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.
Thank you for the advise. From now on as payment for facial recognition at Pak ‘n Fucku all my vegetables shall be recorded as potatoes and all my fruit as those cheap bruised apples on special.
I reckon supermarkets have been chosen, rather than supermarkets driving the need to mass surveil us all, by whomever has the power to mass surveil us all (Govt most likely) in order to help normalize surveillance so that it can get to a level of surveillance that if we are told from the get go what it will lead to, that we may rally against. Personally, I think that everyone outside of the tiny sliver of political curious souls, don’t give a flying rats about surveillance so this is an easy peasy sell, even if they were upfront about the level of surveillance that they may prefer to have over us. Of course, this is a win win for supermarkets whether they drive this or not.
Otherwise all workplaces screw over workers if they can get away with it. The problem is why we no longer get this. Why don’t we get that Uber n co exists only because they skimp on worker pay/conditions. Why don’t we get that using self-check outs leads to job losses. Why don’t we get that these types of things eventually hits us all!! Of course, the convenience factor here has a big influence on our actions, but I reckon that the demolition job on Unions, and the influence and information that they disseminated, let alone the actions they drove, has really been a significant factor as to why we are ambivalent about so many things that have the very real potential to be against our best interests both now but even more so in the future.
The supermarket duopoly dominance did not appear overnight. It began with the ComCom approving the takeover of Foodtown by Woolworths.
Both of the players have been slowly and carefully adding to their market dominance, while the Commerce Commission has been asleep at the wheel..
Com-Com for short, but we fear for far too long, for us Virginias.
True and they’ve had a long time to practise legal extraction of profits.
‘ First dog on the moon’ answers this question. Tweed and Bechamel Foreclaws, shareholders, live in glass towers miles away from real life and they have ‘friends ‘ in equally high places.
” It’s funny how the only people who can do something about the cost of living crisis are not at all affected by the cost of living crisis.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2024/aug/28/huge-profits-for-the-supermarket-duopoly-bechamel-our-shares-are-up-again
It is quite likely that supermarkets will make agreeing to be snooped on a condition of entry in future–and they will just do it anyway of course as per car number plate snapping.
That old movie “Minority report” where people are scanned for their history and preferences when entering a retail store is nearly here. In the US apparently digital pricing LEDs will have cameras and alter the product price by customer live!
I still only use checkouts with real people, but time my visit to minimise the queue. It is a reminder of monopoly power to see the majority of checkouts closed, herding people into self checkout.
My local SI New Word doesn’t have facial recognition. But does have cameras recording licence plates which are filtered for known shop thieves. Thieving will always be a problem where there are many high shelves with stuff lying on them to pick up.
It is viable in a country that is run ethically and people can afford to be ethical and lawful, but this Kiwiland has been unethically creating criminals and that behaviour by being tough on cannabis, giving us 3rd world wages yet offering the well-paid 1st world conditions for the favoured, taxing the poor high as a percentage of post-disposable gross wages, and bringing people from poorer countries to bring our workforce down to a similar level. Thus a great big gap between costs and big returns is the intention, which suits some people just right.
Why should the poor accept their lives being ruled by advantaged people fleecing them, without retaliating out of necessity, or just table-turning. This sort of thinking is no doubt behind Darleen Tana also.
We are a theme park encouraging the degenerate, amoral, hedonistic form of society, with the people clinging to society and its recent but old structure, forming the soft underfoot layer of the novelty active-playway fun toy – the big bouncy castle.
For those looking to skip the self-checkout and support the continued employment of workers, Countdown does do click and collect for orders over $50.
I also heard from someone that you can just lie to Countdown when creating an account, and that they don’t test that the mobile phone number you give them works. In theory, you could create a new account every month.
Thanks for the tip John, hehe
Sooo the trial period for facial recognition tech is over and the supermarkets can install it in their stores now?
Total fucked up if so. Unbelievable.
Let’s not forget how this coalition of chaos and it’s inept leader has created a crisis in health also…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/gps-in-crisis-and-patients-paying-the-price-survey-shows/QLHADOSH6NCYLMRJPQ34LHKJDE/
Wonder how far that tax cut you voted for gets you now?
In the UK self checkout is being phased out.
Different, but similar in terms of being a consultant and finance dept. driven fad to “hot desking” which many workers really detested.
New Zealand is turning into a surveillance police state. Resist.