here it goes:

Why don't they just take the batteries and/or motors out of the products on the shelves?

Instead of adding complex computer shenanigans, why not design the product so that the most expensive part (e.g. a battery in portable tools, a motor or gearbox in mains-powered ones) is removable, shipped to store separately, and installed (or just given out) by the check-out clerk separately? Surely this must be simpler overall than adding digital complexity to where it doesn't belong[0].

The only reason I can think of is logistics - a wireless kill switch doesn't take extra space in the store, and doesn't create extra burden for inventory tracking. On the other hand, any wireless kill switch that doesn't involve turning the device into an always-connected surveillance system, with a built-in SIM card and crypto chip and all, will eventually be defeated by some trivial bit of DIY electronics (and the plans for that will spread among thieves quickly[1]).

[0] - Not in this century, anyway. Maybe 100 years from now we'll be able to routinely make cheap computer add-ons that don't suck.

[1] - Like the plans for breaking into cars in era before advanced electronic countermeasures. Almost two decades ago, I once saw a bundle of such files on someone's computer, collected by the owner out of general curiosity - IIRC, it was a bunch of PDFs with diagrams showing, per make and model of a car, into what shape you need to bend a piece of metal, and where to slide it, to defeat the central lock.

tyingq• 5 years ago

They have to sell replacement batteries, so the power tool would still have a high value.

But, I have seen places where you just take a piece of paper to the checkout rather than the tool itself.

TeMPOraL9• 5 years ago

I think most stores with construction materials will allow the "pencil and paper" purchase flow, because it's needed for purchasing big/heavy stuff or buying in bulk. You give the note to the clerk, pay for the stuff, and arrange delivery.

Loughla• 5 years ago

But, I have seen places where you just take a piece of paper to the checkout rather than the tool itself.

How is this not the solution, and more technology is? The local hardware store has cardboard slips you take to customer service for high-end/expensive tools, they then ring you up and you walk out with your newly purchased tool.

They've done that since the 90's. It's not that hard to figure out. Why does every problem need a *TECHNOLOGY* solution? I'm genuinely confused by all of this.

bluedino• 5 years ago

> But, I have seen places where you just take a piece of paper to the checkout rather than the tool itself.

That's how we bought video games in the 80's from Toys R Us.

EvanAnderson6• 5 years ago

I can see the totalitarian-minded mining this for a revenue opportunity to create an exciting new era of subscription-based power tools. You could have geofenced tools (your licensed job site) and tools that only work during specific hours or for a specific period of time. Higher torque settings or speeds could be unlockable features. Accessories would be DRM-locked (for "safety" and to "prevent theft").

This already happens in earth moving equipment.

The design of the tools will become increasingly complicated to tightly couple DRM functionality to prevent the trivial DIY electronics hacks that you describe. (My sci-fi brain is imaging motors with wacky windings that need specially PWM'ed streams of electricity to spin effectively, etc...)

I hate our industry so much.

throwaway0a5e11• 5 years ago

Just wait until government and industry lobbyists get their hands on it. The powered PEX expander or wire terminal crimpler will need someone who's in the database as having the proper license in order to enable it after you buy it. You cross state lines and your tools won't work because you won't have the valid license. You try and use your tools near the property line and it won't let you because the DB has the wrong coordinates and thinks you're trying to work at the facility next door and you need to be in the union to do that. Of course the company will sell you the unlocked version of the $200 tool for $3k. If you bring too many power tools from different owners to a the same place and that place isn't in the DB as having a building permit the building inspector will show up with some thin veneer of parallel construction.

(Hopefully pressure from the low end tool manufacturers who try and compete on value keeps these kinds of things from happening.)

elliekelly• 5 years ago

Higher torque settings or speeds could be unlockable features.

Diabolical. “Scan this QR code to watch an ad and unlock 30 minutes of 3x speed!”

TeMPOraL9• 5 years ago

Yeah. I was desperately trying to be charitable, but I suspect you're correct and this is the motivating reason.

My sci-fi brain is imaging motors with wacky windings that need specially PWM'ed streams of electricity to spin effectively, etc...

After having recently read too many military sci-fi novels in short succession[0], I started to think how warring alien species would secure their military hardware against reverse engineering. I came to a similar conclusion - there would likely be a whole field of making every possible bit of a device coupled with every other bit, kind of like homomorphic encryption, but done with atoms and fields instead of bits. Like you said - windings that only work if you PWM the voltage precisely, perhaps according to some algorithm that compensates for those windings being scrambled, softly shorted, and otherwise smeared across half of the device's interior surface. Etc. Impossible to fix, but also impossible to figure out without original schematics.

And yes, the way the market is heading, I suspect we'll start doing this to ourselves to secure sales and protect IP.

[0] - The Expeditionary Force book series.

2001lodyssee• 5 years ago

I can see the totalitarian-minded mining this for a revenue opportunity to create an exciting new era of subscription-based power tools.

Think bigger. Power tools that phone home describing their use and location, all tied to an individual via credit-card checkout (or face recognition) and/or warranty sign-up.

It's probably best to think of the modern world as being constructed with the substrate of a Las Vegas casino.

LinuxBender• 5 years ago

Could this also give unions control over what tools are approved for use on specific jobs or in specific regions? Or be used to detect when a union worker is doing a job they are not allowed to do? This is a thing. I had to "look the other way" when a person was sanding some wood, as if I cared. There was a specific union that was supposed to do the sanding and this was preventing the framer from completing their job.

crispyambulance• 5 years ago

  > Why don't they just take the batteries and/or motors out of the products on the shelves?

In really durable tools, motors are mounted deeply and securely in the case. They have to be. Removing/replacing a motor in a power tool is an involved time-consuming process that is prone to many errors. Of course, it would also require cooperation from the tool manufacturers concerning warranties and to to accommodate their product-design to a process like that (ain't gonna happen-- even the best tools are relatively low margin product, with much of the mark-up taken by sales channels).

And even if that's possible, it would be "easy" only for a highly-compensated, skilled mechanic with the right tools and 5-20 minutes of time. That's never going to be the case in neighborhood Home Depot's.

TeMPOraL9• 5 years ago

Of course, it would also require cooperation from the tool manufacturers concerning warranties and to to accommodate their product-design to a process like that

I understand they're already involved - you can't just add an electronic kill switch after market, it has to be built into device, or else it would be too trivial to bypass.

jsymolon• 5 years ago

Shades of "software dongles"

dahart• 5 years ago

Why don’t they just take the batteries and/or motors out of the products on the shelves?

I don’t know, but two reasons I can imagine are:

- It may be much more expensive to have to install motors at checkout. That would mean needing all motorized tools to be designed with removable motors, which most are currently not. That would almost certainly mean a skilled staffing increase company-wide to find & fetch & install motors, a reduction in customer experience having to wait for it, running the risk of having the motor out of stock, etc. I’d speculate that a commodity chip inserted into the power circuit is a very cheap solution in comparison, and perhaps something Home Depot can do now without asking the manufacturers for anything.

- The cutoff circuitry can potentially be sold and marketed as a consumer feature. If the customer can also walk away with a tool they can disable, then the solution helps second-hand theft too. I’d bet that contractors would absolutely love the ability to disable and even track their tools using a smart-phone app.

jbluepolarbear5• 5 years ago

It won’t work for them to lock the tools by Bluetooth. Open the tool, remove the deadman switch, and the tool works. A power tool is a switch that connects the power source to the motor.

hedora2• 5 years ago

Most tools are battery operated these days. The batteries have a computer in them. You could have it refuse to deliver power if the tool isn’t properly activated. Similarly, the vario-resistor in the trigger could be replaced with a computer.

LargoLasskhyfv• 5 years ago

What about weight? With some of that removed you get the wrong feeling for how it handles. Not exactly unimportant for power tools.

TeMPOraL9• 5 years ago

That's a good point, thanks! Solving it by adding weight-equivalent dummies would further complicate this idea.

wirthjason2• 5 years ago

    > "We certainly don't want to affect the 99.5% of our customers who are just there to pick up their hammers and nails," Glenn said. "We don't want to look like an armed encampment."

This is the best quote from the article. It feels so sensible and opposite to how many media companies treat their customers. People have to jump through so many hoops and hassle to avoid DRM that’s it’s easier to just get a rip without all the rights garbage.

Tempest19813• 5 years ago

Although you still need to track down an employee to buy something (who moves it to a different locked area at checkout). And then wait again at checkout to have a 2nd employee go fetch it.

Similarly, at Walmart, even the $15 hair dryers are locked in glass cases, which the warden must unlock with a large ring of keys.

thesuperbigfrog• 5 years ago

It sounds like the beginning of "power tools as a service" which would be terrible.

However, I could see a "power tools subscription model" as an interesting idea for contractors and other serious power tool users: A contractor pays a monthly fee and gets a steady supply of drill bits and replacement power tools.

throwawaygh2• 5 years ago

You can definitely rent tools, including from HD, but it's much more common for pros to use financing from the manufacturer.

ZeroGravitas• 5 years ago

For non professionals you sometimes get community tool libraries.

adolph2• 5 years ago

I think I would like this service. I already use tool rental at HD for stuff I don't want to own.

Tempest19813• 5 years ago

Would be great to have a neighborhood "lending library" for tools.

andylynch4• 5 years ago

Sounds like the local hire shops?

throwawaygh2• 5 years ago

I'm skeptical of the effectiveness.

The article states that the reason for this intervention is a set of organized shoplifting rings that operate as shadow businesses.

I have a hard time believing that an organized operation won't eventually figure out how to enable stolen gear. Maybe via technological means by figuring out how the bluetooth "enable" protocol works or waiting for a vuln in the tool's bt stack, but much more likely by just bribing a cashier or manager.

Keeping valuable merchandise behind lock and key -- or behind the counter -- seems like a more effective solution.

Workaccount24• 5 years ago

Honestly if they do enough volume to spin custom silicon, which gets cheaper and more accessible every year, it would become impractical to bypass the security. You essentially would get an electric motor and would need to rig up your own controller. And likely also figure out how to get the DRM battery to work with it.

shawnz• 5 years ago

It's a power tool, why does it need any silicon at all?

Obviously the primary current path of battery -> trigger -> motor isn't going to be able to be routed through any integrated circuits. So I have a hard time imagining that this won't be trivially bypassable.

major5052• 5 years ago

fuck that. Then you try to sell it and the godman thing stop stop working. I don't want DRM in my power drill.

rs999gti• 5 years ago

You have remote kill and upgrade in your mobile phone, did you get rid of your phone?

api• 5 years ago

You can disable it, and anyway a phone is a different sort of product. It's a computer product with a local interface (making this stuff easy to administrate) and is usually a lot more costly.

I think what the parent is expressing is that they don't want this kind of functionality in everything, requiring constant management of all the DRM in all kinds of everyday items. Too much of a hassle for little benefit.

andylynch4• 5 years ago

My plumber would love this stuff. He's always complaining about tools going walking and anything that helps stop that is a win.

major5052• 5 years ago

Better way to keep tools for a long time is not to borrow your tools.

est31• 5 years ago

Or lose access to it because google canceled your account for some reason.

gadders2• 5 years ago

From the headline, I thought this would be for tools that get stolen from trades people's vans. That would be useful. It seems to be a very common occurrence, and you often see the locks on vans upgraded.

kotaKat• 5 years ago

Dewalt (and a few others) already have Bluetooth-enabled batteries that can do this. You can take some of their "Tool Connect" batteries and disable them over Bluetooth, or put them into a time-limited "lending mode" that kills the pack after X amount of time.

https://www.dewalt.com/products/power-tools/connected-produc...

andylynch4• 5 years ago

I noticed Milwaukee mentioned in this thread as one of the vendors involved - yes, they can do this too (https://onekey.milwaukeetool.com/Connected-Tools) - this sounds like an extension of the same idea.

gadders2• 5 years ago

Thanks (& to kotaKat). That sounds like good news.

leephillips• 5 years ago

When I lived in Washington, DC, and was fixing up a house there were contractors who simply would not take jobs there. They knew it meant getting their tools stolen from their vans. They would travel long distances for jobs within VA or MD, but refuse to drive a few miles into DC.

hirundo• 5 years ago

I'd be interested in a feature like this that works for the owner after the sale. I assume that would mean that I have to have an app on my phone running to use the tool, and that's not great, but I could live with it. I have friends whose homes and trucks have been broken into just to take their tools. These were contractors and it was a major setback for them. Theft deterrence is worth a fair amount of inconvenience to many buyers.

andylynch4• 5 years ago

Check this out - https://onekey.milwaukeetool.com

I expect other manufacturers are working on similar things.

1-63• 5 years ago

You'll start to see some people deliberately powering on their tools to make it look like they're working.

EvanAnderson6• 5 years ago

I assume that would mean that I have to have an app on my phone running to use the tool...

Which won't be updated when your phone OS changes, necessitating purchasing new tools. Sounds like a win!

rbanffy2• 5 years ago

Now just imagine a foreign power being able to brick all power tools and blame it on a rogue hacker group.

But at least the stores didn't get tools stolen, didn't need to pay more for insurance, and could pocket the profits.

chelmzy• 5 years ago

They are using bluetooth. Your scenario is extremely unlikely and would only work if some wormable bluetooth vuln was widespread.

rbanffy2• 5 years ago

Something like an app almost everyone uses?

driverdan• 5 years ago

As a consumer I have no interest in a power tool with BT (de)activation built in. I will not buy from them.

sircastor2• 5 years ago

Me neither, but what do you do if the all the quality brands don’t offer anything else? Do you prefer the poorly performing drill, or the one that works really well and has this thing you never use?

I’ve bought enough tools from harbor freight to be struggling with the question.

lucb1e2• 5 years ago

The question is whether they tell you. It might be like this internet-lite (where you share a NAT connection with a dozen other customers) that is never mentioned by the ISP, before or after purchase, until you notice you can't host games, nextcloud, or anything else.

totony• 5 years ago

You can just test if it works when picking it up

mdip6• 5 years ago

I couldn't help while reading this thinking 'Security is in charge of Customer Experience'. Obviously theft is a serious problem for the likes of retail -- and shoplifting is something that isn't 100% preventable. You can reduce it, but you can't stop it. And every step you take to reduce it risks alienating customers.

For example, we've all encountered those silly alarm systems at the doors. As I've never been a shoplifter, I've never had those go off on me except in error. When I worked at CompUSA for 5 years, we had a greeter at the door who told me "they've never once, in 15 years, caught a shoplifter". They went off several times a day, so the only people being stopped at the door were people who had purchased their goods being treated like a shoplifter.

I'm assuming this system will work a lot better than the old, but if I got my tool home and it simply didn't work, I'd be extremely frustrated -- especially if I could have avoided both drives to the retail store and had the product delivered tomorrow, instead.

The alternative is to turn the whole thing upside down. Change the way shopping is done so that shoplifting doesn't work. I fill a cart, walk through the gate out the door and receive a total, passing my card/phone over a sensor to pay. Of course, this means it's on Home Depot to get it right and I'm sure there will be ways to defeat the system. If they fail to ring up an item because it's not detected in the cart, I'm not sure if they have legal recourse at that point, but it also serves to motivate them to make the system a lot more reliable than the current ones are. And you stop treating your customers like shoplifters :)

dtjb• 5 years ago

If Home Depot could somehow extend this anti-theft protection to the original purchaser, that would be a huge positive to customer experience. Tool theft at job sites is a massive problem, especially because most workers are responsible for providing their own tools.

ianhawes• 5 years ago

This. I was excited seeing the headline, but disappointed it only applied to purchasing from Home Depot.

giantg27• 5 years ago

The easiest way would be to implement the smart gun tech for tools. Keep the paired bracelet at the counter, then the user can wear it when using it. If the bracelet isn't in range, then the tool won't work.

I'm guessing people wouldn't be very happy with this user experience though. Cost for biometric implementation would likely be cost prohibitive.

EvanAnderson6• 5 years ago

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Power tool DRM would, inevitably, be used in an anti-consumer fashion.

marcus0x62• 5 years ago

The toolmakers have already done this: https://onekeysupport.milwaukeetool.com/en/knowledge/ios-too...

flareback• 5 years ago

Future Headline "Construction halted across US as hackers prevent power tool usage"

alistairSH3• 5 years ago

Honest question - where do professional tradesmen buy their tools?

Mechanics (auto, airline) don't normally go to HD or Lowes - they buy from SnapOn, Cromwell, or Mac - all three send salespeople in large box trucks full of tools to work site. And all three offer credit and payment plans. And when tools break, those trucks come by with replacements.

caf• 5 years ago

Reading the headline, that's actually what I thought it was going to be.

nimbius• 5 years ago

i wrench in a shop all day long, and let me tell you what works. Pink tools.

My pocket knife is hot pink, my socket wrenches are dipped pink, and most of my powertools have a flair of pink somewhere from a can of Krylon. Pink is natures danger color for the average nail swatter pounding monster energy and fried cake from the 7-11 at 4 AM. my job boxes are covered in unicorn stickers and rainbows.

sethammons• 5 years ago

That's what I thought the title was referring to and my initial thought was it would be brilliant to "lojack" your power tools.

moftz6• 5 years ago

My Makita batteries have an anti-theft feature built-in that offers a way to disable the battery after a certain date or number of hours or days. You have to plug the battery back into a special terminal to "recharge" the day or hour timer or to set a new lockout with a PIN. It comes with warning stickers you can put on your batteries. The system is mostly just meant to prevent workers from borrowing equipment for weekend side jobs or keeping batteries after the job is finished. It doesn't actually stop someone from stealing them (or even the tool the battery goes with) but hopefully they read the sticker and realize that it's not worth stealing what will soon be a worthless battery. I've never used this feature but it's a neat system. Sometimes the tools themselves have anti-theft tags inside that will set off sensors but I don't know if anyone actually uses that outside of the store you bought the tool from.

soneil2• 5 years ago

I was actually relieved to find the opposite, that this only concerns the store until it goes out of the door.

There was a story the other day that Office 2010 was no longer activating in some regions because the activation servers just aren't there anymore. The downside of having an iphone-esque "activation lock" is that you could be left with a 10yo drill that isn't permitted to turn on because the activation servers have been abandoned - and any sensible workaround negates its use as a theft deterrent.

speedgoose2• 5 years ago

In my opinion, the alarms at the doors are there to dissuade non experienced thiefs.

kmlx2• 5 years ago

it's not only your opinion, it's an actual fact.

these are called deterrents. same as cctv and other tech. they're not bulletproof, their aim is to make life harder for the perp.

letitbeirie2• 5 years ago

If the alarm goes off just hold up any piece of paper that looks like a receipt and keep walking. That's what I do when I'm not stealing anything at least, but nobody's ever stopped me to find out.

kiba• 5 years ago

In some of my encounter with alarm systems at door, there was a gap in which a person can just walk through and not trigger any alarm.

tpxl• 5 years ago

For example, we've all encountered those silly alarm systems at the doors. As I've never been a shoplifter, I've never had those go off on me except in error. When I worked at CompUSA for 5 years, we had a greeter at the door who told me "they've never once, in 15 years, caught a shoplifter". They went off several times a day, so the only people being stopped at the door were people who had purchased their goods being treated like a shoplifter.

A cashier once forgot to remove the alarm thing on an item I purchased after checking me out. The alarm went off about 20 feet before I was at the sensor, by the time another group was passing through. The security guard checked them and their receipts and let them go. When I passed through no alarm went off.

moftz6• 5 years ago

I used to wear a fleece-lined sweatshirt that would set off the sensors at Barnes and Noble every time. I checked all over for the anti-theft sticker and had washed it multiple times but it must have been inside the jacket.

ancientworldnow• 5 years ago

The simple way already effectively used by companies like B&H is that for high price items or things easily shop lifted, you take a ticket for the item, it's brought to checkout by employees or in b&h's system conveyor belts, and then you purchase it and they hand it to you. This is a solved problem without need for complicated and expensive solutions like yours (which cuts out people paying in cash which is a lot of home depot) or this new solve.

minikites5• 5 years ago

and they hand it to you

This involves paying someone to be the "they" to hand it to you and companies don't want to pay employees if they can possibly avoid it.

mdip6• 5 years ago

The way you describe and the way this process actually works, in my experience, are two different things.

I'll take the "reason I only buy razor blades online" as an example. I knew my Gillette was really dull and that I'd been out for going on a week, but kept forgetting to pick some up until I stopped at Walgreen's on the way home. I went to the aisle with the blades and was met with a card, instead of a set of blades. I took said card to the register. Walgreens is so slow; I swear the operate on one employee except when the Pharmacy is open. I get to the front, have the card and a now-annoyed cashier.

Three people behind me, she gets on the speaker and calls for assistance, has me step aside and starts ringing up the person behind me. Three people go through the register when Mr. Break comes up to the front to retrieve my item. He grabs the card, looks dubiously at it, says something quiet to the cashier and disappears. Two more customers later, he's back.

"We're out of this one."

"There were several cards there."

"We're supposed to get more in, today."

So I left. About a week later I remembered to order a few hundred dollars' worth online.

In defense of your post, I've seen it work. Except this last holiday season -- mostly due to the restrictions placed on them by the state I live in -- my local Microcenter usually handles this well. If I've happened upon a sales-person, the item I want is taken to the front/locked up before I get there so at least when I'm checking out, I'm not also waiting on someone to find the thing[0].

[0] That ... on one occasion ... ended up being purchased by someone else since I was visiting the store with my boss from out of town and we ended up spending a solid 5 hours there one afternoon.

tomjen3• 5 years ago

My mum worked in an upscale retail store back in the day when they introduced the first version of that system. As you say they went of on customers all the time, so she or a coworker would be ready with a box chocolates and an apology. This wasn't cheap at all, but it was still worth it because it prevented so much theft.

I don't know if that is still the case, or it is just that thieves go for the easy stores that don't have any security. Back before reddit banned r/shoplifting I lurked there out of curiosity, and it seemed that those who posted there had pretty good ways around that security.

nybble41• 5 years ago

As you say they went of on customers all the time, so she or a coworker would be ready with a box chocolates and an apology.

You have been randomly selected to receive a door prize! We just need to confirm your receipt first…

Spooky23• 5 years ago

That’s an effective deterrent from a certain type of theft. Mostly casual/thrill seeking thieves.

CompUSAs big shrink issues were more organized criminals popping boxes open or flooding the store. I worked at one that was hit by a crime bus — 50 mostly non-English speaking Asians would occupy every employee and loot the place. (They hit all of the big box retailers in our area). The biggest issue was internal fraud.

mdip6• 5 years ago

What you're describing sounds awfully familiar, except for the "loot the place", our store was in Madison Heights, MI, which had/has a large Korean population nearby so it wasn't unusual to have days where it felt like we were being "mobbed by non-English speaking Asians[0]", but I'm not aware of that being used as a distraction at the store I worked at in the 90s -- interesting.

Internal fraud was incredible. One day just about the entire warehouse staff and I want to say a third of the floor staff was fired. If memory serves, the warehouse manager discovered that a large number of specialty "Made for Compaq/Dell" RAM by one of the major RAM vendors had its "COST" value set very wrong (to like $5.00 or something like that). The price paid by employees was whatever IMS said "COST" was. So a $350 memory chip could be purchased for $5.00 by an employee. After figuring it out, of course, he shared the knowledge with other members of staff who participated, as well. Dad always said "if it seems too good to be true, it is", so that -- alone -- was enough to keep me from making that mistake.

The other scam I recall them running was taking items home that were supposed to be destroyed per agreement with the manufacturer. It was very strange coming to work one day and finding out about half of the staff I used to work with was let go for fraud...

[0] We had this one local gentleman who was notoriously frustrating to handle. He'd come in with a million questions, spoke very poor English very quickly and became frustrated to the point of yelling, I think, "F** YOU" at me/storming off when I told him I was having a difficult time understanding ... due to an ear ache (didn't even mention said English; I was pretty good at understanding thick accents, normally).

[1] Not as great as it sounds -- I doubt it was "invoice cost", but if it was a PC/laptop/anything terribly expensive, it was frequently higher than the price of the item.

ancient_art• 5 years ago

Not being treated like a potential shoplifter would be nice!

A friend of mine and I had these door alarm systems go off while ENTERING a store.

We (around 13 or 14 at that time) had to take off most of our clothes in front of other customers (in the middle of the entry next to the registers) until the "store detective" found out it was my friends cap, wet from the rain that day, that triggered the system.

Never told anyone because we were ashamed af.

JKCalhoun2• 5 years ago

I fill a cart, walk through the gate out the door and receive a total, passing my card/phone over a sensor to pay.

More technology? Maybe the wrong direction.

Oldest "hack" in modern shoplifting is to swap the contents of the boxes. You open two boxes on the floor, swap tools, get the better tool charged for the lesser-priced tool.

Or as you suggest, merely remove the identification tag so it is not charged at all.

Maybe just bring back cashiers to ring people up?

mannerheim• 5 years ago

but if I got my tool home and it simply didn't work

I have bought items without the anti-theft devices being removed, everything from guns to booze.

In the latter case, on one of the occasions when that happened, it was possible albeit slightly challenging to simply wriggle the anti-theft device off.

In other cases, though, I had to return to the store.

s5fs• 5 years ago

A few years back I purchased a deer rifle from a local sporting goods store and when I got home I realized they had forgotten to remove their trigger lock. It was about a 30min drive back to the store so I just picked the lock and tossed it aside. Naturally, the next day the store calls looking for their lock and they are very adamant I should return their equipment, but they were less inclined to actually drive over to my place and pick it up.

somenewaccount14• 5 years ago

they are not really meant to catch shop lifters, they are meant to deter shoplifting. And to that extent, they likely work. Maybe not from "professionals", but from little smart ass tikes whom would otherwise think to be 'clever'.

Source: I used to shoplift as a kid. Don't grab the shit with buzzers.

Closi• 5 years ago

I couldn't help while reading this thinking 'Security is in charge of Customer Experience'. O
The alternative is to turn the whole thing upside down. Change the way shopping is done so that shoplifting doesn't work. I fill a cart, walk through the gate out the door and receive a total, passing my card/phone over a sensor to pay.

Your post seemed to start with criticising security being in charge of customer experience, and seemed to end with proposing changing the entire shopping experience to avoid theft.

yjftsjthsd-h• 5 years ago

Sure? The problem isn't that security is integrated into the way the store works, the problem is that security is making things harder for the customer. The proposed solution reworks the store, true, but it does so in order to maximize convenience for the customer.

jacquesm7• 5 years ago

I suspect that those beepers do work: they discourage actual shoplifters to the point that they don't catch them anymore because those shoplifters will move on to stores that don't have the beepers or they successfully lose the tags because they know that they are going to shoplift.

And then there are these thingies:

https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-security-tag-detector...

oarsinsync• 5 years ago

Change the way shopping is done so that shoplifting doesn't work. I fill a cart, walk through the gate out the door and receive a total, passing my card/phone over a sensor to pay. Of course, this means it's on Home Depot to get it right and I'm sure there will be ways to defeat the system.

This sounds an awful lot like how the Amazon retail / grocery stores work. You arrive, scan a QR code at a gate as you walk in. You take whatever you want, and then leave without dealing with anyone. A bit later, you receive a bill in your email and a charge is made to your card.

It's seamless and super convenient. It's also super creepy once you think about how it must work. I don't think I'd go back after that one visit.

ineedasername2• 5 years ago

I remember that, shopping at CompUSA. Even more annoying we're alarms in items themselves, display items. Turn the item around to look at it and the alarm could go off, and take a staff member 5 minutes to walk over and deactivate it. Then a few minutes later it would happen again with a different product.

mdip6• 5 years ago

We used to attach the little tags to people's clothing, especially customers who were very difficult[0].

I'm not sure who pointed it out, but we learned that simply pushing on the top of the "tag" would keep it from triggering the alarm. A few years later, the boxes started showing up with the tags on the inside (that was nice; we no longer had to tag those boxes before stocking them).

I still wonder, though, if they served any purpose outside of frustrating legitimate customers. I get that they are supposed to serve as a deterrent to casual theft, but when the cameras came in and we started bringing the cops by almost every day for theft, it was clear that the alarm system was serving very little useful purpose.

[0] I was 16 at the time!

madeofpalk• 5 years ago

Security is always a trade off with user/customer experience.

It's much more convenient to just not have a door or always leave it unlocked.

dwater• 5 years ago

When I worked at CompUSA, our door greeter did pursue a shoplifter who pushed him down on the way out, resulting in a sprained wrist. They ended up firing him because the explicit policy was not to pursue shoplifters for the very reason that risk of injury is too high.

I learned a lot of basic retail stuff at that job, like the fact that, for emergencies, all automatic sliding doors have to be capable of being pushed open. It seems like all the shoplifters knew it, there were a few times I saw someone bang straight on through them.

mdip6• 5 years ago

That's funny when putting it through the lens of the store I worked at. Our door greeter was a 70 year old frail woman who was a little out-spoken. I can actually see her running out the door after a shop-lifter, but I can't see it end well. (I'm just not sure for whom)

basseq• 5 years ago

We're all playing armchair strategist here, but I really don't understand the thinking or the decision here.

I mean, they kind of thought about CX! They didn't want to go with locked containers because they "don't want to affect the 99.5% of our customers who are just there to pick up their hammers and nails". Those 99.5% of customers who would see (not interact with—just see!) said locked container.

Then they go with this complex supply chain solutions that requires additional complexity (e.g., bluetooth technology) to be incorporated at the design step with vendors to make it all work.

That has to be multitudes more expensive than security tags and gates.

What's the error rate on that process? How many legitimate customers are going to be negatively affected by a miss in the "tool activation" step? And think about it: you're not going to figure out that they missed a step until you get home. Not like the alarm going off when you try to walk out the door before they forgot to remove it. Annoying, but at least you're still at the store!

All this in the name of deterrence. Those "silly alarm systems" aren't designed to catch shoplifters... they're to discourage people from shoplifting. Same thing here.

After all, it's not like the shoplifters are going to return the tools that don't work!

callesgg• 5 years ago

You dont have to go to prison for prison to have an effect on your mind.

Do you get the analogy?

taf22• 5 years ago

Anyone else expect in 10 years we have subscription tools… they only work and they get software updates but only if you pay…. The model is simple, no upfront cost to get access to any tool. Just pay a monthly subscription fee…

Workaccount24• 5 years ago

I'm eagerly awaiting social pushback on the spreading cancer of SaaS everything.

EvanAnderson6• 5 years ago

It won't happen. We're indoctrinating the young early with Spotify, Netflix, etc. It'll just be normal to pay the electricity bill, the music/movies bill, the Internet bill, the tool bill, etc.

aembleton• 5 years ago

I wouldn't mind that if I could have access to a large array of tools that I just return to my local hardware store when I'm done with them. Most of the time, I'm not using them and I only live 15 minutes walk from my nearest Screwfix and Toolstation.

If I could pay say £5/month and get access to any tool even for just a few days a month that would probably be worth it for me.

taf22• 5 years ago

Yeah I agree

d--b• 5 years ago

Problem is that BT components are somewhat more fragile than a drill motor. If the BT component fails, is the tool not working anymore?

They say this is to fight organized crime. I am pretty sure organized criminal know how to bypass a BT security feature...

Workaccount24• 5 years ago

I imagine in the near future some security company leveraging amazon's "No checkout" grocery store AI camera system to watch for theft.

You won't be arrested but you'll get blacklisted on a shared database across dozens of retailers.

The future is going to be weird.

weare138• 5 years ago

So what happens if this bluetooth device fails and bricks your drill after you bought it? These things are used in construction and take a constant beating. They last for as long as they do because they're simply and reliably designed. Why not just put a bluetooth tracker in the box that's disabled when purchased?

swalls• 5 years ago

I'd say they probably considered that a feature.

f6v• 5 years ago

I was hoping we’re that far in the future that the tools would scan your DNA by drawing blood every time you pick them up. Or at least have a fingerprint sensor.

CivBase• 5 years ago

This is the most unnecessarily expensive and convoluted solution. Every product would have to be updated to support this system and it only works with electrical devices.

Here's a better idea. If a product is liable to be stolen, just keep it locked up and require the clerk to get it for you at checkout. It's probably less work for the clerk to do that than fiddle with this new system and it would require much less error-prone technology or cooperation from manufacturers. Most stores figured this out decades ago.

waynesonfire• 5 years ago

i liked what office (depot|max) did... one demo item on display to explorer. if you're ready to purchase there is a slip you take to the counter and the cashier pulls the item for you.

fry's electronic / cosco has people at the door searching every customer and checking their documentation. i believe you can tell them to fuk off. "can i see your receipt?" "no" lol.

ChuckMcM2• 5 years ago

Wow, this quote: Organized retail crime costs retailers an average of $719,548 per $1 billion in sales, a 2020 survey from the National Retail Federation found — a nearly 60% increase from 2015.

The cost of all this shoplifting is 0.7% up from 0.45%.

Meanwhile, over the same period, the cost of using your credit card at home depot went up over 1% from 1.3% to 2.4%.

Who is the bigger threat to your business here, really?

Y-bar• 5 years ago

$719,548 per $1 billion in sales [...] The cost of all this shoplifting is 0.7% up from 0.45%.

Wouldn't that be 0.072%?

somenewaccount14• 5 years ago

yup. they are installing trackers and justifying it with nearly inconsequential losses. patriot act all over again.

MattGaiser2• 5 years ago

Meanwhile, over the same period, the cost of using your credit card at home depot went up over 1% from 1.3% to 2.4%.

Did it? I suspect that large retailers like Home Depot can negotiate substantially on the credit card fees.

handrous4• 5 years ago

Can absolutely confirm that these numbers are negotiable. If you have any amount of scale, ask your processor (places like Stripe or Authorize.net or PayPal for online CC processing). Just bringing it up with sales or customer service, without even having a competing offer, might well get you a "gimme" amount off the public figure. And do shop other providers, if you're processing even tens of thousands a month they might make you a better offer than what you're getting and than the public prices.

oehpr• 5 years ago

wait... are we sure we're reading these numbers right?

that $1 billion. is that the income earned from the sale? Or is that the profit the retailer keeps all told?

As an example, how many chainsaws does Home Depot have to sell before it pays for the theft of one chainsaw? I would assume much more than one.

I think the NRF are just listing the sum MSRP's of legitimately sold items vs stolen items. You can't just divide that to get the "portion of harm"

ChuckMcM2• 5 years ago

I agree that there are a number of sources of possible error, from the retailer to the reporter that is summarizing from a much larger report.

That said, the computation of 'shrinkage' has been defined as MSRP of products that are stolen and/or damaged, divided by the gross sales of all products. The number captures "lost" revenue.

My nephew, who is working at a large nationwide retailer and has access to all of this data for their stores, has told me in the past (and I presume it is still true), that the largest component of "loss" experienced on the retail side is through employee theft, either directly, or by assisting a partner to evade the payment systems. The smallest portion of this loss is from people who come into the store and take merchandise without paying for it.

The "interesting" thing about that story, is not that it makes it harder to sneak out a tool, but that it requires a register transaction for that tool to work. Combined with inventory management of that tool, internal theft rings are uncovered because the employee facilitating the theft has to use their register to do so. But the stores won't tell you that of course.

Just like back in the day getting out of a Fry's Electronics was like being released from a SuperMAX prison lockup with all the gates and checks and re-checks. They too were much more worried about employee theft than individuals stealing stuff.

cmcmcmcm• 5 years ago

I don't mind if the tools would be locked up, I mind that I have to spend 10 minutes trying to find someone to tell them I want it and then he has to find someone who has the key that I have to wait another 10 minutes for the person to come and unlock it and give it to me. I would be more than happy if they have a system where I can do something to indicate that I want this item and then later when I check out it is waiting for me by the register or some pickup counter.

sandworm1018• 5 years ago

I stole from Home Depo and this is my story:

Dark and stormy night in Pacific Northwest. I've finished a long day at work and am heading to meet family at the cabin in the woods. I get a text: "There is a mouse. Buy traps before you come." So I pull off the highway and hit a suburban Home Depo. I grab a wide selection of anti-mouse devices and potions. I try to buy my items but, in a deserted store, none of the cashiers are manned. The "manager" points me to the self-checkout. Ugh. My packing-wrapped packs of mouse traps wont scan. Manager "helps" but then turns it over to me to type in the numbers. With the manager watching I pay, bag my stuff, and leave.

In the parking lot I spread my assortment of mouse-killing paraphernalia on the passenger seat and sent a photo to the family at the cabin. Then I notice my mistake. I paid for two 2-packs of rat traps when in fact I had taken two 4-packs. Do I go back and correct this crime? Do I talk to that useless "manager" and spend an hour struggling to undo my mistake via the self-checkout? Do I risk missing the last ferry? I got into my car and drove on into the night. I am a shoplifter.

drunner• 5 years ago

Reminds me of buying beets at the grocery store that were $.99 "each", but were conveniently bundled in a group of 3.

I got home and was thinking "that was a lot of beets for $.99." but I still have no idea if I did the self checkout right or wrong when I entered "1" as the quantity.

dharmab• 5 years ago

My dad ate lots of guava fruit in his childhood in his native country. He buys a few whenever the local grocers have them in stock. About half the time, the cashier keys them in as limes (about 1/3rd the price) and he doesn't realize until he's home and reads the receipt.

1-63• 5 years ago

I had a similar experience. I had to ask the self-checkout store clerk whether each banana was $0.25 or if it was all the bananas. They told me it was $0.25 per banana.

billytetrud• 5 years ago

If their labeling is confusing or misleading, that's their fault.

sandworm1018• 5 years ago

I think there may be a labelling law that covers that. I believe that they label on any package has to be an accurate reflection of the package's price. Things like meat that are prepackaged but sold by weight have to be individually labelled/priced on the shelf. Each jurisdiction will have its own rules but they all came from a time in the 1950s when evil supermarkets were attempting to hide higher prices on groceries knowing that few people would check their receipts against the shelf prices.

https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2017/04/28/US-Pr...

Arizona:

F. Except as otherwise provided in this chapter or by rules adopted pursuant to this chapter, any package kept for the purpose of sale or offered or exposed for sale shall bear on the outside of the package a definite, plain and conspicuous declaration of: 4. The price, except as provided in subsections K and L.

DC:

(6) DISPLAY AND ADVERTISING OF CONSUMER COMMODITY UNIT PRICES.--A seller shall conspicuously and clearly display the price per package or unit and the unit price in close proximity to the display of the commodity

kbenson2• 5 years ago

That's the trade off of self checkout scales that try to match what you're buying compared to those that don't seem to care at all. At some stores, it's overly sensitive, and you constantly need attention to get past the system thinking you're trying to steal, and even adding a paper bag is enough to cause problems. At other it doesn't seem like it cares at all, and two items can be on at the same time without it noticing. Maybe they track it all and just review cameras later?

Produce charged by the item is probably hard to account for, but three times the normal weight seems like something that might be safe to trigger on.

tantalor• 5 years ago

No, theft requires intent.

You can go back later and settle up if you make a mistake. If you don't... well now it is theft.

sandworm1018• 5 years ago

Been many years now. SOL lapsed long ago. I'm free and clear.

balls187• 5 years ago

I paid for two 2-packs of rat traps when in fact I had taken two 4-packs. Do I go back and correct this crime?

I'm curious what you believe the crime was? It's possible the item rang up wrong and you inputted the correct numbers.

And whether you should have gone back--what would you have done if you relised you made the opposite mistake--you paid for two 4-packs, but only taken two 2-packs?

coding1235• 5 years ago

For me it wasn't dark and stormy, it was hot and smoky...

I discovered my three "No Trespassing" signs were not on the receipt. It is funny that my anti-crime sign ended up being a crime. I spend so damn much money with them though, recently purchased wood chipper, gas powered post driver and tons of other little things. Probably spent a good $2000 in the past 4 months, so I don't feel guilty.

jacquesm7• 5 years ago

Your ideas of morality are interesting for want of a better word.

moftz6• 5 years ago

I accidentally scanned a flank steak as a can of beans since I was holding the can and flank at the same time. The bagging station must have had the weight sensor turned off since I didn't notice the mistake until looking at my receipt at home.

jdc05892• 5 years ago

I too unintentionally steal from home depot. If you sell assorted individual bolts/nuts/washers, the most convenient place for people to put them is their pockets unless you provide a better option, which they don't. pretty easy to forget about the 3 nuts in your pocket.

shaftway2• 5 years ago

I grab one of the buckets and use it as a shopping cart, even if I'm only getting a few nuts and bolts like that, just so I don't accidentally lose one in a pocket.

Of course, that backfired once when I got home and realized I hadn't paid for the bucket.

sandworm1018• 5 years ago

I used to ride motorcycles, sportbikes. I was in a pharmacy once carrying my helmet via the chin strap. Rather than a bag or cart I was putting things into the helmet as if it were a basket. Store security noticed and confronted me in the aisle. They were friendly enough.

dncornholio2• 5 years ago

You did not steal, they charged you not enough. Big difference.

Stealing / shoplifting means you had intention.

umvi5• 5 years ago

It was self checkout and OP selected the wrong SKU at checkout.

The stealing part didn't happen until later when OP realized his mistake and intentionally chose never to correct it

mrweasel• 5 years ago

A Danish supermarket chain got all pissy about how you where stealing from them and you’d get reported to the police if you kept the money when their staff gave you the wrong change. It last until customers pointed out that their recipts where wrong in something like 80 - 90% of the time, in the stores favor and they’d now start filling police reports rather than just asking the staff to correct the error.

umvi5• 5 years ago

Well, you can still go back and buy 2 two packs at four pack prices and then you wouldn't be a shop lifter anymore.

This post almost reads like "well home depot's UX wasn't very good one day and I was in a hurry so that entitled me to steal guilt free"

lostcolony3• 5 years ago

Would you consider it not stealing if it had been the cashier who rang him up?

What if he didn't notice it at all? Is he still "guilty" for the theft, such that it would be fair for police to show up at his doorstep and arrest him if the store detected it and correlated it to this credit card? Is it fair for him to be put in county jail for six months, which is a possible consequence for petty theft?

Syzygies2• 5 years ago

Home Depot doesn't sell "Replacement Clamp Pads" for their Bessey "Clutch Style Bar Clamp". They regularly go missing. You're _supposed_ to shop lift them, then the store sends the defective clamps back to be refitted. This is apparently by design.

shaftway2• 5 years ago

They don't?

https://www.homedepot.com/b/Hide-Unavailable-Products/N-5yc1...

boatsie• 5 years ago

The annoying thing is that the store again has all the power here. If you get overcharged for something that was supposed to be on sale, scans as the wrong item, or the price label is different than the scan, it is on YOU to notice, then wait in line in person to explain the problem and get it corrected.

There is no penalty for the store and you don’t get any additional compensation, so most people will say, “I guess it’s just $2 so it’s not worth fixing.” But suppose this happens to thousands of people. The company always wins.

gkoberger• 5 years ago

"The company always wins."

You're replying to a story where the company lost.

There's a ton of consumer protection laws. I agree companies might have the upper hand, but I think consumers have a lot of recourse here in the US. There's tons of laws, the ability to do chargebacks, etc.

agumonkey• 5 years ago

i wouldn't qualify that as stealing since it was an innocent (although beneficial) mistake

had you plan to confuse the manager to let him ask you to type stuff then it would be different

I had a similar issue one day, while showing some prices to my mother I had to take one box of something out of the shelf. After criticizing the absurd premium of that mall, we walked out. 100m outside the store I notice I still had that box under my arm.. somehow there was no anti-stealing widget and I simply walked out with it unknowingly. It was one petty CDROM label sticker press from the early 2000s, $20 top .. mother and I decided not to go through the hurdle of negotiating good faith return with the security guy. (the irony is that 3 years prior I did steal, out of a joke-then-dare moment with a buddy, stuff and got caught; so when I realized I did "steal" again .. I became livid and started to look at my mother mortified saying I swear I swear I didn't while she looked at me dumbfounded not understand what the hell I was talking about)

frozenport• 5 years ago

well written but irrelevant to the article's described effort to protect high-end equipment against organized criminals

harrisonjackson• 5 years ago

I had a similar self-checkout error at a home depot. I can't remember what the exact item was but I was buying it in bulk so probably some sort of fastener or screw.

The packaging was clear and the scanner must have gotten the barcode off one of the single items rather than outer bundled item barcode. The cart price was high enough I didn't notice the price difference on one item.

I called and they said not to worry about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

paul7986• 5 years ago

I did similar thing of sorts with a all in one air fryer though I went to a manned cashier with it and a few other items. I realized once I got home the cashier didn't charge me for the air fryer.

So your not alone re: not going back when You had all intentions of paying and went thru the right process to do so.

The company I'm sure wrote their error down in their billion dollar loss column. Which I shop there regularly and do self check out now more successfully!

mosseater• 5 years ago

I've had this happen with a blender at a Target, and a Christmas tree at a Walmart. The cashiers were very much doing it intentionally. That's what happens when you pay people minimum wage!

ssully• 5 years ago

Went to Trader Joe's last year and "treated" myself to a fancy jar of honey. I usually buy the cheap stuff, but this was like a $10 jar of New Zealand honey. I probably spent 3 minutes in front of the display deciding if I should buy it or my usual stuff.

I got in line, grocer bagged (I usually help, but they did all the bagging last year), paid and left. When I got to my car I saw the jar of honey in the corner of the car outside of the bags; they never scanned it. Instead of going back in and paying for it, I just left. Still feel kind of bad for it.

azinman2• 5 years ago

Bank error (to use monopoly terminology) isn’t the same as bank robbery. This is irrevant to what they’re trying to prevent.

mauvehaus3• 5 years ago

Propane tanks aren't allowed in stores in most places in the US. Which causes some problems when the folks working at box stores don't know that their store sells (literally) empty ones brand new (vacuumed down from the factory).

I had a new one in my cart, and was told no fewer than 3 times to take it outside between the aisle and the register.

If I hadn't been feeling so damn honest, I'd have followed their instructions to the letter.

colejohnson662• 5 years ago

Why would one want an empty one?

bob1029• 5 years ago

I used to work retail, and I wouldn't classify this as "shoplifting". It is more appropriate to label this as "Shitty customer service resulting in totally-avoidable shrink".

benlivengood• 5 years ago

For everyone worried about micro-crime the stores and insurance companies already have this priced into "shrinkage". No store can keep a 1:1 correspondence between items purchased and items sold at intended prices to customers and it's only best-effort to approach that correspondence. SLAs of 100% are unrealistic for either stores or customers. In this case the average SLA due to shrink is about 99% across retail sectors (1.38% shrink is the average, 1% the median) [0]. That includes a lot of intentional theft which dwarfs accidental over- and under- payment.

[0] https://www.bluecart.com/blog/inventory-shrinkage

treis• 5 years ago

I can one up this. Made an order online and had my contractor go pick up the stuff. I think it wasn't pulled yet so the contractor picked it himself. Few days later I start getting "Your order is ready" e-mails and eventually a cancelled one. Guess they didn't mark it as completed, re-picked it, and then eventually refunded the order when it wasn't picked out.

Though typing this all out it does occur to me that maybe my contractor just walked out with all the stuff.

rambojazz2• 5 years ago

So the question is, did the rat traps work or not?

kileywm• 5 years ago

Some stores, like Costco, have an interesting, alternative approach. Many items in their electronics department are prepay. You can try out the floor model (tethered to the display platform), and if you wish to purchase it you pull a cardboard item card. That card is scanned during the checkout process, and once payment is received, the staff bring the physical item from secure storage to the post-paid customer.

With the item card approach, you never have the product in your hands until it has been paid for. Between that practice and their receipt checking at the exit, I do wonder what their theft numbers look like.

SamuelAdams• 5 years ago

Had the same experience buying a CPU from Microcenter. You told a store associate what processor you wanted, he wrote it on a cardboard slip, then you get the product after checkout is paid for. Overall I was pretty happy with the process. Hardest part was hunting down a sales associate.

gre• 5 years ago

Fry's had a cage behind the registers with all their small expensive parts like CPUs and RAM.

benglish11• 5 years ago

At Costco you don't even have to tell a store associate. They have a stack of cardboard posters with the item on it and you take that to the register

kergonath3• 5 years ago

Around here in <some European country>, they do this quite often with stuff that tends to get stolen (video games and such) and stuff that they must not sell to children (like razor blades).

You just get a bit of cardboard from the aisle, and either the cashier gives you the item when you pay, or you retrieve it from a counter, showing the receipt.

It’s actually quite mind-boggling that their conclusion from their risk analysis is to get this high-tech solution with potentially much worse user experience, than the foolproof low-tech one that just involves them paying one more bloke.

toast0• 5 years ago

It's not just paying the person to get your product after you pay for it; they also need to rearrange their space to store those things (many which are bulky) towards the front of the store. Locked cases are an in between step, need a person to help, but don't need a dedicated space at the front.

dec0dedab0de2• 5 years ago

I've never been to Costco, but Toys R Us used to have their video games like that in the 80s. We also had a chain of stores around here called Best, that I seem to recall having a conveyor belt of whatever you bought, and you would stand there with your receipt waiting for it to come out. I may have imagined that though. Either way, it would be much more effective at stopping theft.

letitbeirie2• 5 years ago

I do wonder what their theft numbers look like.

Toys'R'Us would know - they were doing that with Nintendo games all the way back in the 80s.

jjulius• 5 years ago

Toys'R'Us also did that with their larger-ticket items, such as bicycles.

bombcar2• 5 years ago

As we transition to more pickup/delivery-type retail that will happen more and more. Expect to see the "counter" move forward toward the front of the store as grocery and retail return to the "general store" type aesthetic, where most of the stock is behind the counter instead of in front of it.

Will also eventually save on packaging too, as it won't have to be flashy.

hatware• 5 years ago

It's such a simple, smart policy and it doesn't frustrate honest customers.

Angostura• 5 years ago

Next stop:

* You need to use the same technology to activiate premium features via a subscription

* You cannot resell them

etc etc

ReptileMan• 5 years ago

Most tools are motor and batteries and small control board. They don't have much to drm. So probably it will be trivial to solder something that is able to control the stolen merch good enough.

sombremesa• 5 years ago

Good to see Glowforge’s pioneering work is starting to have an industry-wide effect. /s

rayiner• 5 years ago

He made a point to distinguish between "professional shoplifters" and disorganized solo thieves. The pros, he said, frequently are connected to a larger network that can, in some cases, function as a sophisticated "shadow business."

This is the aspect of “defund the police” that people don’t seem to understand. Police can’t stop every, or even most, solo criminals. But that’s not the only purpose of police. Where the police monopoly on violence is weak, organized crime springs up and turns shoplifting, robbery, etc., into a business.

Kaze4042• 5 years ago

Isn't the point that by defunding the police that they'd be relegated to spending the resources they have on the functions they're actually trained to do, like the one you mentioned?

0xcde4c3db2• 5 years ago

Pretty much. Even outright police abolition doesn't propose simply shrugging our shoulders and ignoring crime, for that matter, just that we should figure out how to address crime with institutions whose central paradigm isn't threatening and committing violence. That's a tall order, and I gather there's plenty to criticize in the movement, but most arguments against it come across more like arguments against Thanos snapping all police officers out of existence.

oauea• 5 years ago

Sounds like they're creating a lot of waste.

bartread• 5 years ago

Riiiiiiiiiight.

So, we're talking about organised criminals here? Primarily, anyway?

They steal power tools because they figure they can make a lot of money out of them, and there's clearly a substantial market for stolen power tools if that's the case. It matters not one whit if the goofballs who steal the tools on their behalf are able to make them work or not.

Do you honestly think they're not going to be able to figure this stuff out and easily inactivate the Bluetooth lockout?

All you're going to end up doing is passing the cost of this theatre on to legitimate consumers which, perversely, will increase the appeal of buying stolen tools at a discount. Bravo.

Why not use the tagging mechanism you probably already have for high value items and which won't require any additional costs/new technology?

This has nothing to do with customer experience, or even with reducing revenue lost to shoplifting, and everything to do with some tech/IT guy's wet dream about control and power.

(Cynically, I wonder if this also provides a route to killing the secondary market for power tools, forcing people to buy new. It's a long play but it's exactly the kind of thing I can imagine them doing, especially with people like Sonos having tried to brick speakers to prevent them being resold.)

1-63• 5 years ago

I think power tool theft goes beyond retail. If they could use the same Bluetooth tech so it's associated to the owner, it would prevent a lot of jobsite theft and theft from contractor vehicles.

CTOSian• 5 years ago

ok, so someone can't simply crack them open, take off the "smart controller" and install one of those adjustable speed control from china ? I doubt this is something (eg like firmware) embedded on the motor.

paulpauper2• 5 years ago

This is the worst way to make money. Yeah, I'll risk many years in jail to steal $500 of crap that I can only pawn off for $100.

fmajid• 5 years ago

And there I thought it was Home Depot selling tools that are protected from being stolen at the worksite, a much bigger problem that theft from stores themselves.

jbluepolarbear5• 5 years ago

How is this gonna stop theft? I have a lot of power tools from Home Depot (ryobi) and I take them apart all the time to fix them. Power tools are relatively simple in design. A Bluetooth anti theft system last as long as it takes to open the tools and remove the anti theft and re-solder the parts back.

My dad was a long time construction worker and there’ve been many anti theft devices in power tool. None of them work and are circumvented in minutes if you know why you’re doing.

This is the dumbest stunt I’ve seen a company take; this isn’t anti theft, it’s anti consumer.

paulpauper2• 5 years ago

How is it anti-consumer? If you paid for the tool and it works, what difference does it make? It won't stop all theft but is just an extra deterrent that does not involve having to lockup the tool.s

jbluepolarbear5• 5 years ago

Have you used a lot of power tools? Because power tools get beat up and every anti theft mechanism I’ve experienced becomes the weak point of tools. Back in the late 90s Milwaukee started putting key locks in the saws. My dad constantly have his saws “repaired” cause the lock would slide closed and be unable to function, he started taking them apart and removing the mechanism. That’s anti consumer. If it will be the reason your tool stops working, it’s anti consumer. If the lock ever turns on when you don’t want it to, it’s anti consumer.

Also, Home Depot calls out on their repair site that they do not repair Bluetooth enabled devices, that’s anti consumer.

starky• 5 years ago

If the lock is effective, then you are definitely going to have cases where a paying customer receives a tool that is locked or re-locked itself.

The organized groups on the other hand now just have a slight inconvenience (at worst, until they reverse engineer the electronic locking) where they have to open and bypass the lock before they re-sell the tool. Power tools aren't complex enough to be able to make them impossible to bypass without the theft still being profitable.

avhon1• 5 years ago

If the anti-theft device is integrated into the brushless motor controller, it could require some serious reverse-engineering skills to bypass.

jbluepolarbear5• 5 years ago

That is going to be the single biggest point of failure. This is going to sky rocket tool costs and require specialized equipment to diagnose and repair. They’re are not integrating it in the motor. They will get sued big time for faulty motor failures.

somenewaccount14• 5 years ago

Organized retail crime costs retailers an average of $719,548 per $1 billion in sales, a 2020 survey from the National Retail Federation found — a nearly 60% increase from 2015.

Interesting way of saying < .1% Bullshit that the tool manufacturers are going to install bluetooth tech in every device for purely on/off purchases. They are going to track the shit out of that tool, mark my words. Also, it will fail on occasion, likely more than .1% of the time. If they don't want to effect 99.9% of the legit purchasers, they wouldn't be putting this power consuming device tracker in 100% of devices.

ttul• 5 years ago

The organized crime groups could not make it happen at scale without a few dirty managers. Don’t let Home Depot fool you here: most of their shrinkage is from the inside.

hedora2• 5 years ago

Well, that’s dystopian!

If they’re going to all that effort, allow the end user to lock and unlock the friggin tools too!

I’d happily pay more if I could bluetooth tether my power tools to a few cell phones.

Tool theft is a huge problem for contractors and home owners, and this would put a huge damper on it. I guess reducing theft after it leaves the store would interfere with planned obsolescence.

erdos4d• 5 years ago

How is this realistic to implement though? Unless it is done in the motor itself, I have to believe someone will have a hack for it very soon.

toss1• 5 years ago

>...the company's fight against organized retail crime. He made a point to distinguish between "professional shoplifters" and disorganized solo thieves. The pros, he said, frequently are connected to a larger network that can, in some cases, function as a sophisticated "shadow business."

OK, so they're fighting pros with bluetooth-enabling the tools at checkout. What could go wrong?

The amateurs will certainly be foiled, while the pros will pay crackers to build a work-around.

Meanwhile, the enabling device will become another point of failure in the product and will cause more warranty claims and dissatisfaction - and there's nothing quite as annoying as being in the middle of a job and having a tool breakdown, especially a newer one that is expected to work for years.

Would also be likely that they'll have miscellaneous connection failures while trying to enable the tool at checkout, e.g., just from EM interference in random locations; that'll make for happy customers...

Sure, it is a serious problem, but I'm not sure this is a good solution.

dukecitypal• 5 years ago

Next natural step would be to sell the tools for a lower cost than the competitor and start charging for hours of use.

devwastaken• 5 years ago

If this is organized as they say, it'll be broken in a week. Change the checkout process. Customers can bring a little box under the display, and a tool cashier brings out the actual tool. Or, when purchased at the front you get an electronic ID for each tool you then go back and redeem with an employee at the tool isle.

wampwampwhat• 5 years ago

Home Depot could solve this problem really easily by having more than two people working in a store at a given time.. It's a pretty simple solution. Every single person I know has stolen something small (like a box of screws) from home depot in the last few years because they got tired of trying to find someone to check out with and said fuck it and walked out. Theres other examples of that same forced to steal because theres no way to pay in this thread, and all over the internet. HD has incompetent top down leadership. Fire your C Suite.

epmaybe• 5 years ago

If you're upset with the service a place provides, the rational response isn't to shoplift, it's to find a different place that offers the same service..

Merad• 5 years ago

Alternative headline: Home Depot discovers a way to introduce power tools that can fail due to software bugs.

underseacables• 5 years ago

Going to Home Depot in some places is to be treated like a thief. When you use the self check out they have a camera looking right at you and they show you looking at you, and they have the cameras in the departments that beep, and it’s just that much on the side of annoying.

newdude116• 5 years ago

Yeah. What a Bullshit. What is the next thing? They change policy and charge USD 1 per hole if you drill more then three per day? Thanks I pass.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26466515

“The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.” In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. “You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug. From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door. “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”

flowersjeff• 5 years ago

I honestly see this as the 'things to come' - and sort of impressed that these technologies/ideas haven't been used sooner.

With that said, I too think that it would be a HUGE gain for all if ownership / control could be transferred. However, most people cannot properly control stuff they dearly care for, and could see this becoming a HUGE headache for the stores to manage after the sale.

Perhaps an after purchase website that you register your info and products ( maybe connecting said devices to your phone(s) or other BLE devices .) The big issue is, you're on the job - forgot your phone/etc...and can't drill a hole. Although, most people would be more likely to forget their shoes than their phone.

shuntress• 5 years ago

Of note in the article: "There are very organized groups where the leaders at the top are recruiting people that are drug-dependent, homeless, or down on their luck and offering them incentives and providing shopping lists to go out and bring back certain products"

In the broader context, attempting to thwart shoplifting directly is essentially treating the symptom rather than the disease. This is not caused by homeowners looking to save a buck on tools for yard work. It's organized crime taking advantage of vulnerable people.

Social programs to help remove this source of cheap/willing labor combined with thorough investigation-based law enforcement is a better solution than theft resistant tools.

fakename• 5 years ago

“Organized retail crime costs retailers an average of $719,548 per $1 billion in sales” Seems like a lot of work for 0.07%

crazygringo2• 5 years ago

That's because you're calculating the percentage wrong.

The relevant percentage isn't against sales but against profits. Home Depot has a profit margin of around 10%, so it would be $719,548 against $100M in profit, or 0.7%.

If you can increase profits by nearly a full percentage point that's huge. That's how companies grow, after all -- a percent here, a percent there, and all these little things are what make the stock price grow.

Sure it's a "lot of work". That's what companies do. If it were easy we'd all be billionaires.

CountDrewku5• 5 years ago

So you're claiming they just like upsetting customers and spending money to stop theft for the hell of it? I suppose we should trust some rando on hackernews over the people running the business. Yeah.... hmmmmm

ineedasername2• 5 years ago

If the tools can be activate by Bluetooth, seems like they might be deactivated that way as well (especially if it was returned).

Given typical IoT security, it would be interesting to see how that ends up working out for them.

poulsbohemian• 5 years ago

I've got two complaints here as a legitimate and frequent consumer:

1) They already chain down all the tools and/or keep them boxed without store displays such that it is very difficult to evaluate tools you might wish to purchase. You can't even pick them up to get a feeling for the weight. Many of the more robust tools (table saws, drill presses, etc) they don't keep in stock either.

2) So many of the accidental thefts in the comments are due to self-scanning. Well - why were consumers forced to self-checkout in the first place? Because HD never has enough checkers, their checkout areas are poorly designed for the kinds of bulk items being purchased, and basically HD is being cheap and wants to lower their costs by putting the burden back on the consumer. Sure, I do my best to scan accurately and ethically, but I can completely see how this happens and it is difficult to blame the consumer when HD has deliberately funnel you into self-checkout.

crummybowley• 5 years ago

I read your comment without reading the article, then I read the article. I am sad :/

While it would make sense for loss prevention at the store, it would make more sense if this feature was extended to the end user.

spike021• 5 years ago

Reminds me of video games/movies where guns/other weapons only work for the enemies or whatever because they have an NFC or something that validates them as being allowed to fire the weapon.

cratermoon• 5 years ago

Good. Now do it for guns.

flerchin• 5 years ago

Any technical details on this? It better be like a dye-pak on a shirt I'm buying, and not like a John Deere tractor.

cududa• 5 years ago

Given how easy it was to breach their POS system, something tells me the private key that activates them is going to get stolen real fast.

GeorgeTirebiter• 5 years ago

This is the same Home Depot that had its PoS terminals compromised ? https://www.sans.org/white-papers/36367/ These people? https://threatpost.com/home-depot-data-breach-order-confirma... OK. Maybe trying something to reduce shrinkage is good -- AFTER hardening the back end.

ranrotx• 5 years ago

Fuck Home Depot. First they killed off all the mom-and-pop hardware local stores. Now we shop there because that’s usually the only choice. Are we supposed to feel sorry for them? It’s bad enough that they’ve turned me into their employee with their self-checkout system.

Someone at HD made the calculation that by not employing as many cashiers, the personnel savings will be profitable even in the face of shoplifting. But now, they are just putting another burden on their customers and vendors.

javman• 5 years ago

I started shopping pretty regularly at Home Depot after buying a house about eight years ago. I used to be surprised after paying when the alarm sounded as I walked out the door. I would stop and turn around, and usually a cashier would wave and say "you're okay!"... or just wave impatiently... or there would be no cashiers. It got to the point where I had a little bit of dread every time I walked out the door ("Is it going to go off this time?")... It is somewhat embarrassing to have other customers look at you like you must've just stolen something.

After a few years of this, I noticed the cashiers don't even look at the door anymore when the alarm goes off. I've never seen a security person at Home Depot.

I'm more likely to buy tools and parts online now. Home Depot has become the last resort unless I need something immediately, or need raw building supplies. Because I don't want to feel like a criminal moments after paying for what I'm carrying.

kf6nux• 5 years ago

The trade publication Loss Prevention Media defines organized retail crime as "any organized criminal, conspiratorial attack on the retail establishment"

Meanwhile, the real world defines organized crime as: criminal activities that are planned and controlled by powerful groups and carried out on a large scale.

zs234465234165• 5 years ago

They are preparing for Screwdriver as a service.

PHGamer• 5 years ago

yea i dont need remote internet connected power tool that needs to call home to work. fuck these guys.

Home Depot is introducing power tools that won’t work if they’re stolen

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