[LINK] Google Wallet, Hate and Gloating in Forbes

[Fernando Cassia]

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 19:10, Jan Whitaker <jwhit at melbpc.org.au> wrote:
>
> We also have that low-charge no verification
> thing going on in our supermarkets. Now THAT's a
> disaster waiting to happen for the banks.

Australia


Self-service checkouts: are bad apple scan cheats going bananas?
http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/shopping/selfservice-checkouts-are-bad-apple-scan-cheats-going-bananas-20110803-1iauq.html

---
Georgina Robinson
August 3, 2011

You wouldn't dream of shoplifting a litre of milk or a bunch of
bananas from your local supermarket, would you?

That's stealing, after all - a disgraceful, juvenile habit you left
back in high school, when the pack you ran with sported mullets and
sucked on Winnie Blues.

But have you ever found yourself staring at one of the increasing
number of self-service screens, with $15 in your pocket and the
temptation to put your $13.98-per-kilo* lady fingers through as
$4.98-per-kilo turnips?

Have you ever thrown a fist of garlic in with the onions - after you'd
weighed the bag - or punched in green beans ($4.98/kg) instead of snow
peas ($7.98/kg)?

Simone, a shopper leaving Coles at Pyrmont yesterday, admitted to
frequent abuses of the self-service grocery lane. "With all the fruit
and vegetables I'll just put it [in] as the cheaper [variety]," she
said.

"Or with a box of drinks or something I'll often put it on the floor,
then take it after I've paid for all the other things."

The supermarket giants, Coles and Woolworths, deny their "shrinkage
levels" - industry speak for theft or the loss of goods - have risen
since rolling out the technology in 2003. And while other shoppers we
talked to said they had never called their royal galas ($5.98/kg) pink
ladies ($2.98/kg), Simone is by no means alone.

A forensic psychologist who specialises in assessing shoplifters,
suspects a "large chunk" of the population would do it once or twice.
"I think people who do it regularly would be different but some people
will do it just because they're hard up on the day," Dr Christopher
Lennings said.

"They've gone out with $20 in their pocket and they've got a $25
shopping bill so they're trying to squeeze." Coles and Woolworths said
they did not have figures on theft levels since the introduction of
self-service checkouts so we consulted a few more shoppers.

A Sydney accountant told us he had, on more than one occasion, put a
hand of bananas through as carrots since the price of bananas spiked.
"Roughly it's about a $7 to $8 difference, when bananas [were at
their] peak," he said.

He would never consider hiding something in his pocket if he went
through a regular checkout."That's stealing," he said. "I'm not proud
with [the] banana swap but I don't steal; at least I don't do it now,
as an adult."

Fuzzy logic perhaps, but it is a very common justification and quite
separate from a shoplifter's mentality, Dr Lennings said. "It's called
shame avoidance," he said.

"They don't want to be seen as a thief so, therefore, if they make
some kind of contribution to the purchase, it's not as bad. "It's a
shame-based motivation for fudging the process ... They're minimisers
rather than people who go out and steal."

Traditional shoplifters, on the other hand, steal for a thrill, for
the hell of it, or because they have to. "[Self-service cheats] don't
like the idea of stealing or being thought of as a thief," Dr Lennings
said. "This idea is OK because they're substituting and paying part of
the cost of the goods."

A Coles spokesman said theft or fudging at self-service checkouts was
not a problem across the 190-odd stores that had been fitted with the
technology to date. "The vast majority are honest and do the right
thing in regards to self-checkout," he said.

The retail giant prefers to trust its shoppers, he said."It's part of
a broader philosophy that new management in Coles brought in when they
joined the company a couple of years ago. "They had security barrriers
at the front of the store that you had to walk through before you
could enter.
----

In the US of A:

Major grocer getting rid of self-checkout lanes
Albertsons will replace computers, wants more human contact
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43687085/ns/business-consumer_news/

Big Y to eliminate all self-checkout lines
http://www.masslive.com/business-news/index.ssf/2011/09/big_y_to_eliminate_all_self-checkout_kio.html

""After extensive research, Big Y has concluded that these self
checkout lanes not only do not save their customers time but usually
take them even more time to check out than customers in standard
checkout lanes," the company said in a statement Wednesday.
“Self-checkout lines get clogged as the customers needed to wait for
store staff to assist with problems with bar codes, coupons, payment
problems and other issues that invariably arise with many
transactions.""

Fraud scheme hits grocer
Card Reader Compromised at Self-Service Checkout
November 29, 2011
http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=4280

...Food for thought... if you pardon the pun. ;)
FC
-- 
"The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers."
Richard Hamming - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_code