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Teenager Jailed After Buying PS4 for £8 by Weighing it and Paying for it as Food

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the hot-potato dept.

owl writes:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6652659/Teenager-jailed-buying-PlayStation-4-8-WEIGHING-paying-6lb-food.html

A French teenager has been jailed after buying a PlayStation 4 for under £8 by weighing it as if the games console was a huge bag of fruit.

The 19-year-old man, named in the French media as Adel, picked the device off the shelf and took it to the fruit section and weighed it.

He then put a sticker with the heavily reduced price tag on the expensive console and went to the checkout.

Adel paid £7.86 (€9) for the 6lb bag of 'fruit' at a self-checkout at a supermarket in Montbeliard, eastern France, last September.

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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 06 2021, @06:48PM (2 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Wednesday October 06 2021, @06:48PM (#1184825) Homepage
    My local "convenience" supermarket - has everything I'd ever need and more, so I don't need any larger - has 5 self-checkouts where there used to be 2 tills, and one "support" staff to help out and generally supervise. Of course, that's the no-theft incentive right there, you have to be ultra-ballsy to try to get away with anything audacious when right under her nose.

    I held off using them as long as possible, but too many slow people use that store, I guess they're tourists, and eventually I just couldn't be bothered to wait for the human. The throughput is definitely higher, and the cost is definitely lower with this setup. Many of the other chains in town use the hand-held scanner, scan as you go, technique. No idea how that works and what their lossage is like. I presume the penalties for fucking up or cheating are just too high to be worth it.
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  • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:02PM (1 child)

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:02PM (#1184930)

    Where I lived back in the late 80's, early 90's some supermarket chains tried self checkout lanes. This was back before people were used to using "technology" beyond cable TV or a VCR in their daily lives. They ended up eliminating them as they went almost unused.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @10:17PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @10:17PM (#1184981)

      I remember years ago when one of the local chains installed self scan machines. I tried it a few times, but I always had to get help because it wouldn't register my touch. At which point, it was pretty obvious just how badly they were trying to avoid having to pay for cashiers.