Some notifications are made to the police about pinching at self-service cash registers.
To the shops an unpleasant phenomenon took root with the advent of self-service cash registers. Customers get in the way by deceiving stores in the most diverse ways, says the crime commissioner Mikko Minkkinen.
Thousands of reports of snooping are made to the Helsinki police every year. The police do not separately record pinching that is done at self-service cash registers, but based on the descriptions of the acts, these still happen at a constant pace.
Typically for example, people leave part of the products unpaid at self-service checkouts or intentionally weigh products incorrectly. There have also been such scams, where the customer has, for example, weighed just the bag and put the products to be bought into the bag only afterwards.
According to Minkkinen, a typical feature is also that you put some of the products in your pocket or backpack and pay for a single product at the self-service checkout.
HS has reported several problems related to self-service checkouts and express checkouts in recent weeks.
Tradespeople have ended up for example to limit the opening hours of self-service cash registers as well as to checkweigh certain products.
Shopkeepers have assumed that the threshold for pinching is lower at self-service checkouts. According to their estimation, first-timers commit the crime more often.
According to Minkkinen, based on reports made to the police, it seems that pickpockets at self-service checkouts follow a traditional pattern.
“There are those who are pinching out of habit and then first-timers,” Minkkinen describes.
Pinching there is no single problem solution for prevention.
Measures already implemented by stores, such as checkweighing, help in part. Several self-service cash registers have also switched to a model where the barcode of the receipt is required to leave the cash register area.
With this, it is possible to prevent such scams, where the author scans the products, but leaves them completely unpaid.
According to Minkkinen, alarms installed on products are also effective prevention measures. However, these are still a rarity in the grocery store.
Although checks made through self-service cash registers have increased as cash registers have become more common, according to Minkkinen, so-called traditional checks are done more.
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