Good Idea?
 

I’m up in Minnesota spending some time with family, and ran into a situation at a.local Home Depot that I’ve never encountered before. Simply put, the brakes on their shopping carts lock up if you try to push them through an open door without paying for your items. They will also lock up if you try to push an EMPTY cart out of the store, which is how we found out. Apparently it is Home Depot’s latest effort to combat shoplifting, which is especially bad in Minnesota at this time.

Good idea?

Any other novel ways by merchants of countering shoplifting that you know of?

Any other ideas from folks how to stem the shoplifting craze?

Good idea. Some stores use an alarm system that most shoplifters and store employees just ignore.

Well, shoplifting under $1000 is OK in some big cities like San Francisco and NYC.

Just not fair - should be OK everywhere.

Nice idea. Seems like it would be expensive to implement but if a store is suffering from shoplifting then maybe it would be worth the investment.

it's good & bad. good for the store, bad for the person whose items are so large they need the cart to get it to the car. unless of course, they have store employees who can carry it out for you, then is ok.

Agreed. In Minnesota any shoplifting theft under $1000 is a misdemeanor. You can report it but due to police shortages and the proliferation of other more serious crimes (in the eyes of law enforcement anyway) following up on misdemeanors is seen as a waste of time.

We Villagers are extraordinarily lucky to have the law enforcement we have.

Have all stores close, and only sell online.

Thats what happen when people are allowed to get away with petty crimes but to me stealing $ 950 is not petty at all

I agree. Amazon sells everything that Home Depot does and most items are at a lower cost. I rarely ever go to Home Depot or Lowes. This week, I received some HVAC filters, refrigerator filters, batteries, toilet paper, and a pair of pliers. Saved time and money.

I thinks it’s great
We use to have a problem with carts disappearing, the store got carts that lock up is you try to remove from the parking lot. It helped keep the carts on the stores property and cut down on the loss of carts.
So if this helps all for it. After all we, the honest consumers pay the price for loss and theft.

No commercial tax base....where do you think that burden shifts to?

Now if we can just find a way for those carts to find their way back to their corral. Shout out Cart Narcs!

Arresting shoplifters used to work pretty good. Maybe we ought to try that again.

Target up in my old town up north had shopping carts that lock their wheels if you roll them too far from the front of the store. If you bought a lot of stuff and parked further away in the parking lot, it was an inconvenience to drag the thing to the car. But then I realized you could roll it just fine, if you rolled it backward. Just push from the back end or pull it behind you instead, and it'd roll fine.

My area wasn't a high-theft area. Most of the thieves were just mundane shoplifters - people who steal the "loss leaders" put out near the registers on purpose because they expect shoplifters to steal. Candy mostly. Bic lighters, gum, stuff like that.