Stealing is a Trend

Many of you will know Jonathon Winchester from Shopper Anonymous. He has just presented a talk called ‘Its a Steal’. He used figures on stealing in the UK which are quite scary; 3.5 million people admitted to stealing in the UK in the last five years 25% by accident and returned the goods 60% by accident and kept the goods 15% deliberate stealers He mentioned that the supermarket Sainsbury’s has a 4% shrink on chesses due to stealing. He also mentioned for every one pound of customer stealing there is 4 pounds worth of staff stealing. Staff steal as follows; Stealing product Sickness days when not sick Administration errors in the office Back door stealing The big message for me was that retailers should have a prepared “banning” letter that they can hand to customers who are known to have stolen.