Consumers are using unique and imaginative ways to deceive the self-service checkout machine, costing Australian supermarkets billions of Australian dollars. A decade ago, a self-service checkout scanner was introduced in Australia. This means that consumers who are accustomed to stealing have had years to refine their theft techniques.
Coles and Woolworths are targets for burglars who "save money" by scanning certain items, using expensive items as cheap products (such as fruit or noodles) and even exchanging barcodes. This is a popular small crime that has turned some supermarket customers into tricky pickpockets.
However, a large number of self-help thieves see their behavior as justified because it is simple and they can only steal from companies that make billions of Australian dollars a year.
A 2016 study by Dr. Emmeline Taylor of the National University of Australia, (ANU), coined the term "stealer", which describes "nice" people who have been turned into thieves by temptation, a self-service machine.
Dr Taylor said: "self-checkout seems to increase the incidence of customer theft, especially for those who do not. The shoppers often claim that for the first time they inadvertently stole items, such as their inability to scan them, and then they began to steal frequently, offering a series of excuses to justify their actions. Many pickpockets don't think their actions are really criminal, they just think they are deceiving the system or playing a mundane activity. " She added.
Australia alone saw A $4.5 billion worth of retail theft in 2016. In February last year, a mother in Ipswich, Queensland, was caught after stealing A $4500 worth of Coles and Woolworths groceries when she once again scanned 7.22 cents of instant noodles for each item.
For three months, the woman pasted barcodes of cheap instant noodles onto expensive pieces of meat, a $200 coffee maker and other household products.
A poor German backpacker was fined A $100 this week for not scanning expensive meat on a self-service checkout machine. Bacon and cheese were fined A $100. The man was caught after he scanned only part of the groceries and tried to pack unpaid items, a method used by many check-out thieves.
Other shadowy techniques used by pickpockets include using unweighed shopping bags, scanning a pile of expensive avocados as a single, and making it impossible to weigh an expensive bag of nuts correctly.
However, the technology invented by Australian technology companies may soon turn self-service theft into the past. Tiliter Technology has invented a system that can deceive the scanning of cheaper products into the past. The new Smart checkout will automatically identify the product without the need for unwanted barcodes.
The company's co-founder, ChrisSampson, says machines are so advanced that they can even find differences between different types of the same fruit. "our technology is different from what we've seen in the past, because it can tell the difference between the Pink lady and the Royal gala Apple," he told reporters.
Many independent grocers are experimenting with the system, but Woolworths has confirmed that the supermarket has no plans to implement the technology.
"self-service checkout is a very popular and convenient choice for customers and we know that most shoppers are doing the right thing when using them," a spokesman said. Of course, comprehensive measures are needed for those who do not have a good code of conduct. "