[aerostable_slug]

And a rise in membership-only retailers, like Costco. These retailers can make the use of biometrics and other shrink-prevention mechanisms a condition of membership & entry.

Memberships also give retailers a way to kick miscreants out of an entire chain (vs. trespassing them from one location) and keep them out without risking a lawsuit for profiling or other verboten activities.

If I opened a store in San Francisco tomorrow it would be some kind of membership only deal, maybe a co-op to appeal to local politics. No way would I allow the general public inside unless I were selling bulk concrete or something else equally impossible to shoplift.

[mothballed]

It might be interesting to have some kind of "shoplifter insurance" card paired with facial recognition you have to show to enter, rather than a store-specific membership. If you steal it is an "at-fault incident" that raises your rates, but no need to deal with the legal system for the store to get the money back.

People that steal a lot would have high insurance rates and would eventually have to order all their food from one of those stores with the prison bars in front.

People that don't steal would have minimal to no insurance rates and would not be paying shrinkage for those that do.

[gus_massa]

That's nice until you get a false accusation and there is no formal procedure to appeal the ban.

[Alive-in-2025]

And this problem of no appeal possible hits you lots of places online. youtube copyright strikes (great way to attack your enemies), reddit bans, twitter bans.

YouTube bans are a killer for a lot of people who support themselves that way.

[mothballed]

There is not a store on earth I know of that will allow you to appeal the shrinkage fees if you prove you're not a thief. The costco scenario here is basically giving you an insurance discount for having ~0.2% shrinking instead of 1.4% shrinkage with the same deal that you can be kicked out with no recourse. Insurance actually would give you that 'appeal' -- lower risk groups have the chance of insuring their shrinkage for next to nothing.

All stores are basically charging you an insurance rate it's just under the current system it's baked in with the assumption you're as equally likely to be a thief as anyone else.

[gus_massa]

I prefer a hidden 1.5% secret fee instead of a possible secret permaban from all stores. It feels almos like a protection racket.

A few centuries ago, people fight to get public courts with clear rules. No we are making the courts private to save a few bucks.

[mothballed]

There's also no way to 'appeal' the shrinkage they charge you for at the store on behalf of the thieves, so still seems better to me. In either case, you can shop elsewhere (or alternatively here, seek a different insurer) if you don't agree.

That is, the insurance is the appeal. It's allowing you to appeal that you're not a thief so you shouldn't pay full shrinkage premiums. And even if you think one insurer is wrong, you can go with another one, even while shopping at the same store -- providing you more appeal options than before when previously all you could do was just leave and go somewhere else if you disagreed.

[gruez]

You can still have an arbitration system like how credit card chargebacks are handled.

[TuringNYC]

>> You can still have an arbitration system like how credit card chargebacks are handled.

You can have that, but it doesnt exist, so it isnt helpful. We can have many good things, but unless they are --paired together-- with the potentially bad things, you end up in a bad place.

Talk to anyone who has been randomly deplatformed off Uber, CitiBike, etc.

[nutjob2]

In what sense are you keeping the general public out? Some percentage of any population will be shoplifters.

What makes more sense is store sized vending machines. Pay for what you want and it is dispensed. Order on site or online. I'm surprised no one is doing this on a wide scale yet.

[ajcp]

->store sized vending machines

Which was literally the shopping experience before Selfridges "revolutionized" the department store experience by letting customers have direct access to goods for sale.[0]

Before that everything was behind a counter and you have to be served and monitored. Even the grocery store was a similar experience, whereby you would give the clerk your list and they would select everything for you.

Everything that is old is new again.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_store#Innovations_1...

[ryanmcbride]

I'd be perfectly content with this model, but the problem is then they'd have to hire employees to do things! Stores would much rather have us pick everything ourselves, checkout ourselves, and have our cars remote detonated by robots automatically if the crime computer deems it appropriate.

That way they only have to hire two employees. One to drag carts around the parking lot and one to drag keys to all the locked cabinets of soap and shampoo and diapers and whatnot.

[cjbgkagh]

The main issue is spiky demand, you’d have keep a cadre of employees around to minimize peak latency. Offloading tasks to the shopper scales well with usage.

[aerostable_slug]

Also revenue loss due to fewer impulse purchases. You could still have candy bars in the line to get to the counter, but it's not the same thing as merchandising in aisles and on end caps.

With robots doing the picking and packing the employee problem becomes reduced, but it might take some serious innovation to reliably get customers to leave with more products than they went to the store to buy.

[lostlogin]

Click and collect has made grocery shopping almost tolerable in my household. It seem a modern take on the pre-Selfridges model.

[TulliusCicero]

People willing to pay a membership fee like Costco are probably less likely to be shoplifters, plus signing up for a membership means they have your info which further discouraged shoplifting, and then if they do catch you then it's easier to ban you from all their stores.

[nutjob2]

Shoplifters aren't going to follow any of those rules, they'll just use fake or stolen card or identities.

But I think people still do it, I don't know if they still do it but Costco would check your receipt against what was in your trolley when I shopped there, if I remember correctly (10+ years ago).

[rck]

In 2023, shrinkage at Costco was less than 0.2%, vs a US national average of 1.44%.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/costco-winning-war-against-re...

[margalabargala]

This isn't a situation that requires a social contract where they follow some rules. The ease of shoplifters "not following the rules" with fake/stolen identities will simply approach the experience of someone trying to do the same with an airline ticket.

[TulliusCicero]

> Shoplifters aren't going to follow any of those rules, they'll just use fake or stolen card or identities.

I think you'd be surprised.

And in any case, some shoplifters will obviously be dissuaded by the need to get a fake or stolen card in the first place.

[tracker1]

Costco now checks your picture against your card on entry.

[mothballed]

You don't need a card to enter nor even a friend with one. Just say you're going to the pharmacy.

They don't check at the food court, either. Wouldn't surprise me if people have stole stuff via the big pizza boxes.

[sbuttgereit]

Or... just open up big warehouses, only do online sales, and then deliver to customer?

The truth is we have tried it and on a large scale: The Automat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat). Don't see to many of those around anymore, except maybe analogues in Japan.

With some perspective on the idea, would you invest in the retail real estate, the technology development, and later maintenance, and then still need to have staff to stop people from just breaking into the machine?

[mothballed]

I guess it's up for interpretation whether stealing from an Amazon van is easier or harder than stealing from a store. Is it more risky for the thief to bring the Amazon van to the hood, or the hood to the store?

[sbuttgereit]

The store tends to always be there, there is often times need to have a lot of them, and they're available at well known (even published) times whereas the van isn't always at the same places at the same time and doesn't even carry predictable goods... just that you know there will be goods. Sure you can guess or make your luck by waiting for the van or search for it in good spots... but the cost is higher for the criminal to try and count on such a thing.

The truth is I expect stealing from a delivery van is ultimately simpler... or simply stealing the package off the porch easier still. The issue isn't the ease or difficulty.

Where I expect consumer delivery businesses to do better in the face of theft is on the cost of theft (assuming a certain scale in the delivery business). Given the economies of scale of a warehouse and the delivery model vs traditional retail locations, I bet means the loss for any item stolen from the van is less than that of the same item stolen from a traditional retail location.

[tristor]

> Some percentage of any population will be shoplifters.

This is only true in ways that don't matter, because you count "any population" being large enough to obviously include miscreants. Most people do not shoplift, and therefore there are MANY ways to slice a population which will not include shoplifters.

[emchammer]

Welcome to iCostco, I love you