This would be an open admission they don't actually care about stopping shoplifting.
![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
Thousands of Playstation 5 consoles being stockpiled by Walmart
- Thread starter Krenum
- Start date
Some accountant in some office somewhere at HQ likely does, but 99% of the staff in the building there couldn't care and they aren't paid enough to care. When you are a small mom & pop yeah shoplifting is a big deal, when you get to the size of Walmart then it is written off as a loss and just ends up as a line on your tax filings at the end of year.
If the estimated 3 billion worth of stuff steal from walmart (I think walmart became one of the highest source of revenues for drug addicts in many place, they find paid by cash receipt outside and go get the same items inside with it and ask for a reimbursement) I am not sure it is just some small things they do not care about, Walmart sales a whole lot but with narrow profit margin, they make 14 billion in a good year, zero loss from stealing would be a massive game changer.
But like you said, you cannot rely on employee much nor local reputation, they did spend a lot on AI and analyzing surveillance camera feed:
https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-tracks-theft-with-computer-vision-1000-stores-2019-6
The cameras track items rather than people. If an item is spotted being put in a shopping bag before it has been scanned at the checkout, the system can call an employee to "help".
The retailer said shrinkage - the loss of products due to theft or error - had decreased since the technology had been deployed.
They made 35.86B in profits in their 2021 year according to their financial report on 560B in sales, so if they did suffer 3B in shoplifting incidents that would be against their raw inventory so that would account for 0.005% of their inventory. I mean yes at the head office they are going to look into ways to combat theft, but using staff isn't going to be the answer, nobody on minimum wage is going to confront some hopped-up, possibly armed druggie, who has a secret suicide by cop fetish. They are going to work on automated surveillance, changing their layouts for increased visibility, automated tracking and facial recognition software, Anti Theft AI suites that track the movement of boxes and analyze the shapes on people's clothing for box-like shapes. All while they gradually move more stores over from Walmart to Sam's Price Club. Walmart is not going to invest in more expensive employees to solve this, they are going to invest in an infrastructure that lets them become more like Amazon, as they race against Amazon who is trying and succeeding at supplanting Walmart.
That worldwide, that 3 billion was in the US side business and that amount of profit look rather large
https://www.statista.com/statistics/270923/walmarts-net-income-worldwide/
https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/WMT/financials/annual/income-statement
| Net Income | 13,510 |
35 billion seem larger than their total operatin income (22.5 billion) let alone profit after tax, page 79:
https://s2.q4cdn.com/056532643/files/doc_financials/2021/ar/WMT_2021_AnnualReport.pdf
How can 3 billion Worth of sales (almost 1% of their US sales) for a retailer with low margin can be such a small percentage of their raw inventory ?
Your quote there from the WSJ says they did 559B in 2021, that 35B is their increase in sales over the previous year (according to your WMT 2021 Annual Report), which was 523B (according to the WSJ article there), their Gross profit margin was 24.83% on 138.8B which puts them around 35B in profits after all other expenses.
The numbers there on the top of page 79 are for the EComerce differences as per new laws but at the bottom you have this.
In 2015 when Walmart reported that it looses 3B a year in shoplifting it reported that to be 1% of its revenue which at the time was just shy of 300B, so now that would be slightly better than half a % at 0.53% which is one of those times where something is both statistically insignificant, yet still a huge sum of money.
"The retailing giant says that it loses about $3 billion every year from theft, or 1% of its $300 billion in revenue, Reuters reports.
Leading the effort to fight back against this so-called “shrinkage” is Greg Foran, head U.S. operations, who told reporters Thursday that cutting down on these loses was a key priority for the firm in coming months.
“One percent of $300 billion is quite a lot of money. If you can save 10 basis points of it – boy I’ll take it every day of the week and put it into lower prices for customers,” Foran said to Reuters."
https://fortune.com/2015/06/05/walmart-theft/
Last edited:
I am not sure why you talk about gross profit margin or sales here, we were talking about profit. From my understanding Gross profit margin are a sales - cost of product you sales, not of all other expense. Say you are company that sales for $100 of a product that you bought $80, you can still have a negative profit even with that %20 gross margin.
I am not sure the interesting metric is to their revenues, but what they lost (if they have a 25% gross margin it could mean 2.25 billion in lost) versus their profit before tax.
You have that backwards that would be an additional 750 million on top of their 35B. So they lost out on 2.1% because of shoplifting.
So then we're back to the age old question: should Walmart security employees be strapped and given shoot to kill or shoot-on-sight orders?
No, theft doesnt deserve a death sentence. However. If some dude dances out of Walmart with an inflatable pool, or maybe a 29" Hisense TV or electric can opener? *pop pop*, man down, crisis averted. And that, I think, would send a powerful message.
Last edited:
That hard to follow so 0.005% of their inventory getting stolen would make them lost out 2.1% ? Without theft they would have bought for 2.25 billion less inventory for virtually the exact same revenues I think.
Are you assuming that when they loose something, they loose their gross profit margin and not their acquisition cost ? Does company that sales to Wal-Mart reimburse them for their stolen goods, I would not imagine so. And that 35 millions is gross income, not profit from what I understand.
Take a store that buy 100 article for $650 articles planned to be resold $1000 (that 35% gross margin), he buy them $650 with shipping cost from the distributor, $6.50 each.
That store has $200 of expense a year (salary, immobilization) before tax for a nice 15% net margin before tax.
If he would have 1% of is inventory stolen and would make $990 in sales, he would have still paid the distributor $650 and still paid for is rent and staff $200 and the end he end up with $140 instead of $150.
That %1 of stolen good is a 6.6% reduction on is profit before tax.
They can’t find cashiers capable of providing correct change I shudder to think of what kind of skill their security details would possess. Maybe just the old lady they hire for the door greeters. Some 80 year old great grandma with a chip on her shoulder and mild onset dementia…
The of the 4 articles you linked one clearly states their gross income for 2021 was 138.8B.
And items that are shoplifted are listed under losses which they can use for tax deductions and write offs.
The article I personally linked are saying:
The first one: In 2021, Walmart's net income amounted to about 13.7 billion U.S. dollars, down from 15.2 billion registered a year earlier.
The second one at the line net income has a very close numbers: 13,510
Third one is their annual report, if you look at their K-10:
https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000104169/598c8825-536a-4371-ab8a-98b9ee761c43.pdf
Numerator Consolidated net income $ 13,706 $ 15,201
if you google:
https://www.google.com/search?q=wha...hiAHCCJIBAjEzmAEAoAEByAEIwAEB&sclient=gws-wiz
The answer is: about 13.7 billion U.S. dollars
I am not sure why you would even mention gross income when talking profit/net income.
Has for inventory stolen tax wise, like my example above sure it reduce (obviously) your net income before tax and thus your tax, but with a corporate tax rate that will still be a giant hit.
Ok I read the report wrong, I appreciate the crash course in accounting.
Comixbooks
Fully [H]
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2008
- Messages
- 21,056
I paged though the Toy Catalog in the lunch room it's online only for next gen consoles sucks...
Johnx64
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2002
- Messages
- 9,083
Weird. I work at a target DC and we don't open the boxes they come in to restack the contents on another pallet and stretch wrap them. They come prepackaged 2 in a brown box. Worked in the back at a walmart when the ps4's came out and they also came in brown boxes. Why? Because the white boxes will get scuffed up damaged\come open when packed in a truck or pushed down a conveyor and will have to be damaged out.
Some folks fell for your Poe’s Law.
Old info. Port of LB operates 24 hours/day at least 4 days/week. LA is working on moving to 24x7. That doesn't mean it's not an issue, but it's going away. What's more, both ports are now fining companies that don't pick up their containers within 9 days (if moving by truck), which seems very generous, and 3 days if moving by train (which seems about right). So yes, land carriers are a part of the problem too. Chip shortages are almost certainly play a bigger part of the issue for PS5/XBSX. AFAICT, they're just as hard find (if not harder) in Europe and other parts of the world.
A lot of independent truck drivers aren't operating right now because fuel prices are just stupid and the lack of H2-B visas has drastically cut down the number of commercial truck drivers in the US it's a nasty problem especially with the trains completely packed.
But according to Sony's Q2 earnings call, AMD has agreed to deliver another 14.8M units for the second half of 2021 which assuming they all sell will put them at 22M units sold for year-end. Interestingly enough that will mean AMD will have sold more PS5 chips than Ryzen, Epyc, Threadripper, and Radeon chips combined.
Microsoft has stated a number of times that they are in talks with AMD to get them more chips but in June but who knows how that went.
Last edited:
Trying not to divulge too much, but its hard if you look at my location, i'm told they are air freighted to the coast and then sent to walmart. I do not work at walmart any longer, this is just what i've heard.
Guarana [BAWLS]
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2001
- Messages
- 1,951
Yeah, there are companies resorting to air freight for stuff, because sea shipping is that much of a fustercluck right now.
SOAREVERSOR
Gawd
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2017
- Messages
- 804
They don't! For a corporation like Wallmart they can flat out afford it. It's just how Amazon will give you shit and not care if you send it back (I sent it back, it got lost, oops) or give you money, they don't care it does not make a dent. Also big ticket items are rarely stolen, and when they are it's written off as a loss for tax purposes so Wallmart doesn't pay for it and neither do shareholders or the rich, the working class and middle class pay for it via their taxes. The other dirty secret is that the vast majority of theft is employee theft. The security as it exists is only for insurance purposes so they can write it off.
Wallmart and various other mega corps do not pay a living wage, nor do they actually pay taxes nor do their executives and shareholders. So what happens is there is a certain amount of employee theft backed in form their employees to get buy, that's written off as a loss for taxes and the middle and working class pay for it. Just as their employees food stamps and everything else comes through taxes. This is conservative economics 101, privatize profits and socializes losses.
It's a highly successful economic model.
Yet on their annual investor call the CEO can mention it 13 times ?
https://financialpost.com/news/reta...s-actually-weighing-on-the-retailers-earnings
They call it shrinkage to make it sound mellow, but they still very much care about it:
https://www.retaildive.com/news/wal-mart-working-on-reducing-shrink-as-theft-hits-earnings/404229/
https://www.brickmeetsclick.com/hea...cing-checkout-shrink-with-high-tech-solutions
That seem like a really strange statement, you are usually never coming out of that type of operation without a lost.
https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/...ete-inventory-financial-statements-25394.html
if $10,000 of uninsured inventory disappears and you are in the 25 percent bracket, you’ll save $2,500 in taxes.
And that is not the potential sales you lost, but the inventory cost.
I sold for only $1176 and I will still enter $600 for inventory price sure (i.e. I will write off the stolen one and not act has if I did not paid for them just because they were stolen) and pay tax on the profit 1176 - 600 and not the 1176- 588, but I still lost a lot of money.
Walmart do calculate that it is more profitable to a be a giant operation than a small mom and pop than can use local reputation to not let theft in (or keep them has employee or paying them like costco to have them steal like costco employee ) and involve the police a lot instead of having their own, but that does not mean they do not care nor loose money from theft.
How would one pay someone else tax write off with their tax ?
Walmart pay billion a quarter in income taxes and I imagine similar if not more in municipal property taxes.
Apparently the Walton are getting their giant dividend in the Walton LLC incorporated in Arkansas that make it really hard to avoid tax, they probably pay 19% or so and billions:
http://changewalmart.org/waltonwealth/
For a recent example:
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/Target-San-Francisco-stores-reduced-hours-why-16284219.php
A Target spokesperson reached out to SFGATE Thursday to confirm why the stores' hours were reduced. And it really was as simple as ... they're dealing with an uptick in retail theft.
Last edited:
MrGuvernment
Fully [H]
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2004
- Messages
- 21,480
Just stating the obvious because it seems so many people think this to actually be true on the internet (not necessarily [H] alone)
MrGuvernment
Fully [H]
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2004
- Messages
- 21,480
Store security actually in most States and in Canada have no legal right to detain you, they can not legal hold you in any way. They must contact the police, they can follow you until the cops show up, but the second they lay a hand on you, see your ass in court.
Considering any citizen in Canada could detain you if they see you committing a crime using reasonable force has long has they call the police has soon has they can and deliver you to them that sound like a strong claim. I would imagine a store security guard has the same rights and can do a citizen arrest (like an person could if you would steal is stuff in is house), no ?
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/wyntk.html
- arrest a person you find in the act of committing a crime; or
- arrest a person within a reasonable period of time after having found that person committing a crime.
- the owner of the property;
- in lawful possession of the property; or
- have been authorized by the owner or the person in lawful possession of the property
It could be true in practice because they would rarely pull off doing it legally or that store owner do not give them the permission to do it (but how one would know that in advance ?).
Last edited:
A lack of H2-B visa is a good thing when you see these none English speaking foreigners take a over a hour to back in a dock and then flip the truck over filler with all your shit 5 miles down the road. True story.
Yeah in Canada we have the equivalent, but they make up something like 70% of the long haul truckers. They work for slave wages basically living out of the trucks. So with them gone there’s a lot fewer trucks moving to unload those boats.
Alas fuel prices are probably not going to go down much anytime soon, because, AFAICT, drillers are worried about over production driving prices down as they in 2009 and 2020 and OPEC isn't in a hurry to produce more barrels, so here we are. Fuel aside, covid has just screwed up the entire supply chain. It's bad throughout the world.
Allow me to address your points one by one, please.
The info, objectively, isn’t old. It’s from 5 weeks ago. I mentioned I didn’t care for the source, the Cato institute, which is obviously biased, and there is another WSJ article that provides complementary information with less political slant.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/port-o...hour-operations-unlike-long-beach-11632506723
However, this article, most likely because the author does not understand completely how a port operates, erroneously asserts that the Port of Long Beach operates for 24 hours a day.
Port of Long Beach does not truly operate 24 hours a day 4 days a week. Port of Long Beach allows for 24 hour Gate Operation 4 days a week.
What this means is trucks and trains may pick up loads from storage or shore 24 hours a day 4 days a week. This is good.
Unfortunately, vessels are not unloaded 24 hours a day, leaving many vessels anchored while they wait for a berth to open. This is a significant issue and, in my opinion the main source of a lot of delays and price increases.
Also, customs is still not operating outside of their normal hours, as far as I know, which causes additional delays in the unloading process.
I’m not sure how familiar you are with the Port of LA, but your assertion that LA is “working on” going to 24 hour operation does not do justice to the fraught negotiations that must take place in order to make this happen. There are iron clad contracts in place with the longshoremen that must be honored, so outside of paying up, the only thing that can be done is issuing a positive press release that this crunch will ease eventually.
I have attached a small picture to help illustrate the dock workflow, and I will include the citation from its source.
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4913&context=sis_research
bonehead123
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2011
- Messages
- 1,444
On the stockpiling issue....IMHO, this is just another form of scapling... shame on you wallyworld 
On the receipt checking issue, I have consulted 4 attorneys in 4 different states and they all said the same thing: It is NOT illegal for them to kindly ask to see your receipt, but if you refuse to show it to them, they have absolutely ZERO legal basis to detain, confront, or hassle you, much less take into their security office or otherwise prevent you from leaving the store (unlawful confinement), UNLESS they are prepared to make a formal accusation of theft right there & then, in which case the police MUST be called to document & investigate the matter, and if you did NOT steal anything, then you are within your rights (and possibly obligated) to sue them for damages (time and inconvenience) and slander (potential damage to your reputation and/or standing in your community).
The other side of the coin is that if you refuse to show your receipt, if they want to press the issue, they could legally give their security footage to the police, so they can positively identify you and then BAN you from the premises after sending you a written explanation of same within 72-96 hours. In extreme cases (violence, threats etc by you), they could also post your picture (without any identifying info like name, address, phone # etc) at all entrances, exits, and checkouts so that everyone knows not to allow you to shop there.
I usually just ignore and/or look away from them, unless of course, the checker is a rather attractive female, which I will never pass up an opportunity to have a brief conversation with, hahahaha
If they get aggressive about it, I stop & kindly explain the above facts to them, without allowing them to engage in any discussion, & then proceed to my car without any further delay.
For membership clubs like Costco etc, they COULD cancel your membership, but that entails a whole other set of complicated rules, conditions and legal consequences for said club...
On the receipt checking issue, I have consulted 4 attorneys in 4 different states and they all said the same thing: It is NOT illegal for them to kindly ask to see your receipt, but if you refuse to show it to them, they have absolutely ZERO legal basis to detain, confront, or hassle you, much less take into their security office or otherwise prevent you from leaving the store (unlawful confinement), UNLESS they are prepared to make a formal accusation of theft right there & then, in which case the police MUST be called to document & investigate the matter, and if you did NOT steal anything, then you are within your rights (and possibly obligated) to sue them for damages (time and inconvenience) and slander (potential damage to your reputation and/or standing in your community).
The other side of the coin is that if you refuse to show your receipt, if they want to press the issue, they could legally give their security footage to the police, so they can positively identify you and then BAN you from the premises after sending you a written explanation of same within 72-96 hours. In extreme cases (violence, threats etc by you), they could also post your picture (without any identifying info like name, address, phone # etc) at all entrances, exits, and checkouts so that everyone knows not to allow you to shop there.
I usually just ignore and/or look away from them, unless of course, the checker is a rather attractive female, which I will never pass up an opportunity to have a brief conversation with, hahahaha
If they get aggressive about it, I stop & kindly explain the above facts to them, without allowing them to engage in any discussion, & then proceed to my car without any further delay.
For membership clubs like Costco etc, they COULD cancel your membership, but that entails a whole other set of complicated rules, conditions and legal consequences for said club...
Find better attorneys…On the stockpiling issue....IMHO, this is just another form of scapling... shame on you wallyworld
On the receipt checking issue, I have consulted 4 attorneys in 4 different states and they all said the same thing: It is NOT illegal for them to kindly ask to see your receipt, but if you refuse to show it to them, they have absolutely ZERO legal basis to detain, confront, or hassle you, much less take into their security office or otherwise prevent you from leaving the store (unlawful confinement), UNLESS they are prepared to make a formal accusation of theft right there & then, in which case the police MUST be called to document & investigate the matter, and if you did NOT steal anything, then you are within your rights (and possibly obligated) to sue them for damages (time and inconvenience) and slander (potential damage to your reputation and/or standing in your community).
The other side of the coin is that if you refuse to show your receipt, if they want to press the issue, they could legally give their security footage to the police, so they can positively identify you and then BAN you from the premises after sending you a written explanation of same within 72-96 hours. In extreme cases (violence, threats etc by you), they could also post your picture (without any identifying info like name, address, phone # etc) at all entrances, exits, and checkouts so that everyone knows not to allow you to shop there.
I usually just ignore and/or look away from them, unless of course, the checker is a rather attractive female, which I will never pass up an opportunity to have a brief conversation with, hahahaha
If they get aggressive about it, I stop & kindly explain the above facts to them, without allowing them to engage in any discussion, & then proceed to my car without any further delay.
For membership clubs like Costco etc, they COULD cancel your membership, but that entails a whole other set of complicated rules, conditions and legal consequences for said club...
Penal code 490.5, which states:
"(f) (1) A merchant may detain a person for a reasonable time for the purpose of conducting an investigation in a reasonable manner whenever the merchant has probable cause to believe the person to be detained is attempting to unlawfully take or has unlawfully taken merchandise from the merchant's premises."
If it was not for the pandemic they would probably stock pile systems to be ready for black friday or similar. Nothing new here, it just sucks knowing that there is such a shortage for PS5 and Xbox Series X. I was one of the few lucky ones a month ago to secure an order on Walmart's website (MSRP), it did take 2.5 weeks to ship I am glad they did not cancel the order. I doubt they will scalp (will sell at MSRP), they probably want some success for the holidays even though it will probably be some shit show if it is 20 per store or less.
Had a very unpleasant exchange with a supposed Wal-Mart employee once. She wasn't wearing a vest, name tag, or anything that identified her as an employee. So now when they ask to see my receipt I ask them why. If they do not say they suspect me of stealing something or something was not rang up I just walk on by them.
Did you miss the words "probable cause" there? Refusal to show your receipt to a random check isn't probable cause to detain.
Them checking the receipt is the detainment part. They determined probable cause before that incident.
bonehead123
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2011
- Messages
- 1,444
Bingo ! Ya'll hit the proverbial nail on the head
All 4 attorneys I consulted stated that the merchant MUST give you every possible opportunity to pay for the item(s) prior to detaining you, and that stopping you before you actually reach the outermost doorways, under the guise of "checking receipts", does NOT satisfy the legal requirement of "every possible opportunity". Remember that in the US, you are ALWAYS considered innocent until proven guilty, penal code notwithstanding !
The only "probable cause" in the retail realm is if a store security/loss prevention specialist (and NO, untrained, $8/hr stockers and/or cashiers don't count) believes they witnessed you concealing something, stashing something under or inside of another item, or purposely making it so that the item in question did not or could not be scanned at the register, and then you attempted to leave the premises without paying for said item. Even with this supposed witnessing of a crime, video evidence would be required as proof in virtually every state.
LOL no.
Walmart has taken the stance that if you shop there you are stealing from them and that's fine they can ask for it and you can choose not to show it to them, it's not illegal for them to demand to see it, and it's not illegal for you to say no. But they will likely call the cops on you which is going to be a bigger pain for you than them. Because Walmart is far too cheap to hire actual security.