Another P&M From AJ1G - Store Security Scanners Now Set Off By Cell Phones?

[AJ1G]

In the last few weeks (and NEVER before that) my cell phone has been setting off the store security scanners at the doors of the local WalMart, Home Depot, JC Penny, Radio Shack and even a Lowes up in North Smithfield RI last night as I passed both in and out of the stores.  In at least one case, my Seiko quartz watch with a stainless steel case and watchband also would set off the scanner. WTF over?  No, I have not been knowingly or unknowingly carrying around something with a "hot" security tag!

Have these devices, which normally react to those little magnetic security tags put on high priced items, and are degaussed by the cashier, all been recently reprogrammed or something...never had the cell phone reaction problem before it started happening all over the place several weeks ago... 

According to some of the store security monitors at the local Wal Mart, this has been a very widespread problem of late, with many people's cell phones tripping off the sensors.  Who are the vendors of these monitors, and what the heck are they thinking having a design that trips off false on one of the most common things  that shoppers will be carrying on their persons?

[ab3al]

my guess is that you are with sprint or verizon.  next time you go through the door look at your phone and see how many bars you have.  if its weak or none your phone is compensating by jacking up the juice.  this will set off the rfid sensors at the door.  Its only one brand of rfid receiver that it seemed to affect.  I had a small contract a few years back servicing them for staples and circuit city.  they finally ditched that particular model for a different one.  cant remember the make. will probably come back to me.  You are probably going to an older store.  later that manufacturer corrected the problem.  as far as just in the last week. there is a sensitivity setting in them.  Maybe it has been recently serviced.  Glad i dont have the contract anymore.

[ab3al]

on second thought maybe Dick Chaney sent the black helicopters to your house at night and inserted an anal probe to track you

[W1RKW]

on second thought maybe Dick Chaney sent the black helicopters to your house at night and inserted an anal probe to track you

They are one in the same, aren't they?

[Jim, W5JO]

on second thought maybe Dick Chaney sent the black helicopters to your house at night and inserted an anal probe to track you

They are one in the same, aren't they?

You must be thinking of Nancy Pelosi.

[W2RBA]

on second thought maybe Dick Chaney sent the black helicopters to your house at night and inserted an anal probe to track you

They are one in the same, aren't they?

You must be thinking of Nancy Pelosi.

No, not at all, I'm sure he's right -- it has Cheney written all over it!

[k4kyv]

What are you supposed to do when you walk out the door and set off the alarm, and you know you haven't shoplifted anything or inadvertently walked out without paying  for something?

I  have seen it happen to other people, and they stop short, frozen in their tracks, with a dazed look on their face like a deer caught in the  headlights of a  car on a country road, a tenth of a second before it is splattered all over the pavement.  I suppose people are becoming more and more conditioned to believe that when in doubt, they are presumed to be guilty until proved otherwise.

I have made up my mind that next time it happens to me, I'm going to just keep walking right out the door and completely ignore it, as if nothing had happened.  It's somebody else's problem, not mine.

If they send the goon squad out to wrestle me to the ground, I will just show my receipt, and threaten to sue for damages.  Maybe to shut me up, they will offer to refund my money and still let me keep the item I just purchased.

I refuse to give in and meekly cooperate with all the paranoia that pervades to-day's society.  Hell, at the store, they sometimes even try to card me (at age 66) to prove I'm old enough to purchase beer.  When that happens, I delight in doing whatever I can to make the pimple-farm at the checkout feel as stupid as possible, even though I know (s)he is just following orders.

[WA1LGQ]

  I'm with you Don. The damn things have gone off for me a few times, but I know its not my fault, I just keep walking. Have'nt been stopped or harassed yet. .....LB

[WQ9E]

About 20 years ago when I was fresh out of the doctoral program I did a little consulting work with several retailers concerning security.  At that time one of the big problems was the "fake shoplift" where someone would appear to steal something while being observed by store personnel.  They would then get out of sight for a short period of time and dump the object and then demand to be searched when they were stopped while leaving the store.  The final step was to threaten the store with a lawsuit and generally a store would agree to a settlement.  For some, the "fake shoplift" was quite a bit more lucrative than stealing something and fencing it for a small percentage of its retail value.  I always thought of this as the modern version of the depression era scam where a "customer" would drop something on the floor of a store and slip on it in order to sue the store for injury.

Something else that was common then (and probably now also) was to hide one item inside another and then if the person was caught at the cash register they could claim they had no idea how item A got inside item B. Sort of low risk shoplifting as long as they were not observed in the act of hiding the item.  To this day I am still careful when I buy many items to make sure there is nothing inside that should not be there; sometimes someone plans to steal something and then loses their nerve creating a potentially embarrassing situation for the next unsuspecting customer.  This would really be embarrassing for me since one of the courses I teach from time to time is retail management-not exactly the kind of publicity I need!

The biggest issue with retail security is reducing shrinkage while minimizing the impact on sales and expenses.  I could 100 percent "shrink proof" any store by having the store surrounded by concertina wire and guarded by hungry Dobermans on the inside; shrinkage would drop to zero but unfortunately so would sales.  A common tactic is to make it difficult to steal items, for example leather coats are typically a high shrinkage item so if you chain them all together no one is going to steal them.  But chained together no one can try them on without store personnel involvement so you also just killed impulse purchases.  One chain of stores had life size cutouts of threatening looking police offers stationed throughout the store to remind shoplifters who they might be meeting soon but it turned out that so many customers were intimidated by the cutouts that sales dropped significantly.  The worst store shrinkage I have ever come across was a swim wear store in Florida.  They sold very expensive swim wear which was desirable (but not affordable) by teenagers.  The store was located about 1/4 mile from a large high school and the store featured a boutique style layout which meant that employees could only see a small part of the store at a time creating great opportunities for shoplifters.  As I recall the store only survived about 8 or 9 months and the final total was that of the merchandise that went out the door around 60 percent was due to theft.

[k4kyv]

I recall monitoring a 75m group in QSO a few years ago discussing a severe RFI problem that was wiping out 160m over about a 1-mile radius.  One of the members of the  group, a broadcast engineer, had traced the source to a clothing retailer that use a "Kno-Go" security system, that apparently activated the alarm by saturating the doorway with a signal in the vicinity of 2 mHz, which would trigger the alarm if the security chip was still attached to the merchandise.

He had contacted the store about the RFI problem, but they were not interested in cooperating.  I heard him discussing with his buddies his plan for revenge that he hoped would also cause the problem to cease.  He was going to spend an evening parked in the lot near the exit door with his mobile rig loaded up on 160, and key up the transmitter for a "test" whenever a customer was exiting the door.  He figured that his signal would trigger the alarm, and that after a few irate customers they would turn the thing off. 

Unfortunately, I never heard a follow-up conversation to find out if the plan worked.

[AJ1G]

Finally figured out what has been setting off the Sensormatic security scanners at the local Wally World and Home Depot on me - not the cell phone, not the watch, but of all things my fleece lined nylon shell windbreaker!  Not clear why, all the zippers are plastic, and nothing in the pockets, no obvious security tags in it - it wasn't purchased in a store - its a "company" jacket with embroidered logos. Really bizarre - will contact the person at work who distributes the jackets and see if they have a hidden security tag in there somewhere that needs to be neutered.  Go figure!

[W1RKW]

my biggest bugaboo with security or anti-shoplifting devices is these welded plastic containers or packaging some products come in and the effort to extract the product from them.  It is nearly impossible to open them with your hands. I've used tin snips, utility knives scissors etc. to open them. They are impossible to open without risking injury. I found the nicest scissors for opening them but it's a pain in the ass to have to retrieve them each and every time I need to open one of these SOBs, I can never find them when needed.  I'm waiting for the day that I impale myself, slice a finger open or whatever. I'm going after the store or vendor for the injury.

[Opcom]

Agreed on the tough plastic packaging. Besides being risky to open, it is very wasteful and I have cut myself once.

As for the security monitors, I never stop any more in the rare occasions they go off and have never been harrassed.

I do see more stores that sell costly little things having an employee at the exit checking receipts, but I usually walk past them and say "good afternoon" as they mumble their request to check the receipt, even they seem somewhat embarrassed to have to ask..

I think most store polcies are that the employee never confronts the customer.

The only place that I let look at the receipt is sams club, because they don't check anything, they just mark a stripe down the receipt as you pass by, hardly stopping and also they have several people doing it so I am not inconvenienced, and I do not believe sams club thinks I am stealing.

Fry's electronics on the other hand thinks everyone is stealing, and that their employees are in cahoots with their customer friends and 'forget' to ring up things that get put in the bag at the checkout. I never stop for their receipt checker. Good day sir. I am the AntiCattle.