{"id":254,"date":"2005-01-22T01:13:41","date_gmt":"2005-01-22T06:13:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=254"},"modified":"2005-01-23T11:35:19","modified_gmt":"2005-01-23T16:35:19","slug":"why-is-that-499-tv-ringing-up-for-099","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=254","title":{"rendered":"Why is that $499 TV ringing up for $0.99?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It appears we now know why Wal-Mart is so gung-ho about replacing the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.howstuffworks.com\/upc.htm\">barcode<\/a> with new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/softwaretopics\/erp\/story\/0,10801,82155,00.html\">RFID technology<\/a>: bar code fraud.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nAccording to an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eweek.com\/article2\/0,1759,1748274,00.asp\">article in eWeek<\/a>, someone discovered that if you buy a low-priced item, scan the UPC symbol and then print out multiple copies, pasting them over any high-dollar items in the store, those big-ticket ticket items will of course ring up the low-value price of the spoofed item.<\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t rocket science; anyone with a brain and the motivation could have figured this out a long time ago.  However i imagine most people hadn&#8217;t tried because they (like I) had assumed that the fraud would be easily detected by the cashier ringing up the items.<\/p>\n<p>Well, not so at Wal-Mart.  The UPC fraud ring that targeted the chain guessed correctly that cashiers wouldn&#8217;t bother to notice.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s appalling about this is that there is one check against the UPC system that would normally work: the human element.  Shouldn&#8217;t cashiers find it a little suspicious when a top-brand HDTV rings up as a 99-cent box of Q-tips, or perhaps be attentive to the fact that, whoops, this piece of paper with a fake barcode just <em>happens<\/em> to be taped over the real thing?  Even worse, the article mentions that the scam was completed when the person &#8220;authorizing&#8221; his or her own discount would go to the service desk and return the item, getting a refund for the FULL price of the item.  Shouldn&#8217;t eyebrows have been raised when someone hands in a receipt for that big-ticket TV they somehow paid $.99 for, expecting to get back the $399 full price for it?<\/p>\n<p>This, my friends, is the price of hiring unskilled people at rock bottom wages, and not bothering to value or train them: they start to<em> not care<\/em>.  Or worse, they&#8217;re just <strong>that<\/strong> braindead.  It&#8217;s just sad that instead of addressing the problem, at least raising wages a bit to attract more competent people (or even motivate those who are working for them now to be a little more attentive), Wal-Mart would rather spend its money on a schnazzy, high-tech system that they expect should be idiot proof.<\/p>\n<p>And by the way, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.com.com\/RFID+tags+become+hacker+target\/2100-1029_3-5287912.html\">RFID can be foiled<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>eWeek reveals why Wal-Mart might be so gung-ho about RFID technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets-widgits-and-whatzits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}