[kileywm]

Some stores, like Costco, have an interesting, alternative approach. Many items in their electronics department are prepay. You can try out the floor model (tethered to the display platform), and if you wish to purchase it you pull a cardboard item card. That card is scanned during the checkout process, and once payment is received, the staff bring the physical item from secure storage to the post-paid customer.

With the item card approach, you never have the product in your hands until it has been paid for. Between that practice and their receipt checking at the exit, I do wonder what their theft numbers look like.

[kergonath]

Around here in <some European country>, they do this quite often with stuff that tends to get stolen (video games and such) and stuff that they must not sell to children (like razor blades).

You just get a bit of cardboard from the aisle, and either the cashier gives you the item when you pay, or you retrieve it from a counter, showing the receipt.

It’s actually quite mind-boggling that their conclusion from their risk analysis is to get this high-tech solution with potentially much worse user experience, than the foolproof low-tech one that just involves them paying one more bloke.

[toast0]

It's not just paying the person to get your product after you pay for it; they also need to rearrange their space to store those things (many which are bulky) towards the front of the store. Locked cases are an in between step, need a person to help, but don't need a dedicated space at the front.

[kergonath]

Fair enough, this needs to be taken into account in the stock management.

That said, for bulky items there is either someone bringing them over, or a counter closer to where the stuff is stored (often in another building). They don't keep stuff like piles of large TVs at the front of the store.

[SamuelAdams]

Had the same experience buying a CPU from Microcenter. You told a store associate what processor you wanted, he wrote it on a cardboard slip, then you get the product after checkout is paid for. Overall I was pretty happy with the process. Hardest part was hunting down a sales associate.

[benglish11]

At Costco you don't even have to tell a store associate. They have a stack of cardboard posters with the item on it and you take that to the register

[gre]

Fry's had a cage behind the registers with all their small expensive parts like CPUs and RAM.

[dec0dedab0de]

I've never been to Costco, but Toys R Us used to have their video games like that in the 80s. We also had a chain of stores around here called Best, that I seem to recall having a conveyor belt of whatever you bought, and you would stand there with your receipt waiting for it to come out. I may have imagined that though. Either way, it would be much more effective at stopping theft.

[bombcar]

As we transition to more pickup/delivery-type retail that will happen more and more. Expect to see the "counter" move forward toward the front of the store as grocery and retail return to the "general store" type aesthetic, where most of the stock is behind the counter instead of in front of it.

Will also eventually save on packaging too, as it won't have to be flashy.

[letitbeirie]

> I do wonder what their theft numbers look like.

Toys'R'Us would know - they were doing that with Nintendo games all the way back in the 80s.

[jjulius]

Toys'R'Us also did that with their larger-ticket items, such as bicycles.

[hatware]

It's such a simple, smart policy and it doesn't frustrate honest customers.