Any lawyers here ??? Could you not use the excuse that you were not properly trained on the equipment ??? Thoughts ??? God Bless !!!


Lawyer warns not to use self checkout lanes


Using a self-serve checkout counter could get you framed for stealing, warned one lawyer on social media.

Attorney and influencer Carrie Jernigan, who often shares legal advice to her 1.2 million followers on TikTok, has alleged that stores are using security footage at the register to accuse innocent customers of theft.

“As a criminal defense attorney, I advise most people to steer clear of self-checkout,” Jernigan says in a video that’s racked up over 2 million views.The lawyer says there are “three groups” of people being charged with shoplifting using self-checkout.

The first group is those “with the intent to steal.” Though sophisticated thieves still get away with this, weight sensors and cameras have made stealing more difficult.
The second category she calls the “theft-by-mistake” group. “These are the people that I genuinely think just forgot to scan an item,” she continued, listing an example of accidentally leaving something at the bottom of the shopping cart. Despite the potentially innocent mishap, these folks do frequently face charges, “because … the big-box stores aren’t going to spend their time and resources trying to figure out if you did it on purpose,” Jernigan said.

The third group is the people she called the “truly innocent.”

“Most of these are not getting charged day of,” she explained. Rather, their predicament begins when someone in the asset protection department of a store starts counting inventory, perhaps days, weeks or months later, and “comes up short.”
“So they will begin watching hours of video to see the last person who checked out with the Mario Lego set because they’re two short or an Xbox game. And, for some reason, they pinpoint that they think you did it,” she explained.

According to Jernigan, megaretailers like Walmart usually have to present very little evidence to get an affidavit for warrants on the charges.

“The charges that could land you up to a year in jail,” she cautioned. “You have to spend thousands of dollars hiring a lawyer and we have to go through grainy video footage to try to determine what all you bought that day.”

Jernigan urged people to pay with a card for larger purchases and always keep proof of purchase.

It is hard to imagine the third category is a real widespread risk. How much time/money would it take to scan hours of video to falsely accuse a few customers? And they probably do not get the money back anyway. That just doesn't make sense.

I don't like self checkout - I want a little service with my retail shopping.

Lawyer here


She wants more clicks and likes


Ignore her and checkout however you want.


I do

'Influencer'

Fuck off, you stupid ass.

Additionally, if you're talking about grocery stores, items accidently left in the cart are rarely going to be worth over $10. Contrast that to the many thousands of dollars worth of high end merchandise that is stolen in broad daylight in full view of store officials, and many times store security people and not a single thing is done about it other then the store eventually closing or keeping merch under lock and key.

Something is wrong when such open looting is okay, but a store employee will spend hours looking at tape to recover just a few dollars.

My sense of it is larger retailers accept there will some items walking out of the store unpaid for, but realize the cost to recover outweighs the value that might be recovered, further offset by the labor savings of not having check out people.

The Kroger stores in my area have ONE (1) checkout lane open at any time, trying to steer everyone else to the self-checkout area. It's maddening to see 8 or 9 lanes with no one at them, ever.
I hate self-checkout. I always get an 'error' and the clerk has to come over anyway.

I stopped reading at influencer. Besides I never use them anyhow.

This makes no sense. You have your receipt...right?

I was friends with a girl in college, so 1996 time frame. They had moved to Colorado from Indiana. There, her mother was falsely accused of shoplifting. I don't know the exact circumstance of the event, or what happened, but she sued the store and walked away with 1.5 million.

quote:

Originally posted by Kevbo:
Lawyer here


She wants more clicks and likes


Ignore her and checkout however you want.


I do

I'll do that.

This is ridiculous. Forgot to scan a toothbrush in my basket and prosecution. I have done this more than once and nothing has come of it. Scare tactics.

For what it is worth JHE there is software that scans the tapes and selects certain segments for review. Suspicious movements and individuals demand more scrutiny. No need to scan hours of checkout tapes.

I plunged into an 'interested customer' study over the last year, of those self-checkout lanes.

Mostly these have been various grocery stores.

After a bit of learning curve, I have come to enjoy the time-saving benefit of using one of my digital servant devices. No waiting for someone to dig thru their checkbook & portable junk drawer pouch taking way too long to pay for theirs while I'm waiting to pay for mine.

Typically the times/places I'm using those machines, there's 6 or 8 or more unused without a line, where the other (or often ONLY) checkout-clerk served lane is slowSlowSLOW.

Yesterday as example: early in the day (before 0900) the only clerk was in the 'express' lane processing 2 actual express-item customers, with a 3rd customer with a full cart of 12,000 items in waiting.

I transited the self-check gauntlet and was done before the full-basket lady had even started.

^^^ Donate to BLM and demand racial justice, and get looted. Go woke go broke. They can loot every last damn Nike sneaker in the world and put that hypocritical company out of business.

More like lawyer advertising her services and bypassing state ethics rules on advertising by being an 'influencer'.

Lol reminds me of Burr, "last time I checked, I don't work in a fuckin grocery store..."

If the stores are losing money/sales due to self-checkout lanes they'd be gone in a heartbeat.

Wouldn't it be cheaper to hire some minimum wage worker to drive the cash register than to pay for all of the "asset protection" people/methods?

Not really.

For one, you can get away with fewer asset protection employees than cashiers. For example (made up numbers), they could get rid of 20 cashiers and only have to add 8 additional APs. Still a net savings in personnel costs.

Plus, automation has significant additional built-in savings, especially in the long run once you get past the initial R&D and procurement/installation phases. In addition to the machines being cheaper than the salary alone of a worker, machines don't take sick or vacation days, need time off to sleep or eat or be with their families, get flat tires, try to unionize, cause behind the scenes personal drama, slack off on their phones, have to sit through training on the clock, need health insurance, take retirement payments, make worker's comp claims, etc.

Even with downtime for maintenance, they still practically "work" 24/7/365, at pennies on the dollar compares to even minimum wage human workers.

Walmart has been a guilty dog of this. They apparently have been having collectors come after individuals offering to settle for $200.00.

IN fact, I think there is a class action suit against walmart, and one woman did win in court $2.1 million for a false arrest of theft.

You can google this all day long, there are lots and lots of stories about this.

I do NOT like to use the self check out, especially if I have a lot of items, and not because of the work on my part, but for fear that I pass something over the scanner and it does not read it, and I don't realize it, and put the item in the bag. This is a big problem!

If I have 3 items, I can look at the screen and verify it scanned all 3. If I have a cart FULL of items, this is not practical!!
.