[dewey]

Probably mostly dangerous for the user, or are people routinely writing their own price signs in the store and then "buying" it for less? Walking up to the lot at the car store and crossing out some zeros? Don't see how this would be any different.

[xingped]

Back in the day people used to swap/edit price tags a lot. Also making fake coupons with the same knowledge. It was a pretty common and easy form of shoplifting since all barcodes used to do was just encode the pricing/discount information.

[bombcar]

This is why the stickers have cuts in them, and why the barcodes cross-reference other things.

[ModernMech]

What they do is swap bar codes, or they code organic fruit as regular, or they "forget" to scan in the self checkout, but yes.

[dewey]

So it's just stealing with extra steps.

[bombcar]

Amusingly enough the extra steps likely make it worse once caught as it shows intent to defraud and planning.

In some places walking out with a MacBook Neo is a misdemeanor-but putting a barcode for bananas on it and checking out would be one or two felonies.

[walrus01]

This is a big reason why retail product barcode stickers (not barcodes printed directly on a package as it comes from the manufacturer) are now commonly printed on frangible stock with built in slices in it which breaks apart in 3, 4 or more pieces if you try to peel it off.

[ButlerianJihad]

Price tags have been constructed like this since the 1970s. The little gummy paper ones with literal prices stamped onto them. They fragment into about six pieces if you pick at them and try to pull them off an item.

I noticed this straightaway and my mother informed me how bad people would try and swap price tags on items and this was a countermeasure.

Later on, when I owned my own vehicle, it was the common lore that, after applying a new annual registration tag to the license plate, we should go over it with a razor blade, and slice up about six sections on the little sticker, because there were criminals out there who would lift off the registration sticker because it was quite valuable to fraudulently "register" license plates that way and bypass the DMV. Although I never saw this crime actually perpetrated or met anyone who was a victim, I guess I did it myself a few times. Better safe than sorry!

[rithdmc]

Hardly matters when one may print their own barcode on labels and cover the frangible one.

[gruez]

printing your own sticker requires way more prep than ripping one off a pack of ground beef and sticking it on a pack ribeye steak.

[rithdmc]

Absolutely, but it's also a low barrier. I think there's a lot of organized theft comparative to opportunistic.

[jasonjayr]

You can buy a battery operated portable bluetooth based printer to print barcodes from your phone, for less than $15. It'll even fit in your pocket.

I mean, you need to prepare having that printer on you, but it's not all that difficult to print on demand while in the store.