As a major beauty, personal care, and pharmacy retailer throughout Canada, Shoppers Drug Mart is a very convenient place. It’s so convenient, in fact, that many shoplifters find it easy to lift merchandise from their stores.
We’ll tell you all we know about Shoppers Drug Mart’s shoplifting policy. Unfortunately, they do not respond to inquiries about how they handle this. This seems due in part to the disparity of implementation between locations. Also, their parent company, Loblaw, does have some information available but not through corporate inquiry.
Shoppers Drug Mart Shoplifting Policy
Shoppers Drug Mart does not list their shoplifting policy on their website or through their parent company’s corporate headquarters. Many people have tried to ask them about it in the past. Neither Shoppers Drug Mart nor Loblaw responds to unknown individuals.
In aggregating accounts from public forums, social media pages, media articles, and legal advice sites, we can glean a little information about what it entails.
One thing is certain: they definitely have security guards and cameras in place. This is especially true at the self-checkout lanes, where light-fingered theft tends to be high.
Customer Treatment
When you perform an online search, many stories appear in the results about customers entering the store to immediately experience profiling by security and employees. Their surveillance efforts aren’t very subtle either. This is especially true for those who walk in with large bags and wear oversized clothing.
Oftentimes, employees consistently ask marked customers if they need help or security personnel makes it plain they’re following. Another thing some of locations are doing is letting repeat offenders walk out the door with merchandise.
They allow them to come back to the same location on repeated instances and then keep tabs on the total of their theft until it reaches the classification of grand theft.
Then police and Shoppers Drug Mart work together to bring the full force of the law onto the shoplifter.
Unfair Accusations
Some people receive shoplifting accusations and treatment even though they are innocent of the crime.
Several accounts show how many people are suing several locations for wrongful imprisonment among a host of other careless infractions on the part of security.
An Example
One viral example shows a security officer confronting a teen they suspect of shoplifting. In attempting to stop the youth, the officer body slams him into the floor and proceeds to handcuff the teen. The public outrage that ensued created a media disaster for Shoppers Drug Mart.
But, in response to the officer’s behavior, they mention having a no-touch policy. Truly, executives expressed their concern over the incident and do not condone such behavior from any employee.
While that may be the case, many customers warn about shopping at Shoppers Drug Mart. It is a veritable guarantee that they’ll receive unfair and suspicious treatment from security and staff.
Ergo, the pharmacy retailer seems to have a zero-tolerance policy in place but employees, including security, are not to touch anyone.
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Shoplifting is Still a Huge Problem
Yet, high-pressure surveillance over customers and other extensive loss prevention measures does not stop people from shoplifting.
There are several viral examples of groups of people stealing thousands of dollars of beauty products. Another man received 10 counts of shoplifting in 2019; all 10 are separate occurrences.
Some of these groups are intrinsically involved in nationwide theft rings, where Shoppers Drug Mart is only one of their targets. These kinds of operations mean the people are collecting their total thefts to sell online or at a public open flea market.
Light-Fingered Discounts
However, the most common retail theft Shoppers Drug Mart deals with is light-fingered customers at the self-checkout lanes.
Here, they fail to scan certain items in their cart and walk away as if nothing happened. Now, to be fair, sometimes people truly make a mistake and forget to scan some items.
But, with this being a widespread phenomenon, it’s impossible to differentiate who is being honest and who is stealing. So, anyone who remotely looks like a shoplifter will receive treatment like one, whether they are or not.
Although the imbalance is somewhat understandable, it does seem that Shoppers Drug World could employ a little more subtlety and couth.
Sales clerks could be friendlier, security officers don’t have to be so intimidating and other team members could exercise a little distance when following a suspected shoplifter.
What Their Parent Company Is Doing
The parent company, Loblaw, does have a Loss Prevention Department. Here, they take a very proactive approach in evaluating what merchandise is most desirable for shoplifters and they watch shrinkage numbers at each of their stores to see where shoplifting is high.
In an interview with Loss Prevention Magazine, Dean Henrico gives thorough answers as to how Loblaw Companies approaches the issue of shoplifting.
He’s the senior vice president of Loss Prevention for every store the company owns, operates and manages.
Protocols in Analyzing Data & Losses
Henrico tell us that the company changed the way they think about loss prevention in 2007. They transformed their traditional reactive approach, catching thieves after the fact into a compliance-based organization.
Here, they believe that loss prevention is only as good as an incident that never happens in the first place.
They don’t dismiss the traditional ways of catching shoplifters. But, their newer strategies center on why the theft took place from the beginning. They evaluate video footage and the circumstances. They then analyze the weaknesses, the product’s desirability and then put safeguards in place to prevent it from happening again.
Commonly stolen goods, either by individual stores or as a systemic problem, receive a flag. When the data returns to Loss Prevention showing an uptick in theft, they take deliberate measures to curtail it.
Some Results
These increased efforts have resulted in a 31% rise in preventing shoplifting from their stores. So, while this is a vast improvement and contributes to making shoplifters think twice, there’s still a long way to go.
Unequal Implementation & Legal Problems
However, it’s important to note that what they may implement at one store may not be in practice at another.
It depends on how much of a problem shoplifting is at any given location. There are a few stores that rarely if ever experience theft but many others see it several times per day.
Additional factors that influence security efforts and shoplifting incentives are the province and municipal laws along with pressure from worker’s unions.
For instance, in Toronto, local union leaders put pressure on retailers like Shoppers Drug World to introduce more police and security.
But, Toronto also recently passed a law forbidding the use of plastic bags at retailers. They did this in an attempt to be more environmentally friendly but it actually incentivized theft.
Walking out the door with products unbagged is now a common practice, so shoplifting is thus easier.
Conclusion
Shoppers Drug World’s shoplifting policy seems to be one of zero-tolerance. By all accounts, anyone entering the store will receive the treatment as if they are a thief. Unfortunately, it’s not one of customer care but one of offensive defense of merchandise.
But, this company and their parent, Loblaw, find shoplifting such a dire problem they deem it necessary to implement such extreme measures.
They use a host of combined techniques, which has resulted in a 31% reduction in theft. This is excellent, but it’s not enough to deter every shoplifter. Many still manage to get away with it.
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