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Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

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Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#181

Post by devmor »

Avshalom wrote: post #157
runjake wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, something I'm somewhat qualified to answer! So, yes, these systems are actually effective. The systems and procedures are designed to look low key, but essentially perform PRISM-like mass surveillance behind the scene. These systems are managed by former US IC personnel. What happens is that your identity is tied to these purchases and after a certain threshold you get flagged as a thief, essentially. At that po…

On the other hand Walmart has been getting rid of self checkout because they're not actually effective.

Interesting, I rarely go to Walmart if I can avoid it, but I've noticed the stores here seem to only have a couple staffed checkouts left. There's 14+ isles of self checkouts.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#182

Post by imp0cat »

master-lincoln wrote: post #25
imp0cat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As if devices created in Russia would all be "useless" or only for illegal purposes. I smell prejudice

What? Obviously, they are not useless, it's just that it's way easier to skirt the law there. And when I say skirt the law, I mean blatantly ignore.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#183

Post by wincy »

runjake wrote: post #149
colechristensen wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Target keeps a file on you until you've stolen an amount which constitutes a felony.

Yep, same thing with Walmart. I don't know about Target's systems, but wouldn't be surprised they're on par. Walmart is one of the biggest leaders in loss prevention and customer surveillance.

14 years ago Target had nearly full coverage with digital cameras when I worked loss prevention. I have to imagine with the reduced cost it’s become even more of a panopticon. The biggest risk was employees, and yes, they’d wait until they committed felony levels of theft to apprehend them. Petty theft was hard to prevent since you rely on building up a case. Boosters (someone who fills up a shopping cart with the most expensive items and just pushes out) as well as employees doing things like stealing iPads was a huge source of shrinkage. We had pictures up of known boosters that had hit Targets in the past.

Of course, the smart thieves would just take whatever into a bathroom, open it up, then stuff it somewhere in a coat and walk out the door. Those were really tricky, since we couldn’t “prove” it since we didn’t have full video coverage (for obvious reasons) so we’d just trespass those people. We had a lot of off duty cops because our location was particularly bad, making $30 an hour to mostly sit around and play games on their phones and look intimidating standing at the front door and walking around the store.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#184

Post by wincy »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #132
neuralkoi wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday I went to Walmart, and at the self-checkout the system quirked out and an attendant came by. She reviewed some sort of draconian overhead cam video of me trying to locate a tag out for a product to scan. Gave me "guilty until proven" innocent vibes. Are these systems actually effective?

Sam's club has 'the arch', and one time when I did self checkout I did miss an item (thought I scanned it and I didn't apparently) and so far that's the only time they've actually checked the cart, the rest I was just waved through. So seems pretty good. Obviously erring on the side of having an employee double check makes sense when their profit margins are generally single digits. One missed tshirt means they lost…

Well, Sam’s Club and Costco are kind of their own things since they’re members only, you sign an explicit agreement with them saying it’s fine for them to look at your cart, and if you refuse they can just revoke your membership and refuse to do further business with you. You’re under no obligation at Walmart or Target to get your receipt checked, although most people are polite and fine with it.

Personally, I always just say “no thank you!” and walk past the receipt checker at non members stores. They know me at Walmart and know I’ll refuse the receipt check and stopped bothering me.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#185

Post by MisterTea »

conductr wrote: post #109
compton93 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's crazy. But coming from someone who wrote a book on retail fraud and worked as a retail fraud analyst for several years... you could have just walked straight out with those items. Transacting was your way of leaving a calling card for the investigators/analysts to find you... You stole regardless of how you did it.

The visual risk of walking out without paying is much greater than the risk that anyone actually investigates AND tries to track him down for it. Back when I was a kid it was common to still just have simple price tag stickers on every single item. We’d pull off a cheap sticker and put it on an expensive item. If they noticed, we’d just shrug and say “oh Nevermind then” when they found the right price. The only probl…

> The only problem was most cashiers actually knew all the prices of stuff and paid attention,

Yup. I was in a local super market and saw Tomahawk steaks priced at $4-6 each. It had to be a mistake but I figured I would give it shot and see if they noticed. Cashier looked at the price, did a confused double take and immediately called over the manager. Turns out the decimal point was off by one so my $4.50 tomahawk was really $45. I bought it anyway and it came out great in the oven.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#186

Post by culi »

Hilliard_Ohiooo wrote: post #108
culi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, grocery stores made record profits during covid. I've sometimes toyed with the idea of an "open sourced" grocery store that's extremely transparent about every detail. Think electronic price tags that give you a complete breakdown of the cost of an item, cost of labor, cost to account for "loss", over/under-supply, etc. I feel like there's a niche out there for hyperinformed consumers

That's basically Costco, the price they pay is what you pay, the system paired down to bare necessities, and it is incredibly popular.

The transparency just isn't there. I would love to see a reasonably complete breakdown of the final cost of every item

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#187

Post by culi »

tesseract wrote: post #116
culi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, grocery stores made record profits during covid. I've sometimes toyed with the idea of an "open sourced" grocery store that's extremely transparent about every detail. Think electronic price tags that give you a complete breakdown of the cost of an item, cost of labor, cost to account for "loss", over/under-supply, etc. I feel like there's a niche out there for hyperinformed consumers

That's pretty much what a food co-op is supposed to be.

Yeah food co-ops are awesome but they don't expose that kind of information to the casual shopper. Even most members. Even if you're very actively involved you'd have to strap together multiple spreadsheets and receipts to come up with something like I'm describing

I guess I'm thinking of something like dynamic pricing, except instead of it being used to manipulate consumers into paying the most they can possibly pay, it's used to give you really transparent, real-time information about what goes into that final pricetag

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#188

Post by [deleted] »

neuralkoi wrote: post #118
Aboutplants wrote: post #29

I was in college when self checkout became a thing and it took us all of about 45 seconds to realize that you could just check everything out as bananas. Steak was weighed and priced at 4011 (banana code) as the stoned teenager cashier paid no attention. Everything on the receipt was literally Bananas

Yesterday I went to Walmart, and at the self-checkout the system quirked out and an attendant came by. She reviewed some sort of draconian overhead cam video of me trying to locate a tag out for a product to scan. Gave me "guilty until proven" innocent vibes. Are these systems actually effective?

[deleted]

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#189

Post by wincy »

lamasery wrote: post #153
FatherOfCurses wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad the store owners introduced a way to give customers more control over how merchandise exits their store.

Not just that, getting unpaid labor. Self-checkouts aren’t automating anything, they’re just making the shopper do work for the store. I hope they’re losing money over it.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve explicitly said “don’t mix the raw meats with other products in the bags” only for the cashier to completely ignore me. This happened at a high end organic grocer the other day (after I had specifically and nicely asked) and I talked to the manager. He ran and got me replacements for my produce that was tucked into the grocery bag right next to my ground beef and raw chicken breast.

Isn’t this just basic food hygiene? Surely they teach this to the cashiers.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#190

Post by nilamo »

petterroea wrote: post #55

It's always funny when people publish source code and have a disclaimer saying "You CANNOT use it for bad!". When is the last time a criminal read such a disclaimer and thought "Oh right, guess this isn't for me"? Sure, at least the developer can say they did say so, but it doesn't matter. To me it seems more like avoiding responsibility. You published the tool, and by doing so you changed the world, even minutely, a…

Hardware stores sell chainsaws. There might be a disclaimer about proper usage or safety guidelines or some such, but you're right... someone who intends to use something to commit a crime, will do so regardless of the text asking them not to.
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