BayouVixen's Blog

Well, I see Target's new return policy is getting some flack. Small wonder -- for years, retailers have been going out of their way to one-up each other in liberalizing return policies to ensure that customers walk away with a smile.

Yet what we see at work here is one of the big-box chains finally saying, "Enough!" to the organized thieves who are raping retail for billions of dollars a year.

For years, Target -- and other major chains like Wal-Mart and K-Mart -- made it progressively easier for customers to return items. During my time as an assistant manager for Wal-Mart, for example, I actually accepted merchandise for return which actually had a TARGET price tag on it because I was strongly encouraged to "make the customers happy."

But what has happened in the business is that organized crime has moved in. A 2006 story in the Wall Street Journal estimated retail losses to external theft at $37 billion -- but later that same year, Wal-Mart removed its in-store loss prevention associates and re-trained them to concentrate on internal, not external losses. Within weeks, many stores -- including the store I was working at -- were watching thousands of dollars an hour run out the doors in the hands of organized bands of thieves, who were aware that no one would stop them.

As a salaried manager, I was authorized to stop shoplifters -- and one night, I did so when we observed three ladies who had taken a Shop Vac out of its box and had cleaned our shelves of Prilosec, Nicorette and Fusion razor blades, hiding the smaller packages in the shop-vac box. I was only able to grab one of the three, and when we counted up the merchandise the total was more than $4,000. The police who picked up my catch later stopped by the store to tell me that it turned out she and her two friends were wanted in seven states and were part of a black-market ring running merchandise to Mexico -- selling it back to American retailers via flea markets in the Rio Grande Valley.

Wal-Mart senior managamenet told me if I physically confronted a shoplifter again I risked termination -- because I "might have hurt her and she could have sued us."  They were more worried about lawyers than with doing what is right.

But we may be seeing that idiotic view turning around, because retailers react when the bottom line is threatened.

Electronics have been a hot theft item for shoplifters for years, especially drug addicts in need of quick cash. And as retailers liberalized their returns policies -- first extending the time allowed for a return, then finally not even requiring a receipt at all -- theft of small items rose exponentially ... and "returns" of electronics items rose exponentially. Even the addition of the RFID theft-deterrent system did little to curb the practice since customer-service associates and managers have neither the equipment nor the expertise needed to research an RFID tag quickly enough to satisfy customers at a returns desk.

Clothing was another high-theft item I encountered, again since it's relatively easy to remove the theft-deterrent tags with magnets. Again, the retailers' own make-the-customer-happy policies worked in favor of the thieves: when Wal-Mart implemented a policy of putting all returns without a receipt on gift cards, most thieves knew all they had to do was get angry and demand cash and most managers would bow to their wishes out of fear the "customers" would complain to higher management.

The sad part is, legitimate customers are the ones who are being short-changed here, and it's because society does not view STEALING as "wrong" -- after all, it's only a few dollars, and Target has millions of them, right?  I can't begin to tell you how many times I've been threatened by well-to-do daddies after catching their kids stealing cosmetics, Yu-Gi-Oh cards or music CDs.

If customers want to see a return to the days of "the customer is always right" and "we trust our customers," they need to stand up and demand that our legislators enact statutes which provide some measure of protection for retailers from liability over theft-prevention measures, and they need to stand up and say, "THEFT IS WRONG."