Josh-da-man

I believe that ALL Wal-Marts have been using those horrible spider wraps.

Which pretty much insures I'll never buy a boxed set from them since those fucking things cut into the cardboard cases.

DoogieHowser

I buy most of my DVD's from a store that specializes in DVD's and imports. The people who work there are paid well and know much more than the workers at best buy or some bigger store. And they have 5 or 6 security camera's in the small store. I was talking to one of the guys who works there, and asked if the camera's ever caught anyone stealing. He said "not exactly". I asked "what do you mean". He said "Well... there was this guy who went in the adult room. He was staring at the back cover of an adult DVD, he stuck his hand in his pocket and it looked like he was beating off, but we could not tell for sure. A while later he puts the DVD back, and leaves the adult room. By the time he made it to the front of the store he had a big wet spot on his pants".

So I guess even if you can't steal DVD's, people will find some way to get something for nothing.

DVD Polizei

But I will bet you're not the average BB employee.

I've been there on a few occasions and the employees are almost literally asleep. I had this one chic at the checkout desk which was scary. I was about to tell her don't do a bowl and party all night if you have to work the next morning.

John Sinnott

I was at K-Mart talking to the guy in electronics. He said that the previous week they had caught a guy stealing a huge amount of DVDs. This guy put a duffle bag from stock into his cart, then spent the next hour or two filling it with DVDs. He kept ging to the DVDs, putting some in his cart, leaving, coming back and repeating the cycle. The guy noticed that the bag, always zipped closed, was getting fatter, and that there weren't any DVDs in his cart so he called security. They followed the guy for a while, and after the duffle bag was full, he went to the Garden Center, which is located outside, and threw the bag over the fence. The guy went to jail.

tofferman

My local Walmart no longer allows customers to choose the new releases they wish to buy from the display racks on account of shoplifting. All new releases are now kept behind the counter, as the head of their entertainment department told me that their most recent shrink audit revealed a loss of over $300,000! Apparently people were coming into the department with the box that would normally house a baby car seat for sale there. Instead it was empty and they would fill it up with new releases!...then pay for the baby seat and leave. For those interested, this was at the Walmart in San Leandro.

jessebo

the guy who took the disc out of the case was an amature. I worked loss prevention for several years, and I've seen professionals come in and load up bags of merchandise and just walk out the door. DVDs, VCRs, computers, you name it. I get a kick out of the security stickers and the electronic sensors they put inside the cases. the only people these deter are usually the amatures. I say usually because every once in a while, it doesn't even deter them. the stickers are a waste of money and time. I'm surprised the companies haven't figured this out yet. that this would happen at wal mart is not amazing at all. I've worked for this company as well, and most of the stores I worked at did not have a full time loss prevention person. in fact, I know of one store where they actually fired the loss prevention person because he was making too many stops. they were all good stops, but they told him he was bound to make a mistake and he was a liability.

TomOpus

Man, I'm yet to see anyone steal a DVD or seen remnants of such.

I miss all the fun

devynal

Let's just say I work for a retail company that doesn't allow the normal employee to stop and question a suspected theif, but only lets the loss prevention person stop a suspect -- screw that.

I usually work the electronics department. One night I notice a guy with about 5 DVDs in hand, and I know damn well he won't pay for them - over $100 and he looked poor. I follow him to the bedspread department and watch him. He starts opening them up, and I jump out and ask him what the hell he was doing. He then proceeds to ask me if this certain bedspread would fit his bed. I said no and took the DVDs.

Another time was when the PS2 first came to retail. I was straightening the DVDs one day and went to lunch. I came back and noticed every title shifted over onto the next one. There was a team of about 2 or 3 guys. One would distract me with PS2 questions whilst the other would take DVDs and fill a huge Rubbermaid container with it. They weren't the smartest of people; they kept looking over at me, and if you keep looking at an employee while they scan the department, well then you're an idiot. They finally spooked and I found the container full of DVDs, $1100 worth, and they were all multiple copies of various titles. Hello Ebay.

We've since then bullpened the department and make every electronics item paid for back there. It's funny when you ask someone to make their purchases there, they look at you funny, drop the stuff at the register and say I don't want it.

paulringodaman

I witnessed the BEST DVD/VIDEOGAME STEALING/DISCOUNT EVER. I don't condone it and would never try it because guilt gets to me and it would eat at me, but I watched it unfold and was shocked on how easy it worked.

I was at Best Buy last week and some guy about 20 wanted to buy Finding Nemo. Then I saw him take the case out of the outer sleeve and put the case and discs back on the shelf. I was interested in what he was doing because I've always wanted to get outer boxes for movies I purchased at Blockbuster. I then followed him and saw him put KOTR 2 for PS2 ($49.99) inside the outer box. He walked to check out, PAID and whala---------- KOTR for $17.99. Pretty funny and sad at the same time.

jessebo

hate to tell you this, but your just as guilty as he is by not letting someone in the store know.. nobody wants to get involved, but everyone pays when people get away with stuff like this. the store doesn't loose out because they just raise the prices to make up the loss.

Altimus Prime

Well, what this guy at the door apparently didn't know was that I had just been in the store for about a half hour with the same DVD with NO sticker on it. I was at the service desk, and had actually gone all the way to the back corner to electronics with it. I had bought it there previously, and came back to try to figure out if the DVD was defective or if it was a problem with my player. I came back in with it a second time because the employees, while handling the disc, were careless and scratched it up, and I wanted to talk to a manager about an exchange.

About those spider things - I hate them. Circuit City uses them a lot. Sometimes they use the big plastic boxes, sometimes they use these things. And they are so tight they damage the cardboard boxes of box sets. My Quantum Leap Season 2 has crimps on it from the thing. It's terrible they can't find a way to secure their inventory without damaging it.

paulringodaman

Listen, you're right about that. Everyone pays for losses. BUT, I owe NOTHING to Best Buy and if they lose money I do not care. I am not gonna risk my life or the life of an employee (if I elect to tell an employee) for Best Buy. (Hell, I don't know if the perpatrator has a knife, knows karate, etc) Oh, and I don't feel guilty either, I'm not here to save Best Buy's profits: That's why they have cameras and security guards.

I'm not a bad person or anything -- if I saw an old lady get her purse snatched, I'd do everything in my power to take down that guy. But I feel for an old lady -- not a corporation who has screwed me over MANY of times.

jessebo

what if he has a knife or knows karate? I didn't mean to imply that you was a bad person. good people choose to ignore crimes every day because they believe it's none of their business. your right, you don't owe it to best buy or any other corporation, you owe it to yourself. it's costing you money not the corporation. they just raise prices that you pay in the long run. as far as a knife goes, I've arrested alot of shoplifters, and I only ran across 1 who came after me with a weapon. I seriously doubt someone stealing a video game in a DVD cover is going to graduate to armed robbery, assault over that game..

paulringodaman

hey i see you were in the army........you could beat up shoplifters...im a dork and weak...im not going near a robber!!

SLeopold

Not sure. They started going through collecting them after I pointed it out.
He said they were from his personal collection, ones he didn't want anymore. Most were compilation tapes and pretty rauncy.
Since they wouldn't let the person who reported it just take them for free, I'm also pretty sure that none got sold.

Skyler

You said it

JDF5244

I recently found a sliced open box at Costco. Lame...

Al_Tahoe

No offense, Doogie, but I could have gone all day without reading that story

darkhawk

I worked at Target in the lawn and garden and caught a guy trying to steal about $600.00 worth of DVDs. Some of the titles were The Sopranos Season 1, 2, 3, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

John Sinnott

Unless the old lady was rich, right? I'm amazed that you feel it's okay to let a thief go if they are harming everyone by shoplifting. What bizarre morals.

Chasing a purse snatcher is much more dangerous than reporting a shoplifter. You'd risk you life for an old lady, but can't be bothered with telling an employee? Strange.

Altimus Prime

Yes, they were testing it in a player, both back at the TV/DVD section and at the service counter. At the service counter, a woman with long fingernails actually dropped it on the counter and was not at all careful about how she handled it.

I wound up getting a new copy of the disc at another Best Buy, and it plays fine.

Willh51

At Target the other day, I saw Terminal Limited Edition opened on a shelf. Someone had stolen the first disc with the movie on it and left the two extra discs.

shtfilter

I work a large retail store that carries DVDs,video games and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and gets them all stolen on a regular basis. We have cameras, but no one to watch them, so as you can guess we lose a lot of money each year.

Anyway, the problem with retail theft is not the costumers!
They steal, so what, it's not my company. The real problem is when the management suspects the employees are the ones doing the stealing. As someone posted about earlier, it is a major problem to confront people that you simply "suspect" are stealing. You have to watch them steal the merchandise which is almost impossible unless you run a store the size of Gamestop.

So, as an employee, if you know that nothing real is going to happen to these people, why involve yourself. So, they get in trouble. Get banned from the store? Call the police, who then let them go? What does it get you? A pat on the back?

And for anyone that chases after someone over a "store's" DVDs that is simply crazy. If you had got stabbed, shot, run over or simply beaten the store would have not helped you. You know as well as I do that policy is to let mall security and/or the police handle anything after they leave your building.

kayak99

Many retail merchants will actually fire the employees who go after a thief. ( 7 Eleven for example) Any comments on the policies of BB, CC and others you work for?

Shagrath

The one retail job I worked at in high school (Comic/Card/Game shop in a mall) actually rewarded us for catching shoplifters. We'd get a $50 bonus to our paycheck for each shoplifter we got. The manager of one of our other locations would regularly get 2-300 extra a month, because he'd catch one kid, interrogate him while waiting for the police, and the kid would rat out all his thieving friends. I only caught 2 or 3 guys while working there, but the extra cash sure was nice.