Australia’s largest home / hardware store also checks the items your taking against your receipt and stamps your receipt upon exiting the store, thereby reducing the incidence of thieves walking in empty handed and taking the item again while claiming they’ve already paid for it.
Why doesn’t Home Depot do something similar?
Categorically the only people on earth having trouble with this lose receipts, say no to electronic copies of the receipt, and come back in all the time without receipts.
Home depot has about the friendliest return policies of any major retailer I've ever shopped with.
Assuming the "largest home / hardware store" means Bunnings, this w/e I returned items to a different store but with a receipt - so that was simple, but different to what you've stated.
Not long ago I return $175 worth of goods without receipts (after return $300 with receipts, because apparently I lost some...) to a different store to the one I bought from. They checked my ID and I assume I'm now on their loss prevention records; but from what I know that's not likely to be an issue until there's an obvious pattern of abuse.
Bunnings definitely have people returning items that they've stolen from one store and returned to another without a receipt, but they have a loss prevention team to try and reduce that.
It's the trade off of reduced friction (and increased purchases) vs theft - eg I wouldn't have bought everything I did if I was concerned that the returns process wouldn't be seamless.
It turns out that the credit card network's transaction ID is completely useless to store staff and doesn't correspond to anything they can search up.
They went ahead and decided that the fact I could give them an ID number at all is sufficient proof of purchase and happily exchanged it.
(Of course, in this case I was returning a defective item and they're legally obliged to replace it - perhaps they're stricter on change-of-mind.)
Why would a store ever accept returns without a receipt?
The whole process is even more convenient now that email receipts are becoming common.
Why doesn’t Home Depot do something similar?
(In contrast, Costco is empowered to do so via their membership agreement.)
"Generally speaking, it's illegal to detain someone from leaving without probable cause of a crime. (In contrast, Costco is empowered to do so via their membership agreement.)"
This is commonly thought but not quite right, either on facts, or on law.
First, people cite a membership agreement.
Let's take a look:
https://www.costco.com/wcsstore/CostcoUSBCCatalogAssetStore/...
https://www.costco.com/member-privileges-conditions.html
Nothing there.
Maybe it's elsewhere. Can't easily be found (not good for Costco!)
It does say they can adopt rules at any time. But false imprisonment requires voluntary consent, which is knowing. So that would not help them.
Besides that, false imprisonment, in most states, is both a felony and a tort :)
The answer to the question "are you likely to be able to sue costco successfully for trying to check your receipt when you don't want them to" - no, unless you revoke consent and they don't revoke your membership and kick you off the property :)
The answer to the question "can they legally detain you" - also no if you revoke consent (and the first person to say something about the 4th amendment here loses, since we are talking about private actors).
Voluntary consent is definitely a valid defense to false imprisonment. However the idea that consent in the membership agreement overrides anything that later happens is, at best, laughable.
Imagine the membership agreement says "you unconditionally consent to costco locking you up in the backroom until they get bored".
Do you think I don't have a false imprisonment claim, if, when they try to do so, i say "I do not consent to this", and they do it anyway?
How is that voluntary consent? Even if i did consent, i clearly and unequivocally revoked it. Maybe i breached a contract. Irrelevant, however. Remember, it's both a tort and a crime. Even if they have an argument about the tort (they don't really), they don't about the crime.
There is plenty of precedent on revocation of consent all the way up the Supreme Court (United States v. Drayton, etc). Saying "no" to a receipt checker and walking away almost certainly counts as proper consent revocation.
Now Costco certainly has the right to revoke my membership and remove me from their property. But they can't certainly can't detain me though once i've revoked consent. It even may have a reasonable argument that the first time it tries to detain me, it was within the consent (depends on what happens in the above story).
The second i revoke my consent by saying no, sorry, it's clearly false imprisonment (in states that don't have a shopkeepers privilege).
Nothing there.
Costco reserves the right to inspect any container, backpack, briefcase, etc., upon entering or leaving the warehouse.
Once (that I can remember), an item was misplaced by the checker into the items of the patron behind me (I had paid for something I wouldn't have gotten out the door with).
And at least twice, back when they accepted Discover and would allow up to $50 cash back on a purchase, I didn't realize that I hadn't gotten the money... only to have the receipt-checker proactively ask me if I got the cash. In both cases, a subsequent count of the register confirmed it, and I got the full amount of cash.
So, I'm content with Costco's process, but I don't allow proactive checks anywhere else (e.g. Fry's).
Errr, that doesn't give them the right to detain you, so no, that's not it. This is the more general stealing provision, and
1. Not even close to the same as receipt checking.
2. Probably void in a number of states (where receipt checking would not be)
that doesn't give them the right to detain you
Of course, those who aren't members anyway aren't really risking anything.
The system at some stores make it hard to return stuff, while others make it easier. If the customer is happy they will return later to buy more stuff if not happy the go somewhere else like a competitor.
Kroger had $108 B.
Walmart had $485.9 B.
When you're selling that kind of volume, you're not doing it without algorithmic help.
Absolutely agree that OP should have been able to more easily get an in-person override. But I understand why the original rejection happened: or rather, I understand why HD uses a data mining company to attempt to prevent theft.
PS: Side note, you'd be surprised how big of a chunk of theft directly involves receipts / returns in some way or another.
In any case it’s ridiculous that a manager can’t look at someone’s history of buying lots of stuff and override a one-time return for a fraction of a percent of their recent history.
The right answer here is that the algorithm probably screwed up in this instance. There was a clear signal for a legitimate customer: large order, small return.
Saying that the algorithm screwed up is confusing a symptom with the problem: making business processes so inflexible that local staff cannot correct mistakes.
These companies have been profitable for a long time prior to now. Why is it that they suddenly need algorithmic help?
If you're running a < 5% net profit margin, as most of these businesses are, then 1.5% inventory shrink (approx average) is a pretty big deal.
In a case I know of, LP colluded with the customer service manager to steal $10K cash, by shifting the camera focus from the money counting area. In this case, both the LP manager and the customer service manager got fired, and, of course, without any charges, since there is no proof.
At Fry's electronics, to return a product, LP has to key in his password as well. If the price of returned product is more than $300, LP and some other manager have to key in their passwords.
Isn't that why receipts are printed?
- Menards; just added ability to look up your receipt yourself at their self-help terminals, so now they require you find the receipt there
- Lowes; requires the card you bought it on
- Harbor Freight; can help find the receipt, or will give in-store credit
- Home Depot; no idea, who shops here, it's way more expensive and they have nothing in stock lol
Note that on the scale of Home Depot the guy complaining is a small customer. The big customers spend thousands of dollars there very week and return 10s of dollars every week. (buy 100 2x4, use 95 and return the 5, then repeat 100 for the next project tomorrow - they need the return because they have to pass the receipts on to their customers who might check to be sure they are not cheated out of $20 on a $15000 project)
There's also the trick of rooting through the store garbage for receipts, then going through the store to find the corresponding items and 'returning' things you never bought with the found receipt.
Returns are mandated here though and I guess the US is anti-consumer in a lot of ways so companies won't really be forced to find solutions that don't explicitly benefit them.
I really don’t think Australia has this solved any better than the US, if this is the only solution.
Of course if you only allowed returns strictly with proper receipts all your challenges shockingly disapear except the all the people that are pissed off because their return is denied instead of only the minority now.