A German court has fined a 58-year-old man the equivalent of Three Hundred Thousand Dollars for deliberately scanning expensive purchases as cheaper products at the self service checkouts of his local supermarket.
Closer to home similar self service checkout fraud costs Australian retailers over four billion dollars a year.
Professor Larry Neale of the Queensland University of Technology’s business school said that this is a loss Australian businesses are often willing to absorb due to the reduction in labour costs brought about by automation.