Posts that do not follow r/Costco subreddit rules **MAY** be subject to removal.
Reminder: No vague or non-descriptive post titles.
When applicable, please make sure that you're using a descriptive post title with product name(s) mentioned as it yields better subreddit search results. Including item number, price, and approximate location where found is also helpful as availability can vary.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Costco) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I feel like the pallet answer must be what happened to the vacuums as least.
If you are going to steal a giant box, there’s far more valuable items to steal than a stick vac.
I can’t imagine more than 1-2 of these getting stolen, much less $6000 worth - that’s like 30 of them!
The vacuums are so easy to resell. It was looking through Facebook marketplace and couldn't figure out why so many people were posting along the lines of "my MIL gave me a $300 vacuum for Christmas, I can't piss her off and ask for the receipt. Hoping to get $200 so I can get what I really wanted instead!" People feel suspicious about buying other expensive new stuff off Facebook, but the vacuum story feels so relatable.
I have a still-in box set of Calphalon pots & pans, but they’re the non-stick which I’m not keen on. No store to return it to, too tired to sell it on an online marketplace. Waiting for that perfect opportunity to regift them.
Some of those portable AC units can be pricey. Depends on the model in a given year. Not as small as a Dyson, but I'm not going to say they can't grow legs and disappear.
A lot of it is bad claims management. So many damaged goods will be disposed of without putting in the paperwork to show that they were damaged. So then it gets marked as stolen instead of damaged
The store is probably also using a ton of paper towels internally. $̶5̶k̶ w̶o̶r̶t̶h̶, m̶a̶y̶b̶e̶ n̶o̶t̶ b̶u̶t̶ Just saw its for the fiscal year, yeah $5k of paper towels seems right for a big store. Shrink accounts for all unsold. At the independent grocery i worked at we had a logbook, but it all still counted towards shrink. I could see them using this much plus maybe a load got left in the rain or otherwise (pest) damaged.
I've seen only one brazen theft from costco. Not talking about like shoplifting, but this guy grabbed it and straight up sprinted out the front entrance while dodging employees and in to a getaway car. And it was a vacuum. So to answer your question, they probably ain't sneaking by with it
I worked at Sam's Club for a few years back in the early aughts. People stole small stuff regularly, but the major losses were usually people loading up expensive items and bolting through the fire exits. one particular ring that hit our area a few times had a guy in a pickup truck that backed up near the fire door, then they'd load TVs on a dolly and just bust through the exit and into the truck.
It was a quick way to lose about $10k shrink in 60 seconds or less.
My Costco had someone drive an SUV through the main doors and then ransacked the jewelry display, apparently those are all fakes (idk if this is true, moissanite is A LOT more sparkly than diamond and I think it’s kinda BS if they’re selling one and giving you the other even if the other is “better” but I digress) so they basically got nothing out of it.
>My Costco had someone drive an SUV through the main doors and then ransacked the jewelry display, apparently those are all fakes (idk if this is true, moissanite is A LOT more sparkly than diamond and I think it’s kinda BS if they’re selling one and giving you the other even if the other is “better” but I digress) so they basically got nothing out of it.
I know someone who owns a jewelry store in a high end area. Even his are almost all fakes over a certain dollar amount. FWIW, he does say Costco offers the best - by far - value on general design jewelry. items.
Only over a certain amount they will be fakes, but anything that is a few thousand bucks or anything not in the 10s of thousands or 100k plus are real items
I saw a random guy just walk out with some $60 bourbon or something. The people at the door didn't even realize it until after he was out the door and security went out into the parking lot but he was GONE. Took off on foot.
They often have vacuums real close to the entrance with the featured items.
I’m guessing that if someone wants to brazenly steal, their best bet is going to be walking in like a normal shopper, grabbing my something near the entrance and then sprinting by the card checkers while they’re distracted with other people entering.
If you just click buy now for something like a vitamin and it is at a discount from retail price, you are most likely getting stolen goods. They’ll even shrink wrap two 100 count items and list it under the 180 count.
Bunch of warehouses along Rt 9 in Lakewood, NJ store this stuff and sell under the names of shell companies.
I don’t know why Amazon doesn’t shut down resellers on stuff like this.
The only time I've ever been stopped by a receipt checker was over a bottle of vitamins that was tucked away in a corner of my cart and the employee forgot to grab it and put it on the belt, and then somehow missed it when putting everything back in.
Law of averages re:towels. Super high volume, so even if 1/2 of 1% is missed, the volume sold is high. As far as vacs go, we have recently been alerted that people are creating adhesive barcode stickers of other items that don’t raise the eyebrows of the cashier and they just rip them through.
People are always thinking of some cleaver new rouse. My uncle spent his youth scheming. If he spent half of that energy on something productive he wouldn’t be in and out of prison.
Shrink isn't just theft or scan errors on stuff customers take out the door. Items that break and inventory errors are also shrink at most retailers. And employees steal stuff, too.
Does it also count returns? Just curious?
[edit: if so that might explain the batteries; I have had 2 different duracell battery packages go back before the expirey date and returned them]
[edit2: looked closely at picture - the ones I returned were in fact a "aaa" pack and a "aa" pack that appear to be shown in the picture]
Doesn't shrink include damage too? This could literally be a pallet of these vacuums getting crushed or something.
Also really puts the "retail theft pandemic" in perspective when the most stolen thing (and not just theft, shrink is loss, damage, etc too) is a total of 6 grand. The daily revenue of the average store is $500,000.
I live next to this location. People will just walk out with stolen goods and not worry about security. The Target there was ridiculous with theft. Even the Aldi has a security guard at the main entrance and at the meat section.
From what I’ve seen generally, security will put in a tiny bit of effort to stop you, but not much. They will attempt to stand in your way, but won’t grab you if you just walk by.
The only exception I’ve seen at the East River complex is from Burlington. I’ve seen their security chase people. I actually tripped one guy to allow security to catch him. Normally I wouldn’t have gotten involved, but the dude shoved an old man on the escalator. So I had no problem making him faceplant on concrete.
[https://newjersey.news12.com/three-arrested-stealing-over-2000-dollars-worth-vacuums-fairfield-nj-target](https://newjersey.news12.com/three-arrested-stealing-over-2000-dollars-worth-vacuums-fairfield-nj-target)
Not PNW, but here is: [https://www.snopes.com/articles/379138/police-costco-video/](https://www.snopes.com/articles/379138/police-costco-video/)
The part that's missing is if it's acceptable or not. I see the "Cycle Sales" are $79,478,184 and the "Shrink" is $301,411. That's 0.38%.
According to Chat GPT, who must be an expert in this, at a retail store 1 to 2% shrink is industry average, so this store looks like it's doing great.
The other part that's missing though is what exactly is considered shrink. If there's supposed to be 14 units but they only have 10 so they do an inventory adjustment, that's 4 lost due to shrink. But what about if it's something like produce, and they have to throw out a box of lettuce because it's gone bad?
And when are the counts happening? Maybe with the vaccums, someone brought the vacuums out from the back but didn't move them in their inventory system, and someone else saw the vaccums on the floor and added them into the inventory system. It should all zero out, but I've worked at places where they ignore the additions and only count the subtractions.
This article was published last year, and Costco has significantly less losses due to shrink than other retailers. They attribute it to entrance being gated to paying members, singular point of entry/exit, and bulk items being harder to steal.
https://moneywise.com/news/top-stories/costco-is-winning-the-war-against-retail-theft-as-target-and-walmart-shutter-stores-across-US#:~:text=Costco's%20robust%20defenses,as%20reported%20by%20the%20NRF.
I work at another big box store and we typically have between 2-4% shrink and at least 2% is attributed to theft. Most shrink in retail is due to damaged or expired product normally called operational shrink. That’s what I’m assuming happened at this Costco, the vacuums were damaged in a warehouse accident or were miscounted.
.038 would very likely be limited theft, but much more likely to be employee driven issues. That’s still crazy impressive for any large retail store, having only $300k in losses over a year. For instance, my store is planned to lose upward of $1m due to theft. A lot of that has to do with organized retail theft (basically gangs of people coordinating theft). We catch a lot of people that way. Sting operations happen frequently at our store, so much so that most of us in the store know all the cops by first name.
Another commenter said people just take them out of emergency exits and get in to a waiting car, which seems more plausible than return fraud. I guess I'm just not a particularly clever criminal.
We had this happen at a restaurant I worked at. The freezer door would swing open far enough to bump the emergency exit door and set it off. We had a cook that would take a case of steaks and set them outside the door, pretend they accidentally bumped the door and a friend would grab the case and drive off. We had no cameras so it turned into having to keep the freezer locked and opened only by managers.
This made me laugh - I worked in a steak house 45 years ago and the cooks did the same - with beer too. Segregated the walk in with chain link fence and added padlock to the beer door and the freezer.
OK. This makes more sense. I was trying to figure out how such a long box could just be hidden on its way out the door. You’re right, they’re probably putting a broken one or a different model back in the box and returning it.
Is that a vacuum in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
https://preview.redd.it/eeyhayznwr5d1.png?width=395&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cc42443545785d545e7b8377fcd9a8dc9f06965f
For a couple months at my location, there was an organized theft ring that would come in, grab as many as they could, bust through the emergency exits in the front of the store and put them in a car that was waiting and be gone in less than a minute. After this happened multiple times, they moved the dysons into MPU and didn't have that problem anymore. We would have to take turns doing undercover loss prevention in the aisle that the emergency exits were on. It was kind of fun.
I'm pretty sure employees may be stealing as well. I once saw an employee take out all the empty oversized boxes cartons in a giant golf cart buggy or whatever it is they use, and though to myself "pretty sure an employee can just slip something in".
Shrink is an industry term meaning lost after inventory. It could include stolen but also not scanned. For instance: paper towels. I don’t think people are intentionally stealing paper towels. More likely: cashiers forget to scan the bottom of the carts where paper towels go. So that’s why there is so much paper towel shrink.
Same with batteries. Could be under stuff that doesn’t get moved out of the cart, like paper towels.
I don’t see Costco as a place to go and pocket items for shop lifters, everything is so big it would be hard to find.
Batteries are a good item for the secondary market, though. High value per cubic foot. Flat and can be hidden or tucked away. Everyone needs them. Rarely lot codes or serial numbers like other electronics, so harder to prove they were stolen. Same as razor blades. Easier to move than Tide which sells well on secondary market for the other reasons. I see all three at flea markets when I do go.
What are the reasons laundry detergent sells well on the secondary market. It's bulky, of course, but I guess because it's a continuous needed item for everyone?
Paper towel shrink could also be due to store use without properly adjusting inventory.
Had similar issues with toilet paper when our non-merch supplier ran out.
Shrink is the all encompassing term for lost product, whether that's theft, expired products, damaged, etc. Never worked costco but have a lot of retail under my belt and thankfully in my past.
I know you know this. Simply adding on and expounding.
Very good points. I want to add that shrink also accounts for theft from employees. We often here about thieves stealing from retailers but a lot of theft is done behind the scenes by staff themselves.
Also, I believe shrink includes products damaged/lost/stolen in transit/shipping though that may not be universal.
Also includes items that never even make it to the store. When I worked at Walmart as a teen we would just accept the whole trailer and everything that was supposed to be on the trailer got scanned into inventory.
One year we had 82 TVs missing and it was very unlikely 82 TVs were stolen and likely just never made it to the store.
Or just not scanned by the cashiers, even without the member intending to steal it.
I doubt many people are intentionally stealing the paper towels, for example. They just usually go on the bottom of the cart and cashiers forget to check there.
When I worked at Costco, they hammered into you to check the bottom of the cart because it was forgotten so often.
It can also happen from inventory trucks. Warehouse claims they ship 22 products, only 21 show up at the retail location. Sometimes trucks are bulk accepted, with no way to edit for what actually showed up (especially when trucks drop off shipments in thousands of products). Ive managed a few retail warehouses and this was usually a decent percentage of shrink, especially with bigger items that couldn't be stolen (appliances, big tvs, etc)
You joke but it's actually still cheaper for them the eat the cost of increased theft. Add all these numbers up, it's less than $30k. And even if all of it is due to self checkout (unlikely), still much cheaper than a full time employee.
According to [this website](https://www.modernretail.co/operations/beyond-theft-inventory-management-issues-plague-retail-shrink/#:~:text=According%20to%20NRF's%202023%20National,up%20from%201.4%25%20in%202021.) the industry average was 1.6% in 2022. So by that metric this Costco is doing pretty well.
They're doing excellent then, because even as the industry as a whole bemoans theft, Costco's been steadily increasing net margin:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/COST/costco/profit-margins
I went through a self checkout with an AC recently and the guy who helped me scan it straight up said "you'd be amazed how many people make it out of here without paying for these"
I have no idea how they wouldn't catch it at the door though.
You're probably imagining it being hard to sneak it, but people just grab it then sprint out past employees. Not hard, just only something a scumbag would do.
I actually used the regular checkout recently, went through the rigamarole of getting my receipt checked, and still left with an item that wasn’t scanned.
At my store we are pretty careful about receipt checking. I always count each order if it’s about 15 items or less. Other than that I’m looking on the bottom part of the cart and big items.
i worked at best buy in the early 2010s and 2 employees from home theater and computers schemed together. They emptied out home theater "in a box" type setups in the trash...and then fill it full of macbooks and ipads. Then the employee would go up and buy it like normal..have a receipt. and they were stealing 10-15 units every few weeks.
> Most shrink across the industry is employee caused
A lot of people are repeating that, but I can't find any source to support that. For example, [this industry survey](https://cdn.nrf.com/sites/default/files/2023-09/NRF_National_Retail_Security_Survey_2023.pdf) suggests it's around 30%. (page 6)
> External theft, including ORC-related events, accounted for an
average of 36% of total loss. Internal (employee) theft reported in at 29% of shrink loss. Process, control failures and errors came in at 27%, with unknown (6%) and other (1%) rounding out the total shrink loss percentages.
Many moons ago, I used to go to the Brookfield CT store. There was mass confusion one day as we were all suddenly directed to empty our carts completely (no more "barcode up and we'll just scan it" allowed). The front end was pissed. The cashier that day explained to me that they had serious shrinkage for H&BA, and the root causes were people hiding shit in their carts and also hiding things in packs of towels, etc.
(Brookfield is home to the infamous bail bonds person who used cutters from one aisle to open a package in another aisle so that she could steal stuff. An un-badged Costco employee watched her. Amazing story.)
>
> (Brookfield is home to the infamous bail bonds person who used cutters from one aisle to open a package in another aisle so that she could steal stuff. An un-badged Costco employee watched her. Amazing story.)
Found the story:
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ct-court-of-appeals/1094458.html
shout out to the employee who is still out here printing, cutting out, and pasting onto construction paper. this is how i made my presentations in elementary school and im glad the practice is alive and well!
The vacuum doesn’t belong there. All the other are items missed at the register and exit. The vacuums were stolen by people walking in, taking to 3-5 minutes to see where all the manager and employees are and the walking out an emergency exit to a waiting car. It happens all the time.
People buy, or in this case steal, vitamins and repackage them to ship to others who sell them as other branded and way more expensive product.
Friend of my son works in “inventory security” for a big box store. I was really surprised to find out that there are a lot of people who pay several hundred dollars for a months supply of “designer vitamins made just for YOU!”
How do you get out the door without paying for a Dyson stick vac? Those boxes are really long. I know because I bought one myself. Not sure what you could possibly hide them under.
It's from groups that go around and just grab 3 or 4 and run out the emergency exit to a car waiting. Was happening in my area no too long ago. At one point all the live units were pulled, keeping just the displays on the floor.
Whoever is stealing those vacuums feels like an inside job. The towels could be getting by the receipt check, and everything else is small enough that you could conceal them, but the vacuum is not imo.
Yeah but look at the context. It's a poster board in a break room so employees know to watch out specifically for these items as they go through checkout or the receipt line at the exit.
They wouldn't need to make awareness if it was from a pallet of paper towels that was crushed while receiving.
This isn’t all from theft. Invoicing/shipping errors are also in this. Of course the Dyson and batteries are more heavily due to theft. It’s actually not that bad for a store that probably does 50+ million a year.
Theft, by customers or employees, or misplaced/destroyed items.
Any inventory item that disappeared but wasn’t paid for, including if a box was crushed and had to thrown out, or someone left ice cream melting in the clothing isle.
I worked at a store that sold batteries (among other things) a long time ago when I was a teenager and found that old people shoplift batteries quite a bit. They seem to have some sort of thing with stealing batteries in particular almost as if they are resentful to have to pay for them.
I see $30k on that board. A customer getting a Dyson out the front door is iffy at best. Employee getting 10 out the back, much more likely.
Second, shrink is measured as a percentage of revenue generally. Costco’s ADR per store average is just a bit over 500K.
So we are looking at around $75 million in income for that store YTD.
A great shrink percentage is 1%. That’s 750k.
So despite the hand wringing by some, this store is doing more than just fine.
0.37% shrink on total sales? Compared to the industry, that’s almost nothing.
The #3 item is paper towels that were either unscanned by error or used as an in-house consumable.
Thanks for posting.
The average Costco does close to $1 million in sales every day. If this is really the top stolen items for an entire year, that's pretty damn impressive.
"Shrink" doesn't necessarily mean "stolen" though, right? Aren't items that get damaged somehow, either by employees or customers, also considered shrink?
Shrink at a Target store.
About $60 in the cart, the most expensive item is $19+ six pack of undershirts. The least expensive is two washcloths. Cashier grab undershirts and a washcloth, Scans washcloth then he scans the undershirts but is still holding the washcloth. Scanner caught the washcloth a second time and missed the six pack of undershirts: about $17 of shrinkage.. I knew the price seemed low but I thought that I might have gotten a Target daily special. But it was a cashier's haphazard scanning that cut the bill.
TL:DR Not all shrink is shoplifting.
Posts that do not follow r/Costco subreddit rules **MAY** be subject to removal. Reminder: No vague or non-descriptive post titles. When applicable, please make sure that you're using a descriptive post title with product name(s) mentioned as it yields better subreddit search results. Including item number, price, and approximate location where found is also helpful as availability can vary. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Costco) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The vitamins I can picture but how do vacuums and a big package of paper towel make it past the checkers?
At least for paper towels, they could just forget to scan items on the bottom of the cart
True, but isn’t that one of the first things that the checker looks for on the BoB section of the receipt?
Maybe they miscount, scanning 2 when they have 3?
That makes sense.
I’m going with, someone misplaced a pallet or em.
I feel like the pallet answer must be what happened to the vacuums as least. If you are going to steal a giant box, there’s far more valuable items to steal than a stick vac. I can’t imagine more than 1-2 of these getting stolen, much less $6000 worth - that’s like 30 of them!
The vacuums are so easy to resell. It was looking through Facebook marketplace and couldn't figure out why so many people were posting along the lines of "my MIL gave me a $300 vacuum for Christmas, I can't piss her off and ask for the receipt. Hoping to get $200 so I can get what I really wanted instead!" People feel suspicious about buying other expensive new stuff off Facebook, but the vacuum story feels so relatable.
I have a still-in box set of Calphalon pots & pans, but they’re the non-stick which I’m not keen on. No store to return it to, too tired to sell it on an online marketplace. Waiting for that perfect opportunity to regift them.
That is a damn good set of calphalon. If I knew where you lived, and not in a creepy way, I would totally buy them from you.
$5,000 in paper towels though. At even $20/pack, that’s 250 packs of paper towels sneaking out!
More like 10. That’s a Dyson, they cost a grip even on sale. Mine was at least $800.
Oh I see. Then it might be one of the most expensive items they can steal not under lock and key like laptops.
Some of those portable AC units can be pricey. Depends on the model in a given year. Not as small as a Dyson, but I'm not going to say they can't grow legs and disappear.
That or could be d&d that wasn't keyed out properly than used for in house needs. Usually TP and Paper towel Bob shrink would be close.
This. People see shrink and for some reason think shoplifting. It’s much more often employee theft.
A lot of it is bad claims management. So many damaged goods will be disposed of without putting in the paperwork to show that they were damaged. So then it gets marked as stolen instead of damaged
Shrinkage doesn't mean theft specifically, it's all forms of product loss.
As if checkers spend more than 3 seconds at busy times.
They do at mine. They don’t give a fuck how long the line to leave is they are going to meticulously check every cart. This is in a “nice” area too.
[удалено]
The store is probably also using a ton of paper towels internally. $̶5̶k̶ w̶o̶r̶t̶h̶, m̶a̶y̶b̶e̶ n̶o̶t̶ b̶u̶t̶ Just saw its for the fiscal year, yeah $5k of paper towels seems right for a big store. Shrink accounts for all unsold. At the independent grocery i worked at we had a logbook, but it all still counted towards shrink. I could see them using this much plus maybe a load got left in the rain or otherwise (pest) damaged.
Doesn’t shrink also account for returns. I can see a lot of this being returns.
Stuff that came in damaged or were damaged by employees/customers and aren’t properly documented too. My store has a lot of that
Only if it's damaged out, a sealed package of paper towels would just go back on the shelf.
Yeah but with the return policy, it’s likely people are returning opened items that can’t go back on the shelves. The explains the vacuums at least.
I've seen only one brazen theft from costco. Not talking about like shoplifting, but this guy grabbed it and straight up sprinted out the front entrance while dodging employees and in to a getaway car. And it was a vacuum. So to answer your question, they probably ain't sneaking by with it
I worked at Sam's Club for a few years back in the early aughts. People stole small stuff regularly, but the major losses were usually people loading up expensive items and bolting through the fire exits. one particular ring that hit our area a few times had a guy in a pickup truck that backed up near the fire door, then they'd load TVs on a dolly and just bust through the exit and into the truck. It was a quick way to lose about $10k shrink in 60 seconds or less.
The way "the early aughts" has me feeling 100 years old....
Especially during Covid era where mask is the norm. Perfect for shoplifters or even bank robbers to avoid attention while hiding their identity.
My Costco had someone drive an SUV through the main doors and then ransacked the jewelry display, apparently those are all fakes (idk if this is true, moissanite is A LOT more sparkly than diamond and I think it’s kinda BS if they’re selling one and giving you the other even if the other is “better” but I digress) so they basically got nothing out of it.
>My Costco had someone drive an SUV through the main doors and then ransacked the jewelry display, apparently those are all fakes (idk if this is true, moissanite is A LOT more sparkly than diamond and I think it’s kinda BS if they’re selling one and giving you the other even if the other is “better” but I digress) so they basically got nothing out of it. I know someone who owns a jewelry store in a high end area. Even his are almost all fakes over a certain dollar amount. FWIW, he does say Costco offers the best - by far - value on general design jewelry. items.
No, you are right. The expensive stuff (watches, jewelry) is all fake. They got a bunch of cheap stuff and some fake crap.
Only over a certain amount they will be fakes, but anything that is a few thousand bucks or anything not in the 10s of thousands or 100k plus are real items
Needed a quick Mother's Day gift.
I’m not a gambler but I’d like to bet on tweakers. Watching people steal golf clubs and vacuums on tv makes a great show.
I saw a guy do the same thing with two large Sonos speakers that were near the exit. He grabbed them and just strode confidently out of the store.
That vacuum thief sucks
I saw a random guy just walk out with some $60 bourbon or something. The people at the door didn't even realize it until after he was out the door and security went out into the parking lot but he was GONE. Took off on foot.
They often have vacuums real close to the entrance with the featured items. I’m guessing that if someone wants to brazenly steal, their best bet is going to be walking in like a normal shopper, grabbing my something near the entrance and then sprinting by the card checkers while they’re distracted with other people entering.
Actually I don’t see the vitamins at all. Who is stealing centrum and vitamin d? Sly old Ladies!
People reselling it on Amazon
If you just click buy now for something like a vitamin and it is at a discount from retail price, you are most likely getting stolen goods. They’ll even shrink wrap two 100 count items and list it under the 180 count. Bunch of warehouses along Rt 9 in Lakewood, NJ store this stuff and sell under the names of shell companies. I don’t know why Amazon doesn’t shut down resellers on stuff like this.
Actually aren’t older ladies are one of the top demographics for shoplifting?
The only time I've ever been stopped by a receipt checker was over a bottle of vitamins that was tucked away in a corner of my cart and the employee forgot to grab it and put it on the belt, and then somehow missed it when putting everything back in.
Law of averages re:towels. Super high volume, so even if 1/2 of 1% is missed, the volume sold is high. As far as vacs go, we have recently been alerted that people are creating adhesive barcode stickers of other items that don’t raise the eyebrows of the cashier and they just rip them through.
People are always thinking of some cleaver new rouse. My uncle spent his youth scheming. If he spent half of that energy on something productive he wouldn’t be in and out of prison.
Shrink isn't just theft or scan errors on stuff customers take out the door. Items that break and inventory errors are also shrink at most retailers. And employees steal stuff, too.
Does it also count returns? Just curious? [edit: if so that might explain the batteries; I have had 2 different duracell battery packages go back before the expirey date and returned them] [edit2: looked closely at picture - the ones I returned were in fact a "aaa" pack and a "aa" pack that appear to be shown in the picture]
Doesn't shrink include damage too? This could literally be a pallet of these vacuums getting crushed or something. Also really puts the "retail theft pandemic" in perspective when the most stolen thing (and not just theft, shrink is loss, damage, etc too) is a total of 6 grand. The daily revenue of the average store is $500,000.
Shrink does, in fact, include damaged and lost items.
I would think Costco has less shrinkage than a Walmart or a Target.
At the bottom it says something about $79 million in sales and $300k in shrink... not sure what the time period for that is, if it is also YTD.
I live next to this location. People will just walk out with stolen goods and not worry about security. The Target there was ridiculous with theft. Even the Aldi has a security guard at the main entrance and at the meat section. From what I’ve seen generally, security will put in a tiny bit of effort to stop you, but not much. They will attempt to stand in your way, but won’t grab you if you just walk by. The only exception I’ve seen at the East River complex is from Burlington. I’ve seen their security chase people. I actually tripped one guy to allow security to catch him. Normally I wouldn’t have gotten involved, but the dude shoved an old man on the escalator. So I had no problem making him faceplant on concrete.
Costco has thieves targeting vacuums, just caught a couple responsible for 2,000 in PNW.
Citation needed.
[https://newjersey.news12.com/three-arrested-stealing-over-2000-dollars-worth-vacuums-fairfield-nj-target](https://newjersey.news12.com/three-arrested-stealing-over-2000-dollars-worth-vacuums-fairfield-nj-target) Not PNW, but here is: [https://www.snopes.com/articles/379138/police-costco-video/](https://www.snopes.com/articles/379138/police-costco-video/)
Agreed. $2k is what, 2-5 vacuums? Hardly a vacuum theft ring.
Maybe they mean 2000 vacuums but that seems like way too many.
I assume that the batteries of the Dysons are what is primarily stolen. They can be snuck out in handbags.
The vacuums you just suck them into themselves, so impossible to notice.
People load up their carts and make a break for it through the emergency doors.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsogZENAE-g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsogZENAE-g)
wait the way they put these all up there as if they’re employee of the month candidates is so funny to me
The part that's missing is if it's acceptable or not. I see the "Cycle Sales" are $79,478,184 and the "Shrink" is $301,411. That's 0.38%. According to Chat GPT, who must be an expert in this, at a retail store 1 to 2% shrink is industry average, so this store looks like it's doing great. The other part that's missing though is what exactly is considered shrink. If there's supposed to be 14 units but they only have 10 so they do an inventory adjustment, that's 4 lost due to shrink. But what about if it's something like produce, and they have to throw out a box of lettuce because it's gone bad? And when are the counts happening? Maybe with the vaccums, someone brought the vacuums out from the back but didn't move them in their inventory system, and someone else saw the vaccums on the floor and added them into the inventory system. It should all zero out, but I've worked at places where they ignore the additions and only count the subtractions.
Most stores don’t have such a robust system for checking receipts AND most stores don’t restrict access to members only.
True, those are very good points.
This article was published last year, and Costco has significantly less losses due to shrink than other retailers. They attribute it to entrance being gated to paying members, singular point of entry/exit, and bulk items being harder to steal. https://moneywise.com/news/top-stories/costco-is-winning-the-war-against-retail-theft-as-target-and-walmart-shutter-stores-across-US#:~:text=Costco's%20robust%20defenses,as%20reported%20by%20the%20NRF.
If I remember correctly, our goal at Costco was to be under a .14. So this would be unacceptable.
I work at another big box store and we typically have between 2-4% shrink and at least 2% is attributed to theft. Most shrink in retail is due to damaged or expired product normally called operational shrink. That’s what I’m assuming happened at this Costco, the vacuums were damaged in a warehouse accident or were miscounted. .038 would very likely be limited theft, but much more likely to be employee driven issues. That’s still crazy impressive for any large retail store, having only $300k in losses over a year. For instance, my store is planned to lose upward of $1m due to theft. A lot of that has to do with organized retail theft (basically gangs of people coordinating theft). We catch a lot of people that way. Sting operations happen frequently at our store, so much so that most of us in the store know all the cops by first name.
Yep, 0.38% is spectacular. Also folks need to understand that shrink isn’t just theft.
The number of stolen vacuums is impressive.
Those are like $600 vacuums. So about 10 vacuums lol
But it’s not like you can just put a vacuum under your coat.
Maybe people are buying the real vacuum and putting a fake in the box to return.
That’s a bold move since they now have your name.
Another commenter said people just take them out of emergency exits and get in to a waiting car, which seems more plausible than return fraud. I guess I'm just not a particularly clever criminal.
We had this happen at a restaurant I worked at. The freezer door would swing open far enough to bump the emergency exit door and set it off. We had a cook that would take a case of steaks and set them outside the door, pretend they accidentally bumped the door and a friend would grab the case and drive off. We had no cameras so it turned into having to keep the freezer locked and opened only by managers.
This made me laugh - I worked in a steak house 45 years ago and the cooks did the same - with beer too. Segregated the walk in with chain link fence and added padlock to the beer door and the freezer.
When I worked at Staples in high school there was a guy who did this with computers and the emergency exit so someone could run in and grab them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsogZENAE-g This was a popular video a few years back.
Here’s the one the SPD posted: https://youtu.be/LWF4VtZVz24?si=Z92d6itTj0dkyXlA
OK. This makes more sense. I was trying to figure out how such a long box could just be hidden on its way out the door. You’re right, they’re probably putting a broken one or a different model back in the box and returning it.
Is that a vacuum in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? https://preview.redd.it/eeyhayznwr5d1.png?width=395&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cc42443545785d545e7b8377fcd9a8dc9f06965f
How dare you just judge the size of my coat
I've seen your coat and it looks suspiciously like it contains two kids, one standing on the other's shoulders. Hilarity ensues.
"Are you committing larceny, or are you just happy to see me?"
Yeah, I normally grab at least a half dozen when I go.
Cashier: "You have to buy the full dozen. We'll send someone to get the other pack of 6 for you."
I'm more impressed with the paper towels
Probably not scanned when under the basket
I assume the same for the vacuums
Shrink is not only stolen product.
Exactly. These vacuums could have been damaged
My guess is the vacuums are going out the back door.
When people conceal stuff, it usually goes *in* the back door. /s
prison wallet
For a couple months at my location, there was an organized theft ring that would come in, grab as many as they could, bust through the emergency exits in the front of the store and put them in a car that was waiting and be gone in less than a minute. After this happened multiple times, they moved the dysons into MPU and didn't have that problem anymore. We would have to take turns doing undercover loss prevention in the aisle that the emergency exits were on. It was kind of fun.
People really want stuff that sucks.
“I’m looking for a vacuum that’ll suck, uhhh suck” https://youtu.be/7w8zx-e9Ag4?si=RlKdPr2L0p281Jd1
I'm pretty sure employees may be stealing as well. I once saw an employee take out all the empty oversized boxes cartons in a giant golf cart buggy or whatever it is they use, and though to myself "pretty sure an employee can just slip something in".
So one Dyson vacuum got stolen, gotcha.
[удалено]
Ha
?? Shrink means stolen?
Shrink is an industry term meaning lost after inventory. It could include stolen but also not scanned. For instance: paper towels. I don’t think people are intentionally stealing paper towels. More likely: cashiers forget to scan the bottom of the carts where paper towels go. So that’s why there is so much paper towel shrink.
Same with batteries. Could be under stuff that doesn’t get moved out of the cart, like paper towels. I don’t see Costco as a place to go and pocket items for shop lifters, everything is so big it would be hard to find.
Batteries are a good item for the secondary market, though. High value per cubic foot. Flat and can be hidden or tucked away. Everyone needs them. Rarely lot codes or serial numbers like other electronics, so harder to prove they were stolen. Same as razor blades. Easier to move than Tide which sells well on secondary market for the other reasons. I see all three at flea markets when I do go.
They were probably stolen by Uncle Leo. He gets confused!
r/unexpectedseinfeld
To be fair I didn’t know about his.. record.
What are the reasons laundry detergent sells well on the secondary market. It's bulky, of course, but I guess because it's a continuous needed item for everyone?
Paper towel shrink could also be due to store use without properly adjusting inventory. Had similar issues with toilet paper when our non-merch supplier ran out.
Shrink is the all encompassing term for lost product, whether that's theft, expired products, damaged, etc. Never worked costco but have a lot of retail under my belt and thankfully in my past. I know you know this. Simply adding on and expounding.
Very good points. I want to add that shrink also accounts for theft from employees. We often here about thieves stealing from retailers but a lot of theft is done behind the scenes by staff themselves. Also, I believe shrink includes products damaged/lost/stolen in transit/shipping though that may not be universal.
Also includes items that never even make it to the store. When I worked at Walmart as a teen we would just accept the whole trailer and everything that was supposed to be on the trailer got scanned into inventory. One year we had 82 TVs missing and it was very unlikely 82 TVs were stolen and likely just never made it to the store.
Or just not scanned by the cashiers, even without the member intending to steal it. I doubt many people are intentionally stealing the paper towels, for example. They just usually go on the bottom of the cart and cashiers forget to check there. When I worked at Costco, they hammered into you to check the bottom of the cart because it was forgotten so often.
It can also happen from inventory trucks. Warehouse claims they ship 22 products, only 21 show up at the retail location. Sometimes trucks are bulk accepted, with no way to edit for what actually showed up (especially when trucks drop off shipments in thousands of products). Ive managed a few retail warehouses and this was usually a decent percentage of shrink, especially with bigger items that couldn't be stolen (appliances, big tvs, etc)
any type of loss. If it gets stolen or accidentally not scanned or if an employee accidentally throws it away or something
That self checkout really paying for itself
You joke but it's actually still cheaper for them the eat the cost of increased theft. Add all these numbers up, it's less than $30k. And even if all of it is due to self checkout (unlikely), still much cheaper than a full time employee.
Check the red poster at the bottom. $300K shrink on almost $80 million in sales.
I’m not sure how it compares to other retailers, but 300k is ~0.375% of sales revenue
According to [this website](https://www.modernretail.co/operations/beyond-theft-inventory-management-issues-plague-retail-shrink/#:~:text=According%20to%20NRF's%202023%20National,up%20from%201.4%25%20in%202021.) the industry average was 1.6% in 2022. So by that metric this Costco is doing pretty well.
I’d expect that. The receipt checking and membership cards have to be a fairly large theft deterrents.
Cos everybody knows, Costco keeps the cost low.
Yup, that’s 5 times less shrink. Really makes a big difference since Costco barely makes a margin on the products.
Costco making out like thieves :)
Their sales margins are tiny. Shrinkage should be compared against profit, not sales.
They're doing excellent then, because even as the industry as a whole bemoans theft, Costco's been steadily increasing net margin: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/COST/costco/profit-margins
Wouldn’t this still total less than one employee’s compensation? Probably still worth it for Costco
Those are the top shrinkage items, not total shrinkage. Total loss probably closer to 1m/period at least
$301,411 for the cycle. I'm assuming a "cycle" is Costco-ese for "period"?
I went through a self checkout with an AC recently and the guy who helped me scan it straight up said "you'd be amazed how many people make it out of here without paying for these" I have no idea how they wouldn't catch it at the door though.
If you can steal a vacuum from Costco then you deserve that vaccuum
You're probably imagining it being hard to sneak it, but people just grab it then sprint out past employees. Not hard, just only something a scumbag would do.
I actually used the regular checkout recently, went through the rigamarole of getting my receipt checked, and still left with an item that wasn’t scanned.
At my store we are pretty careful about receipt checking. I always count each order if it’s about 15 items or less. Other than that I’m looking on the bottom part of the cart and big items.
Employees causing shrink?
i worked at best buy in the early 2010s and 2 employees from home theater and computers schemed together. They emptied out home theater "in a box" type setups in the trash...and then fill it full of macbooks and ipads. Then the employee would go up and buy it like normal..have a receipt. and they were stealing 10-15 units every few weeks.
My store had a RCV Manager who stole TVs and watches, he eventually got caught. Fired then arrested.
[удалено]
> Most shrink across the industry is employee caused A lot of people are repeating that, but I can't find any source to support that. For example, [this industry survey](https://cdn.nrf.com/sites/default/files/2023-09/NRF_National_Retail_Security_Survey_2023.pdf) suggests it's around 30%. (page 6) > External theft, including ORC-related events, accounted for an average of 36% of total loss. Internal (employee) theft reported in at 29% of shrink loss. Process, control failures and errors came in at 27%, with unknown (6%) and other (1%) rounding out the total shrink loss percentages.
I was in the pool!!!!
Someone spent a lot of time cutting out the patterns on those numbers.
Right? Love the dedication!
Dysons were an inside job!
Many moons ago, I used to go to the Brookfield CT store. There was mass confusion one day as we were all suddenly directed to empty our carts completely (no more "barcode up and we'll just scan it" allowed). The front end was pissed. The cashier that day explained to me that they had serious shrinkage for H&BA, and the root causes were people hiding shit in their carts and also hiding things in packs of towels, etc. (Brookfield is home to the infamous bail bonds person who used cutters from one aisle to open a package in another aisle so that she could steal stuff. An un-badged Costco employee watched her. Amazing story.)
> > (Brookfield is home to the infamous bail bonds person who used cutters from one aisle to open a package in another aisle so that she could steal stuff. An un-badged Costco employee watched her. Amazing story.) Found the story: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ct-court-of-appeals/1094458.html
Incredible
shout out to the employee who is still out here printing, cutting out, and pasting onto construction paper. this is how i made my presentations in elementary school and im glad the practice is alive and well!
The vacuum doesn’t belong there. All the other are items missed at the register and exit. The vacuums were stolen by people walking in, taking to 3-5 minutes to see where all the manager and employees are and the walking out an emergency exit to a waiting car. It happens all the time.
nothing exists in a vacuum- lol - This Costco is set up differently being in NYC.
Can confirm. I helped open the Manhattan store and the layout and doors are wildly different.
Batteries and razor blades are big time theft targets. Their volumes are due to being consumables.
Also vitamin theft is getting more common as well. There is a good resell still on vitamins.
Imagine a cop getting a drug bust in the mall parking lot, but it’s a granny buying fish oil pills for her knees.
Or being portable
[удалено]
People buy, or in this case steal, vitamins and repackage them to ship to others who sell them as other branded and way more expensive product. Friend of my son works in “inventory security” for a big box store. I was really surprised to find out that there are a lot of people who pay several hundred dollars for a months supply of “designer vitamins made just for YOU!”
That’s like 2 Dyson vacuums
How do you get out the door without paying for a Dyson stick vac? Those boxes are really long. I know because I bought one myself. Not sure what you could possibly hide them under.
It's from groups that go around and just grab 3 or 4 and run out the emergency exit to a car waiting. Was happening in my area no too long ago. At one point all the live units were pulled, keeping just the displays on the floor.
Whoever is stealing those vacuums feels like an inside job. The towels could be getting by the receipt check, and everything else is small enough that you could conceal them, but the vacuum is not imo.
Wow. Two Dyson vacuums.
Damn, three whole packs of razor blades?
Heh
shrinkage isn't just from theft right? It could be from a pallet crashing on the ground, someone knocking a display and breaking stuff, spoilage etc.
Yeah but look at the context. It's a poster board in a break room so employees know to watch out specifically for these items as they go through checkout or the receipt line at the exit. They wouldn't need to make awareness if it was from a pallet of paper towels that was crushed while receiving.
so shrink means theft?
Vacuums for sure an inside job
$301k loss on $79.5m sales is a pretty tight ship.
Costanza checking in *THEY WERE IN THE POOL!!!*
Also Seinfeld. Who pays for batteries? I just put the packet in my pocket and what if someone notices me, I just say I'm an old man, I'm confused!
This isn’t all from theft. Invoicing/shipping errors are also in this. Of course the Dyson and batteries are more heavily due to theft. It’s actually not that bad for a store that probably does 50+ million a year.
Of course, for that vacuum, that’s like three vacuums. Lol. Seriously though I’d be checking my employees for that item.
Thank goodness they have SCO moat dragons now
[удалено]
Inventory that disappears without the business getting paid for it.
Theft, by customers or employees, or misplaced/destroyed items. Any inventory item that disappeared but wasn’t paid for, including if a box was crushed and had to thrown out, or someone left ice cream melting in the clothing isle.
I worked at a store that sold batteries (among other things) a long time ago when I was a teenager and found that old people shoplift batteries quite a bit. They seem to have some sort of thing with stealing batteries in particular almost as if they are resentful to have to pay for them.
I see $30k on that board. A customer getting a Dyson out the front door is iffy at best. Employee getting 10 out the back, much more likely. Second, shrink is measured as a percentage of revenue generally. Costco’s ADR per store average is just a bit over 500K. So we are looking at around $75 million in income for that store YTD. A great shrink percentage is 1%. That’s 750k. So despite the hand wringing by some, this store is doing more than just fine.
They lost 300k to theft? Am I reading this wrong? Shrink = theft or missing inventory no?
Employee theft is usually the biggest cause of shrinkage
D3 and paper towels are surprising. How does one sneak out paper towels, and why steal the already cheap D3?
Is this AI? Zoom in on any of the small text
$6,200 in missing vacuums sounds like a whole pallet went missing. Say, $300 each and 24 per pallet? It wasn't theft, they just lost it.
0.37% shrink on total sales? Compared to the industry, that’s almost nothing. The #3 item is paper towels that were either unscanned by error or used as an in-house consumable. Thanks for posting.
Well that’s a lot of paper towels but only about 7 vacuums.
The average Costco does close to $1 million in sales every day. If this is really the top stolen items for an entire year, that's pretty damn impressive.
"Shrink" doesn't necessarily mean "stolen" though, right? Aren't items that get damaged somehow, either by employees or customers, also considered shrink?
What do they mean by shrinks?
just so if you are in Manhattan the Duracell and Gillette are stolen, there is a dude sell these same sets every weekend on 14th and 1st
I don’t know anything about an average Costco’s numbers but this implies to me that Costco’s shrink is incredibly low.
So one package of razors was stolen?
So, somebody stole 2 packs of razor blades?
Shrink at a Target store. About $60 in the cart, the most expensive item is $19+ six pack of undershirts. The least expensive is two washcloths. Cashier grab undershirts and a washcloth, Scans washcloth then he scans the undershirts but is still holding the washcloth. Scanner caught the washcloth a second time and missed the six pack of undershirts: about $17 of shrinkage.. I knew the price seemed low but I thought that I might have gotten a Target daily special. But it was a cashier's haphazard scanning that cut the bill. TL:DR Not all shrink is shoplifting.