The Supermarket Duopolies gain mass surveillance powers plus total market dominance – thanks for nothing Commerce Commission

The winners and losers of supermarket member pricing

There is a risk non-loyalty club members are paying a higher price for groceries than they should, Consumer NZ says — although this is denied by supermarkets.

Let me get this straight, the shopping duopoly HAS SO MUCH POWER they can gain facial recognition mass surveillance powers…

Foodstuffs’ facial recognition tech trial concerns Privacy Commissioner

The Privacy Commissioner says he has concerns about a six-month trial of facial recognition technology which is under way at a number of North Island New World and Pak’nSave stores.

… and Woolworths new app takes enormous amounts of information!

Remember they can use CCTV to film your licence plate FFS!

• Video footage and audio recordings which may identify you from our cameras (including CCTV, security and team safety cameras) for security, theft prevention, or safety purposes.
• The number plate of the vehicle you have used to visit our store, if that store uses an Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system.

I just want cheap prices, why the fuck does Woolworths need access to my metadata?

Blogger Danny Mekić makes the point that the current drive for self check outs creates a dynamic that makes it more profitable to screw over workers…

To boost profits even further, supermarkets now want to ‘steal’ our privacy with AI surveillance

The rise of self-scanning checkouts in supermarkets has a side effect: one in three loyal customers turns into petty thieves. According to scientists at the University of Leicester, this is because shops with self-scanning checkouts give customers ready-made excuses to take away merchandise without paying, and provoke behaviour that allows the self-scanning customers to ‘neutralise’ their guilt. A forgotten scan here, an accusing finger pointing at a faltering barcode there – these are small acts that add up to a dance of theft, while customers can delude themselves that it is ‘pay in kind’ for having to scan far too expensive groceries themselves.

The irony? Supermarkets keep installing self-scanning checkouts. Why? Because it pays off. In an industry where staff costs are skyrocketing, every saving is a step towards profit maximisation. And what turns out? The kleptomaniac customer is paradoxically cheaper than a cashier. So shoplifting, once a criminal and morally reprehensible act, becomes a profitable part of the revenue model.

To reduce theft somewhat, customers are automatically punished for ‘bad’ shopping behaviour. It is reminiscent of a penal colony: anyone who, according to the unfathomable algorithm, walks ‘too slowly’ through the aisles or stays somewhere ‘too long’ is met at the self-scanning checkout, forced to undergo a mandatory check and empty their bags. To prevent customers from getting fed up with this inhuman treatment and returning to the expensive friendly cashiers, traditional checkouts are understaffed, creating long queues. Thus, self-scanning becomes an ‘attractive’ alternative. By opting for self-scanning, even more staff can be laid off and queues at traditional checkouts remain long, further reinforcing the system of profit maximisation through control and distrust. This paradoxically awakens in even more people a dancing petty thief.

Theft is illegal and cannot be condoned, and in this case it is also a conscious business choice. And the business model works: in the Netherlands, shoplifting rose to record levels last year. Some chains, like Vomar, are putting their self-scanning experiments on hold, while others, like Ahold, admit that self-scanning thefts are profitable and made record profits last year.

And so self-scanning checkouts and kleptomaniacs lead to less work and more profit for the supermarket, and paradoxically to more work for the already overburdened police. This has also caught the eye of D66 MP Joost Sneller, according to whom the police have become the “security of the wholesale retail sector” at taxpayers’ expense, who raised parliamentary questions about this last Wednesday.

The supermarket industry is already feeling the pinch and thinking about solutions. Retail expert Eelco Hos has a better idea than bringing back the expensive cashier to curb customers’ kleptomania: more cameras, image recognition and artificial intelligence ‘that flawlessly monitor which products a customer leaves a shop with’. He says it could also be ‘more repressive’: automatically taking photos of customers who forget to scan a product and forwarding those photos to staff who can open the hunt for the customer. He also knows one retailer who has already applied this.

…so the supermarkets screw over workers by bringing in self check outs which benefit the supermarket and to weed out thieves we all have to be filmed and that data then mined.

If we are apathetic enough to allow the supermarket duopoly to form in the first place, we are stupid enough to give them mass surveillance powers.

Thanks for nothing Commerce Commission!

I wrote a poem.

Ode to Countdown as you dump my loyalty card 

Ode to Countdown.

I fucking hate you.

I hate your market dominance.

I hate your duopoly molestation of capitalism.

I hate your specials that are never special.

I just expect to get screwed over by you.

Like a toxic Ex.

I hate your bullshit new loyalty card.

Why would  I allow you onto my phone?

I never liked you being in my wallet!

I’m not signing up to your shitty loyalty spy-ware.

I will continue to loath you as you keep trying to tempt me with lower prices available only on your spy-ware app.

I will continue to refuse and make some middle management market interaction analyst fret.

I hate you Countdown.

PS – Changing your name to Woolworths won’t make me loath you less.