Avoid self-serve checkouts, lawyer warns, or it could cost you ‘thousands’

[Swordsmyth]

Avoid self-serve checkouts, lawyer warns, or it could cost you ‘thousands’

Using a self-serve checkout counter could get you framed for stealing, warned one lawyer on social media.

Attorney and influencer Carrie Jernigan, who often shares legal advice to her 1.2 million followers on TikTok, has alleged that stores are using security footage at the register to accuse innocent customers of theft.

“As a criminal defense attorney, I advise most people to steer clear of self-checkout,” Jernigan says in a video that’s racked up over 2 million views.

The lawyer says there are “three groups” of people being charged with shoplifting using self-checkout.

The first group is those “with the intent to steal.” Though sophisticated thieves still get away with this, weight sensors and cameras have made stealing more difficult.

The second category she calls the “theft-by-mistake” group. “These are the people that I genuinely think just forgot to scan an item,” she continued, listing an example of accidentally leaving something at the bottom of the shopping cart. Despite the potentially innocent mishap, these folks do frequently face charges, “because … the big-box stores aren’t going to spend their time and resources trying to figure out if you did it on purpose,” Jernigan said.

The third group is the people she called the “truly innocent.”

“Most of these are not getting charged day of,” she explained. Rather, their predicament begins when someone in the asset protection department of a store starts counting inventory, perhaps days, weeks or months later, and “comes up short.”

“So they will begin watching hours of video to see the last person who checked out with the Mario Lego set because they’re two short or an Xbox game. And, for some reason, they pinpoint that they think you did it,” she explained.


More at: https://nypost.com/2022/07/11/avoid...-or-it-could-cost-you-thousands-lawyer-warns/

 

[Anti Globalist]

I never used self checkout. I much perfer having dialogue with a cashier.

 

[asurfaholic]

I never used self checkout. I much perfer having dialogue with a cashier.

I’d rather just let someone do they job I’m paying for in the cost of the groceries. When someone buys from my business I ring them up (invoice). When I buy from someone else I’d like them to ring my goods up.

 

[Invisible Man]

There are some disadvantages to self-checkout. But usually I find that these are more than made up for by the two big advantages of it:
1. It takes me less time to do self-checkout.
2. More self-checkout means fewer jobs.

 

[Swordsmyth]

There are some disadvantages to self-checkout. But usually I find that these are more than made up for by the two big advantages of it:
1. It takes me less time to do self-checkout.
2. More self-checkout means fewer jobs.

2 is NOT a good thing.

 

[Invisible Man]

2 is NOT a good thing.

Here's a petition you will want to sign.

http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

 

[Swordsmyth]

Here's a petition you will want to sign.

http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

When are you going to pay to rebuild the Georgia Guidestones?

 

[devil21]

The real theft is forcing customers to do the work of an employee while cutting staff and raising prices at the same time.

 

[Occam's Banana]

The real theft is forcing customers to do the work of an employee while cutting staff and raising prices at the same time.

Yeah, my back is nothing but a mass of scar tissue from all the lashings I've taken from being "forced" to go to their stores and use their self-checkout lanes.



EDIT: And don't even get me started on places like Aldi's or Save-a-lot, where they have cashiers, but "force" you to bag your own groceries anyway - like you're some kind of serf, or something.

 

[Invisible Man]

The real theft is forcing customers to do the work of an employee while cutting staff and raising prices at the same time.

Right. They're just price gouging. Greedy corporations charging higher prices so that they can make higher profits are the real cause of inflation.

 

[oyarde]

I dont use self checkout . Since the plague started I figured all the people that use that are just ordering groceries online and picking them up after they are delivered in the parking lot and paying with plastic. I see no real advantage to self checkout for the buyer or seller. The one Ive seen most still has an employee stationed in the area.

 

[devil21]

Yeah, my back is nothing but a mass of scar tissue from all the lashings I've taken from being "forced" to go to their stores and use their self-checkout lanes.



EDIT: And don't even get me started on places like Aldi's or Save-a-lot, where they have cashiers, but "force" you to bag your own groceries anyway - like you're some kind of serf, or something.

Right. They're just price gouging. Greedy corporations charging higher prices so that they can make higher profits are the real cause of inflation.

Where did I say it's the real cause of inflation or lashings to one's back? Hyperbole and strawmen are not arguments fellas. Weak sauce.

It's a contributing factor to inflation and methods being used to provide less services at higher prices and also assists the Fed in it's current mission of draining currency back out of circulation to trigger recession and likely depression.

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...on-corporate-america-increased-prices-profits

Corporate profits are at record highs and are even being celebrated in quarterly earnings calls. Don't try to tell me there's not price inflation being used as an excuse to bump margins up higher than they otherwise would be, while simultaneously cutting services. The invention and proliferation of "self service check-out" was precisely for this purpose, along with the digitization of currency/biometric agenda, and anyone who's been paying attention has seen it being rolled out for years.


(Btw, [MENTION=28167]Occam's Banana[/MENTION] , will you still sarcastically say the same thing about being forced when all purchasing choices are consolidated to be available from only 3 or 4 mega corporations? That's where this leads, ya know.
)

 

[Invisible Man]

It's a contributing factor to inflation

No it isn't.

Corporate profits are at record highs and are even being celebrated in quarterly earnings calls.

If this is true, then good for them. Maximizing their profits is what corporations are supposed to do.

 

[Occam's Banana]

Where did I say it's the real cause of inflation or lashings to one's back? Hyperbole and strawmen are not arguments fellas. Weak sauce.

My comment about back-lashings was made in obvious parody of your absurd assertion that self-checkout somehow involves some kind of "theft" and "force". Words have meanings. Absolutely no one whatsoever is in any way whatsoever being robbed or "forc[ed ...] to do the work of an employee" by sellers providing self-checkout - so go yap at someone else about "hyperbole and strawmen" (or at least attend the mote in thine own eye).

It's a contributing factor to inflation and methods being used to provide less services at higher prices and also assists the Fed in it's current mission of draining currency back out of circulation to trigger recession and likely depression.

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...on-corporate-america-increased-prices-profits

Corporate profits are at record highs and are even being celebrated in quarterly earnings calls. Don't try to tell me there's not price inflation being used as an excuse to bump margins up higher than they otherwise would be, while simultaneously cutting services. The invention and proliferation of "self service check-out" was precisely for this purpose, along with the digitization of currency/biometric agenda, and anyone who's been paying attention has seen it being rolled out for years.

As inconvenient as it may be to your preferred narrative, the causes of price increases (or decreases) are myriad and complex. Prices vis-à-vis the Law of Supply and Demand are a thing, and sellers cannot, ceteris paribus, simply increase their prices for the sake of "bump[ing] margins up higher than they otherwise would be" - not without it having a negative effect on their revenue at some point (specifically, the point at which their price exceeds the market-clearing equilibrium price). No amount of hand-waving about "margin-bumping excuses" or corporate greed or whatnot will change this basic and incontrovertible fact of economic reality. The demand curve does not care about anyone's "excuses". (One might just as well propose that "rocket-boosting excuses" - whatever the hell those might be - could be used by NASA to get around the law of gravity.)

Sellers do not need "excuses" in order to increase their prices. They can just do it, if they think it will net them greater revenue - and if their new price is higher than whatever the current equilibrium price happens to be, then they will end up losing revenue (entirely regardless of any "excuses" they might have had for the increase). That is because buyers do not care about any "excuses" sellers might have for increasing their prices (any more than they care about other factors, such as the costs of labor, materials, distribution, etc.). They will simply look at the price, whatever it is, and decide whether they think it is worth paying or not (and as the price goes up, the willingness to buy goes down). I have never once, in my entire life as a buyer of things, stopped to wonder what "excuse" a seller might have had for increasing the price of a thing I was considering buying, and then made my decision based on what I thought of the validity of any such "excuse". I have only ever merely considered whether or not I was willing to buy that thing at that price - and nothing else.

TL;DR: There is no price-increase "excuse" of any kind that will ever allow any seller to do an end run around the demand curve.

(Btw, @Occam's Banana , will you still sarcastically say the same thing about being forced when all purchasing choices are consolidated to be available from only 3 or 4 mega corporations. That's where this leads, ya know.

Well, I guess I'm just not as clever or insightful as you are, 'coz I don't know that "that's where this leads".

 

[devil21]

Well, I guess I'm just not as clever or insightful as you are, 'coz I don't know that "that's where this leads".

It is indeed a blessing and yet also a curse.