Home Depot installing 40,000 high-tech cameras

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | 09/16/03 | TONY WILBERT

[Kennesaw]

Home Depot installing 40,000 high-tech cameras

Smile, you're on Home Depot camera, high-tech style.

The Atlanta-based retailer said Tuesday it has begun installing real-time, digital surveillance camera systems in all of its 1,600 stores in North America. The system will use 40,000 video cameras to allow Home Depot to better monitor its stores and cut down on shoplifting, the company said.

While Home Depot acknowledged that several other retailers currently use digital video surveillance, the company said it is one of the first to use a standardized digital system throughout all store operations.

"For the first time, Home Depot will have significantly increased real-time video coverage of its stores," said Troy Rice, senior vice president of operations. "The new system will help continue our trend of lowering losses due to theft, provide a powerful new deterrent and enable faster, more conclusive investigations by law enforcement."

Home Depot said the new digital technology will outperform the analog technology it currently uses because images from dozens of cameras can be stored nearly indefinitely. Also, Home Depot stores where crimes may have occurred can e-mail images to police departments investigating the reports.

The new system also will help Home Depot fight identity fraud, the company said.

Home Depot expects to complete installation of the new monitoring system by the end of January.

[radiohead]

I guess I'm going to have to be in the minority and agree with you.

We live next door to a Home Depot. Being in an apartment, I don't have much need for major hardware items, but when I do have a need, I usually don't know anything about what I have to buy.

Without fail, I have found the store personnel knowledgeable, curteous, and haven't had to wait a long time in line. Could just be my experience, but there it is.

A true HD story -

My sister and I went to get some paint & supplies. After shopping, we sat outside at the hot dog stand and had a soda. She looked in the bag w/the rollers, etc., pulled out a paint stirrer and said,

"Wow, that's nice for them to give us these nail files. And look how big they are too!"

A couple of girly-girls and proud of it. : )

[tiamat]

Don't get me wrong. Retail sucks, and I really wish he was doing something different. Something that doesn't make him lift weights and where the hours are a little more condusive to family life.

Sounds like the store you were at was badly run. Hubby is very seldom able to get OT, and breaks are MANDITORY.

Usually here it's the part-timers and students who flake.

Tia

[ikka]

It is not about identifying fraud!

It is about beng able to track customer movements within the store and analyze who responds to what displays.

[Cate]

Here's my two cents. My future son-in-law is assistant manager at our local Home Depot. Long before I met him, we made frequent trips into HD. We've taken tiling classes and also some on painting. The only bad experience I've ever had in the store was when I foolishly stood and looked at all their nifty ceiling lights and fans and it made me sick to my stomach to watch all those swirling things. Our area is lucky to have a store that the employees are plentiful and the help is geniune. Hopefully some HD employees will see this thread and do something about improvements in your areas.

[azcap]

Also, I know they mention theft numerous times in the article, but my first thought was shrinkage, which I didn't see mentioned once.

 

Telling the press you are installing a super-duper 21st century camera system to reduce shoplifting makes investors feel warm and fuzzy. Saying you are doing to keep your employees from robbing you blind has a different effect on Wall Street.

 

 

[tiamat]

LOL! I like your story! I will pass it on.

In all defense of retail, I will say that a lot of customers are just plain nasty. I have seen my husband do everything but stand on his head to make people happy and some people will still get an attitude.

Years ago when he worked at Color Tile, there was one real witch who had changed her special order several times, had gotten my husband to throw in a lot of product for free, ( Commision sales and that's food off of OUR table! ) gotten him to drive the stuff to her house on his own time, and she STILL was abusive and nasty.
I got a load of her one day when I was in the store buying more groat for a project we were doing at our first house, and this witch came in and started on him. Mys husband behaved like a gentlman and tried to help her. Not good enough for her!
I couldn't stand it. Without identifying myself as his wife, I lit her up but good.
Hubby's manager sent me flowers the next day because this woman had been making them all miserable for days!

Tia

[al baby]

You can put skill saw blades in betwwen sheets of drywall or plywood

They should put cameras outside at the day labor pool see whos here that should not be

[John123]

Hypothetically speaking, where do you 'slip' those things for their trip out the building?

Good question. However, I saw a rather large woman attempt to sneak out a frozen whole turkey between her legs on one of those dumbest criminals shows. So anything is possible I guess. But I am not advocating stealing!

After all, it is one of those pesky 10 commandments that the ACLU doesn't seem to like. :)

[Uncle George]

Bar code tag swapping is a big ripoff in all hardware stores.

[steveo]

Two words ... employee theft. Surprises me nobody else mentioned it.

Correct! I worked about 25 years in retail. Every security person will tell you the majority of shrinkage is due to employee theft.

[rector seal]

Will the digitized images be watched by bored 3rd world night shift workers in India? Wait a minute, why not Iraqis?

[Renegade]

They better boost the lighting like Lowes or they will need infrared to see in some parts of their stores .

[Recovering_Democrat]

O MY GAWWWWWD!
You'd think Home Depot cares more about its stores than some Americans care about protecting citizens from terrorists.

[azcap]

I've been pretty pleased with the HD here in Arizona. Trying to find the one guy in the lumber department is always a holy grail but they have what I want and will meet any price. I think their employees (and the same goes for Lowes, etc) fall into three categories.

    1.) The  Pro - These are the guys you want to find. Like the Freepers husband they understand both hardware and customer service. They can you tell you if they sell it, where to find, and how to use it. Every Home Depot has several of these gurus but you have to wade through the other two types to find them.

    2.) Cletus - Cletus is 22 years old and the entry level position at Home Depot is the height of his professional career. When he is fired in a few months for trying to do wheelies on the forklift he just won't understand how it all went wrong. Cletus thinks there are two kinds of screws X screws and Minus screws. Never ask Cletus to help you find anything. Start all conversations with Cletus with "Can you find me someone who can help me..."

    3.)  Ed - Ed lost his contractors license last year after that apartment fire you saw on the local news. Ed is the most dangerous kind. Ed is the guy who sold your sister copper piping for her lawn sprinklers. Thank god for the orange vests, because without it Ed would be in a white leisure suit with a bass fishing tie.  Avoid the Eds.

[KarlInOhio]

You left off 4.) The Store Opener - Part of the team which goes from store to store when they have their grand opening. For a couple of months you can't walk into a Home Depot ailes without tripping over 3 or 4 of them. Then, like great flocks of migrating birds, they gather together to go to their next nesting ground, leaving tumbleweeds blowing through the ailes and a few customers wandering around hopelessly looking for left handed monkey wrenches.

[savedbygrace]

But they don't know where anything is.

However, they don't let that little inconvenience stop them from telling you what you're looking for is in Aisle 5, even though it really isn't in Aisle 5.

I hate Lowes as much as I hate Home Depot. Drugs isn't all they should test prospective employees for. Basic intelligence should be a requirement, for a start.

[hoosierham]

At the retailer I worked at in the 70s the biggest thief turned out to be the MANAGERS ,either alone or leading a group of no-account workers !!!!

"Free" tires,batteries,oil changes, and even RIDING LAWN TRACTORS went out the door; shipping records tossed or altered? to cover up. The "ordinary" $20k annual loss soared to $100k after I left. One of the junior perps was heard bragging about the thefts but to my gratification, said" We had to wait until XXXXXXX left for the day or on his day off because he was too square"

The company eventually went out of business. Pinhead fools think "the company","the gov't", "etc." have an unending supply of money and stealing won't hurt anybody !?!

[razorback-bert]

Hmmm, found this tidbit

Posted - 08/19/2003 : 07:36:42 AM

---

The Home Depot had a Loss Prevention team a few yearas ago but did away with it. They are now bringing it back in which red flags should start going up just because of that. You will be working a minimum of 55-60 hours a week. I worked as a LP Manager for Lowes and I believe its a similiar structure. It is not typical LP where you get to catch bad guys and interview internals. You will be chasing paperwork all day and have very little time on the camera system. When you do use the camera system it will be for refund verification. LP at Home depot is more Shrink Control through paperwork errors and Saftey than anything else. You will probably have to wear one of their vests when you walk around on the floor, and help customers when needed. The LP training at Lowes was around 8 months, thats how much paperwork you have to know, plus you have to know every other department in the store and be certified in all of it. That means you will unloading trucks in receiving at 3 or 4 in the morning for about a week or so. Home depot has killed several people in their store because of saftey issues so I am guessing that saftey will be your priority. As far as advancement, you will probably have to re-locate if you want to advance in the company and want a higher pay rate. The pay rate in Home Depot and Lowes is based on the crime in the area and the Shrink Rate. It goes by classes from 2-6 I believe. What you should take into consideration is when you look on LPJObs.com or some similiar website you will see that most of the LP jobs available are from Home Depot and Lowes. This means that they cannot recruit and KEEP their LP managers because of unfair treatment. The bonus structure is based on if the store meets their shrink goals or not, if they dont, you dont get a bonus. I would only go to Home Depot if nothing else is available.

and this one

Home Depot is not a place to be if you want to go to LP. Everything bad you hear is right, and everything you hear good is wrong. Yeah, they make you work a MINIMUM of 55 hours a week. You get a staff of 1 maybe 2 LP people. There are endless audits and inventory tracking. The number one problem is the safety issues. I think like 9 people in the last two years have died at Home Depot from merchandise and stocking vehicle accidents. One of the most recent was a refridgerator that fell on a 8 year old girl. This company is full of libility issues that will heavily involve you.

http://www.lpinformation.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=963

[razorback-bert]

Here is the story on this and HD

Despite the implied transience of the mobile home lifestyle, Trailer Haven has a look of permanence about it. Among the cypress trees and the knee-high wooden fences separating one leafy lot from the next, residents of the San Leandro trailer park have tricked out their lots with all the trappings of home: windmills and goofy lawn signs and statuary painted a not-quite-convincing shade of gold. But not lot #190. No more than an asphalt parking space on the outer edge of the camp next to the pay phone and the exit gate, lot #190 is meant for people who don't plan to stick around for long.
Staking out the park on June 12, 2002, Brian Odell and Matt O'Brien were worried that the three inhabitants of that lot were about to leave town in a hurry. Both men work as investigators for Home Depot, the nation's second-largest retail chain. They believed that the people whose trailer was parked on lot #190 were engineering a massive bar-code scam that had defrauded their company of hundreds of thousands of dollars. For weeks, Home Depot's loss-prevention department had been tracking the trio's movements as they refunded their way through Texas, Arizona, and then California. By the time they'd swept through the Bay Area, they'd hit stores in Pittsburg, Concord, San Ramon, and Pleasanton. They'd been to El Cerrito, Emeryville, Union City, and Milpitas. They'd been as far north as Sacramento and as far south as Salinas.

But until now, Home Depot's investigators had always been at least a day behind the three. They'd pored over in-store surveillance tape of a large, balding, middle-aged man, later identified as John Patrick Hay, who apparently entered the store with pre-cut bar-code stickers, photocopied en masse at a copy shop. He affixed them over the existing bar codes on the items he wished to buy, selecting the same products every time: a kitchen faucet retailing at $169, which he would relabel with a sticker for a lower-end model worth only $39. He did the same with an outdoor lighting kit worth $249, which he would cover with the bar codes for a cheaper model worth $55. The sales for the more expensive items would then be rung up at the lower price. Later the same day, the group would show up at a neighboring Home Depot and a second graying, middle-aged man later identified as Anthony Davenport would peel off the homemade sticker, then return the items for their original prices. With each exchange, he would pocket the difference between the two grades of home fixture. Since he usually exchanged several faucets and light kits at a time, each visit to the refund desk yielded between $1,000 and $1,500. When asked for identification, the men often presented English or Irish passports; later investigation would reveal that they had more than a dozen of these, each with a different serial number.

Davenport's wife, Linda Broderick, was the third member of the group. Although she had only been captured once on a Home Depot camera, the investigators believed that her name was on the multiple bank accounts into which the trio's profits were funneled. As part of the stakeout, O'Brien had trailed Broderick and Davenport to a San Leandro Bank of America, where Broderick transferred a $300,000 cashier's check to her account with the Bank of Ireland. Although the trio still had several days left on their rent at Trailer Haven, the banking transaction seemed like a sure sign that they were planning to split.

After weeks of surveillance, the Home Depot security officers knew they were onto something big, but they didn't quite know how big. They didn't know that the events of that day would unleash a bizarre yearlong investigation that will culminate in Oakland next week with the beginning of the sentencing process for Davenport, Hay, and Broderick on federal charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They didn't know that the trio's trail would lead through at least 24 states, and that the investigation's nationwide scope would draw in the FBI and the US Attorney's Office. They didn't know that the dent the three managed to make in Home Depot's pocketbook, originally estimated at $400,000, would soar toward an estimated $1 million. They didn't know that the scam artists' methodology would turn into a case study on how to beat the bar-code system with nothing more than a Xerox machine and a polite insistence that the customer is always right. And they didn't know that the three would be linked to the Irish Travelers, a shadowy ethnic subculture with a reputation among law enforcement officials for conducting home improvement and shoplifting scams. All they knew was that their suspects were in sight, and that they were getting away.


see the rest at http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2003-09-10/feature.html/1/index.html