The latest retail crime figures by industry body the British Retail Consortium (BRC) shows that violence against retail workers is on the increase.
Despite rising investment in crime prevention in the sector violence against staff rose by 17%. A huge £960 million has been spent on tackling the issue, a rise of 78% from 2002.
Verbal abuse of staff more than doubled by 109% and threats to staff soared by 161%.
The overall total losses from retail crime, however, fell by £700m to £1bn, down from £1.7bn in 2002m the survey shows.
BRC director general Kevin Hawkins said: “The visible cost of crime showed a considerable and welcome fall. However, the hidden cost of crime – the emotional and business viability impact of violence towards staff – has shown a serious and worrying rise. Retail crime is not victimless. Reducing these figures and the terrible unseen cost of this type of crime is a priority for the industry.
“The way forward is to ensure the Government and police take retail crime seriously and for the industry to continue play a substantial role in a wide range of initiatives to fight crime and make our communities safer and better places,” he said.
One Response
A great deal is caused when customers return faulty goods!
As a former retailer, I have experienced and observed a fair amount of verbal abuse and violent behaviour in the high street. Surprisingly a great deal of abusive behaviour occurs when customer returns faulty merchandise. Nobody likes returning a faulty product and people wind themselves up considerably on the way to the store. When they are met by defensive sales persons, who treat every return with suspicion and every customer as a crook, tempers do flair up. Many weak ineffective retail managers leave the handling of returns to untrained, unskilled and unauthorised assistants. Much of the arguments are about ‘rights’. The European directive on warranties was meant to clarify who had what rights and to some extent it does. But many retail organisations have interpreted the law to suit their own requirements and make managers adhere to inflexible, often unfair procedures. I have personally seen a kettle being thrown at a Comet assistant (not manager) because the procedures states ‘repair only after 30 days of purchase’. If retail organisations gave managers fair and flexible returns procedure, trained the managers in handling difficult customers, I believe the amount of verbal abuse in the high street would reduce. In the survey, was any analysis conducted on the causes of violence or violent behaviour? I bet a surprising amount of instances occurred when faulty merchandise was being returned.