Susan Dennison recently had an unsettling experience at her local grocery store, a Loblaw-owned Fortinos in Burlington, Ont.
Just as she was leaving, the wheels on her shopping cart locked up — making it immobile.
She said a store employee rushed over and demanded to see her receipt.
“I felt like I was ambushed,” said Dennison, who scrambled to find her bill. “She’s badgering me, like, ‘Is it in your wallet? Is it in your pocket?’”
She said she was finally cleared when the employee found the receipt — in one of her shopping bags.
In response to customers’ complaints about its security measures, Loblaw, Canada’s largest grocer, has repeatedly said that organized crime is to blame.
Loblaw has not provided data to support its claim.
According to Statistics Canada, police-reported organized crime makes up only a small portion of retail theft, and it has declined between 2018 and 2022.
Fuck Loblaws.
If by “organized crime" they mean “organized by Loblaws’ price gouging”, then yes.
But I suppose Mr Bread Price Fixing knows all about organized crime.
In response to customers’ complaints about its security measures, Loblaw, Canada’s largest grocer, has repeatedly said that organized crime is to blame. “This surge in organized retail crime remains a significant problem for the retail industry,” said Loblaw CFO Richard Dufresne during a conference call in late 2023.
Didn’t they find that there hadn’t been a surge in retail theft, that the “report” it was based on combined every source of shrink - including employee theft, retail theft, writing off stuff that spoiled in the store whether due to improper storage or inability to sell, writing off stuff that the managers over-ordered or mis-ordered, stuff that was exposed to mice and rats, etc etc etc. And that basically the “surge in retail theft” was actually just a cover to make managers feel better about mis-managing their stores?
Last year, the U.S. National Retail Federation initially reported a startling statistic: Organized retail crime accounted for nearly half of the estimated $94.5 billion US that retailers lost due to missing merchandise in 2021. However, the industry group retracted the claim eight months later, after it was revealed that the report was based on erroneous data.
Ah, yes, there it is. Funny how the corpos are still leaning hard on their discredited “report”.
Link to said report and it’s analysis? Not wanting to rain on your parade, but with something like this, <citation needed>
Maybe the amount of shoplifting hasn’t changed that much, but reporting and detection of it is better?
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/shoplifting-data-Target-Walgreens-16647769.php
If they did this to me I would immediately drag my locked up cart to the customer service desk and return everything. Hard no. Not buying my groceries from a place that aspires to be a prison.
A buddy did this at Best Buy when they started this shit.
- Straight to the returns
- Pointed at that guy when asked why
- Ensured it was cash refund because “while I’m here every week for new tech stuff, I don’t need to come HERE. I’m never comin’ back.”
He’s not responsible for that store closing, but we like to say so. ;-)
I say steal more from these pricks. They’ve been gauging us all since covid started for no reason other than greed.
Fuck em.
This isn’t how we solve this problem.
(Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the crime, as they say)
Yes. Loblaws look like dicks all the time. But when we steal from them, it’s still a reflection on ourselves and not them. We’re better than looters coat-tailing a protest to get a new TV.
