Britain is a nation of “shoplifters” using ‘banana trick’ to cheat self-service tills

23 comments

1. A bit tongue-in-cheek, but at least it’s not more Jenas news…

2. A mate of mine perfected this technique in the 80s with Woolworths pic n mix. Rather than penny sweets, fill your bag with a mars bar and skittles and you’ll pay less.

   I blame him solely for their inevitable downfall.

   Fun fact, this person grew up to be a household name.

3. [removed]

4. Britain is a nation struggling with overpricing.

5. Maybe they could have a real person there to check the items. They could even help scan them for the customer, and if you installed some sort of belt that moves the items towards them they wouldn’t even have to move.

   I guess you’d have to pay them for that which might cost more than the current amount lost to theft.

6. Fix price gauging and shoplifting rates will decline – it’s not hard.

7. For the terminally stupid of us, what’s the “banana trick” ? I presume it’s not stuffing your pockets with stuff, then getting your dick out to distract people.

8. There’s a simple solution…

9. You would think with all this talk and growth of AI and robotics, they would have scanners and detectors that would know the difference between a banana and a steak. e.g. # Step 1: Check if the item is yellow. item.color == ‘yellow’: # Step 2: Check if the item is bendy. if item.shape == ‘bendy’: # Step 3: Verify if the item looks like it belongs in a fruit salad. if item.salad_type == ‘fruit’: return “Definitely a banana. 🍌

10. Inflation has come down significantly, exports of food stuffs from Ukraine has resumed and there aren’t any shortages of food supplies and yet the prices of food in supermarkets still remain at their highest. Can’t imagine why shoplifting has become so common…

11. That’s six million and one Brits now. Thanks for the tip!

12. If you’re going to steal something, why would you bother going to the till?

13. As long as we are in agreement to steal from big company’s then it’s ok

14. I once watched a pensioner on one of those mobility scooters that are provided by the shop go into the self checkout area and then proceed to distract the staff by acting like she was having some sort of malfunction with the scooter, she never scanned anything and once the scooter was suddenly working again, she thanked them and then rolled out with what looked to be at least £100 worth of shopping, unchallenged.

    At the time I just thought “You jammy *****” as I was skint and was so jealous that she’d pulled off such a mad heist.

15. Good reason to employ someone rather than replace people with machines then isn’t it.

16. Fish counters at supermarkets, common one was to buy an amount of cheaper fish and a bag of smoked salmon then further on swap the price labels, dump cheap fish in freezer.

17. Used to be brown onions. Surely it’s not beyond the wit of even the basic coder to flag somebody who buys so many bananas as separate items in a single transaction.

18. Pretty sure most supermarkets have caught onto this now

    Another good tip though is that if you see someone stealing baby products remember to look away

19. I must confess that I did put through the loose “posh” pink lady apples as the cheaper ones when I was a poor student

20. My local big Sainsbury’s has recently introduced new weighing/pricing scales for the fruit and veg section. Whereas before you placed your items in the weighing pan and then would have to pick from the touchscreen the image of what you’re weighing, there’s now a new screen with a camera attached to the top that points down at the weighing pan. It identifies what’s in the pan and then the screen shows what it is. You then press the button for the label.

21. Bananas trick?

    Fucking noobs, onions are cheaper

22. Carrots are cheaper

23. If supermarkets weren’t price gouging, posting record profits and overcharging customers that aren’t part of their loyalty schemes,

    Maybe customers would be more honest and steal less…