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Subscribe to RSSFrom Maryland to California, Tide detergent is becoming liquid gold to criminals, who are stealing the bright orange bottles and using them as a form of currency on the streets. KNBC-TV's Robert Kovacik reports.
At $15 a pop for Tide in the 100 fluid ounce container, it's not surprising thieves across the country are scrubbing store shelves clean of the laundry detergent.
Earlier this month, a Tide robber from St. Paul stole $25,000 worth of the detergent and was sentenced to 90 days in jail and five years probation, according to a story in the Pioneer Press.
And a Maryland supermarket surveillance camera caught a suspect loading his car with 15 to 20 bottles of Tide, hauling them away, and then an accomplice selling the detergent to a nail salon. The footage was aired on an NBC affiliate in Los Angeles, which reported that national retailers such as CVS were taking extra security measures to keep “Tide tied down.”
And it’s not just Tide, the NBC story found. A spokesperson for Ralphs Grocery Stores, a California supermarket chain, said the thieves are also stealing Red Bull and shampoo.
It’s not surprising that thieves are expanding their target beyond cars and jewelry these days. The cost of many consumer goods has been steadily escalating in recent years.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, prices for household cleaning products spiked 4.8 percent in 2009, the highest percentage increase since 2002; and prices have only trailed off slightly since.
Out of the entire retail industry, grocery stores and supermarkets have been the hardest hit by theft in recent years, said Joseph LaRocca, senior advisor/asset protection with the National Retail Federation. In 2001, the grocery and supermarket segment reported 1.42 percent of its merchandise was stolen annually. In 2010, the sector reported losing 3.12 percent of its products.
Higher prices can lead some consumers to buy such products via illegal means, creating a market for stolen goods, said Michael Garry, technology and operations editor for Supermarket News.
For the past five years, organized retail crime rings have been on the rise in the supermarket industry, he explained. They steal from mass merchants and resell the goods at big discounts on the Internet, at flea markets, and on street corners. “It’s a billion dollar black market out there.”
Some law enforcement officials have tied the uptick in Tide thefts to the drug trade. One story by The Daily on Monday quoted Oregon police who said drug addicts were "feeding their habit" with the proceeds.
Big chains such as Safeway and Target, Supermarket News' Garry said, now have dedicated staff that deal with the issue and work with law enforcement in an effort to crack the rings. Big cases have been solved in Florida and Maryland, he added, where merchandise worth millions of dollars was recovered.
The products the rings go after have traditionally included infant formula, razor blades, over the counter medicines, electric toothbrushes and batteries. But Tide is new to the rip-off roster.
No one at Procter & Gamble, the makers of Tide, could be immediately reached to comment on the rash of Tide thefts. A story in The Consumerist quoted a company spokesperson as saying, "We don't have any insight as to why the phenomenon is happening, but it is certainly unfortunate."
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Tide has been a perennial top choice by Consumer's Reports for years. Seem to be very knowlegeable thieves. Unfortunately their thievery will raise prices for honest consumers who will pay for the added cost of grocery store overhead to cover the losses. A bummer.
What does the Fed Chairman think is going to happen when he keeps printing worthless dollars and tries to inflate this economy out of it's misery. People are really hurting out there and they ARE going to turn to stealing just to survive.
I really hope this chairman does his own shopping for groceries, pays for his own gas, health insurance, and for education to find out how expensive things have gotten since he started the printing presses. Than again he is part of the "elite" and wouldn't understand what we are going through.
Core inflation rate is low. Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.
Maybe this should be a clue to the makers of Tide to lower the freaking price.
Satanick,
How do you lower prices if all your costs keep going up?
My bet is that inflation is going to be like global warming: when it starts, raising the interest rates will be too little, to late. Duh-oh! The market no longer matches the old models, so what do YOU expect?
How are people supposed to live when the safety net runs out?
@tontosh: You think people are stealing this to "survive"? This isn't some mom stealing some detergent. These are professional groups of thieves working in teams.
People living on nothing but food stamps are getting desperate.
Food stamps only covers, well..., food !
No toilet paper, no laundry soap, no toothpaste.
.
The rise of prices has nothing to do with inflation! It is to keep record profits, regular profits are not good enough these days. No multimillion dollar bonus if you only make a profit.
This sounds like a planted story by P&G marketing - to get the Tide name in the news. Tide is not significantly different than any other laundry soap. The main ingredients are the same in all laundry soaps.
And - what are the thieves doing with the stolen Tide? How does one fence soap? Sell it door-to-door? I don't think so.
This entire story has a bad 'smell'.
Costco keeps their theft costs to a bare minimum since the customer has to show a receipt before leaving the store. I suggest supermarkets take on this practice.
Flea Market items.
Tide is an excellent product. Unfortunately, Procter & Gamble know that and they have been playing "games" for years. They will change viscosity calling it double strength before gradually reducing it back where it was before. Then, they play the quantity game with ever-shrinking bottle sizes and apparently "stable prices".
The same goes for bottles of dishwashing liquid. A few years back, a small bottle was 12 ounces .... then 11 ounces, then 10 ..... now 9. So where is the home office for these guys ? Where is the greed and deception headquartered ??
All these mainstream detergent products are terrible for the environment. Our household uses only Melaleuca natural products.
P&G pulls a 50% GM on sales and has an EBIT of roughly 15% (12%-19% is their range over the past several quarters). This is a very good return in today's market. How many of you have this kind of return on your bank savings? Me neither.
I say they have room to lower their price a little, still make plenty of money and help lessen the pressure on the thievery.
At the same time, we are the ones who create the demand and therefore we are the ones willing to pay the price. If we switch to a different brand, they will lower their price to increase demand (typical supply/demand laws at work).
What shall it be?
The same price for less merchandise is rampant in all industry, not just soaps. The funniest is Kisses, you can now get them blown full of air bubbles so that you get about 10% less chocolate for the same money. Flour and sugar used to come in 5 lb. bags that have suddenly become 4 lb containers. This behavior is across the board. Sell a smaller quantity for the same price so that inflation and costs seem to be stable. However if you factor in the shift in quantity the inflation rate is at, or above, 10% annually now.
Gimme a break!
Tide - the preferred detergent of money launderers.
mozzie-600 Agree!
Or this one.
http://methodlaundry.com/
U do realize food stamps can easily be converted into cash at a discount on the black market.
Oh, boohoo! They have to actually PAY for their own paper products, which most do with the welfare checks they get anyway.
What about those of us who are trying to pay our own way? The rest of us have to EARN our money to pay for ALL of our groceries.
And why do these companies think they have to keep adding more "scents" to their products? It's not only bad for the environment, but for people with allergies and asthma. The only Tide I can't find anymore, is the one that has no additives, like bleach, downy, fabreeze, etc.
I don't want a "rainy day", "ocean breeze", "spring flower". I want PLAIN, UNSCENTED, Tide.
Story shows how far down the economic ladder the U.S. has fallen.
If people have to steal basic consumer staples, that should tell you something about this country.
It looks like these thieves are really cleaning up.
[rim shot]
He'll be here all week (and next week)....tip your waitresses & bartenders...
I have never understood what is special about Tide which would justify wasting money on it. Whoever figured out a way to get people to pay double for laundry detergent is a genius.
What is special about tide is it cleans better, & you only need to use a small amount because it has way more cleaning agents than the bargain brands.(use way less than what the directions say).
When people see Tide on a NASCAR race car, they will gladly pay double to support the driving team. I use Publix laundry detergent.
Agreed. Tide does not have "more cleaning agents", only more perfume! Time after time when I hear Tide users complaining about other detergents, they always say: "My clothes don't smell as clean." Uh, that would be PERFUME, not fresh, clean clothing. Clean clothes don't have a smell. Personally, the heavy scent of Tide makes me feel ill. My MIL uses it and every time we visit I bring my own pillow because otherwise I can't sleep because of the strong scent of it on the sheets.
It's likely the same people who get people to spend $4.99 for bottled tap water.
It may clean more, but it pollutes more too. I won't touch the stuff.
Tide makes me itchy... I prefer my homemade laundry detergent- 1.00 for two gallons (or one gallon concentrated). And I can leave it unscented, or add a bit of essential oil if I want that 'fresh' scent.
The bargain ones leave the old sweat in my gym clothes. It's my sweat but I don't want to hold on to it, work out after work out.
Suffice to say, many of them made for a clean getaway.
Tide doesn't need to cost $15, we pay for every single one of those commercials selling Tide, by buying Tide. If they stopped paying millions of dollars to media companies for advertisements (magazines and TV) the price would be a lot lower, it's not like they are paying off the machines to make it, those have been in place for years, it's not like they are paying people to put it into boxes, machines do that, machines do most of the work. There are some enzymes and a few other ingredients in a box of Tide, not enough to warrant $15.
The reason Tide costs $15, is because people will pay it, period. Stop buying Tide, and watch the price drop to a sane level. P&G could care less about supermarket theft, now if it was disappearing off THEIR dock, they would.
When you stop paying $15, they'll stop charging you $15.
Tide doesn't work any better than the Costco brand and I can get 3 times as much product for the price.
When I was a child, most every detergent my babysitter used, either made me itch, or feel like pins and needles were poking me all over. When she used Tide, I had no problems. So when I grew up, Tide is what I stayed with.
Maybe I've outgrown the sensitivity. Maybe not. But if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I don't get it. Why not just steal the drugs? That way you don't have to unload the goods, and chances are a drug dealer isn't going to report a drug theft to the cops.
A super market worker is much less likely to shoot you for stealing a bottle of Tide than stealing a rock of crack from a drug dealer.
And, I've never seen crack or meth on the shelves of Wal-Mart.
No, a dealer won't report it to the cops. He'll just kill you.
He won't report it to the cops he'll just kill you and your family.
They tie everything they can to the drug war to justify its continued existence.
I think the punishment is a lot harsher if you get caught stealing the drugs. ie. bang, bang
The price of everything is tied to the price of oil. It takes oil to run our harvesters to gather our food. It takes oil to run our factories. It takes oil to drive our trucks to bring our goods to market. It takes oil to light the stores where we buy our goods. This will bring everything to a price level where it pays to steal it. The price of everything will be going to unbelievable amounts after this summer due to the recent oil company price hikes and profiteering. The only thing that isn't rising is wages. We're heading into a time when almost everybody will have to steal just to survive. It all comes down to oil. We're about to hit $5.00 a gallon for gas. In Venezuela the price is about $0.12 a gallon. What would the price of TIDE be if gas here was $0.12 a gallon? Check YouTube "Oil. Nationalize the industry". Get involved or be a victim.
In Venezuela the government subsidizes the price of gas. Their government spent $2.5 billion last year to keep the prices low. Here, our gasoline is taxed to support the upkeep of our "excellent" roads. It varies depending on the state, but the average is about fifty cents per gallon.
Definitely, oil drives prices
But that doesn't explain why Tide is so much more than other laundry detergents. Must be more of a demand issue.
Do they get high on Tide?
They have no suspects because they always make a clean getaway.
These are very Tidy crooks.
And SQUEAKY CLEAN!!
They have to spin cycle the product through the black market.
Maybe they're using Tide to launder money?
So what did the drug bust of $30 million worth of pot did to anyone's bottom line? where is the $30 million of funny money going to now? Put them useless DEA agents to stand next to a rack of Tide in the grocery store, at least there is some real money in the economy they're safeguarding there.
It's gonna get a lot worse thanks to helicopter ben and the banksters. Keep a close eye on debit/credit card theft also. People are really hurting financially.
If I were do steal something to resell it would be Printer Ink cartridges. They are so over priced!
Amen...it's pretty sad when it's cheaper to buy a whole new printer that comes with ink cartridges, than it is to replace the cartridges in your existing printer.
Fed's economic theory:
"A rising "Tide " lifts all boats"!
The drug culture epidemic has resulted in rampant theft. And those funds go to narco gangs that spread death and terror. At some point it will become impossible to have a civil society made up of druggies who steal or commit any crime to sustain their addictions. They have no interest in a better world.
Or we could stop imprisoning people for addictions and personal choices, treat the addicts and let the recreational users be free.
First they bitched when people were dealing drugs. Some people steal, possibly they also do drugs, but not always. This does take the cake, but for years we've been hearing about all kinds of theft.
I havent bought laundry soap in months. I have learned how to make my own and for the cost of tide I can made 10 gallons of laundry soap. It is better than tide the people of the town I am from have a lot of oil field workers and they swear by this soap recipe.
sorry typo "I can make 10 gallons of laundry soap"
Could you share the recipe?
The one I use is 1/3 bar fels naptha laundry soap (some use 1 bar ivory instead), grated and melted into 1/2 gallon of water. I just use my big stainless steel pot, on medium heat. Then add 1/2 cup each borax and washing soda (not baking soda), heat and mix till dissolved. mix in 1/2 gallon cool water, mix occasionally while it cools. If you want regular strength, mix with another gallon of water- make sure your container is at least 3 gallons- I've heard of using a 5 gallon bucket. Concentrated might get lumpy, you can shake or stirr it to mix. If you want unscented, stop there, or you can add approx 10-20 drops of your choice essential oil (not perfume oil). 1/2 cup per load regular or 1/4 cup concentrated. I just refill old laundry detergent bottles, makes the shake-before-use easier. :)
Okay, let's figure this. Prices from Amazon:
Fels Naptha Laundry Soap $4.37 a bar, 1/3 bar = $1.46
4 ounces Borax $11.99 for 76 oz = $0.63
4 ounces Washing Soda 8.90 for 55 ounces $0.65
Essential Oils, estimating at $0.50
Total cost, not including electricity for heating and water = $3.24
Plus time to make it, pour it into the recyled old laundry bottle, and clean up after making it, plus the extra time and effort required to shake it up before every use - 1 hour a gallon @ very conservative cost of my time - $12.00
Total cost $15.24 for 32 uses = $0.48 per load
Tide - approximately $16.75 (not on sale, not at discount store, full retail price) for 64 uses = $0.26 per load
Tide sale price or purchased at Sam's Club $11.99 for 64 uses - $0.19 per load
Doesn't seem to be very cost effective. Am I missing something???
ok, Amazon's prices are waaaay out of whack for basic cleaning products... I pay just over 1.00 for the fels naptha at my grocery store, borax and washing soda sound like they're going for at least twice what I pay. As I don't take time off my 40 hr/wk job to make it, I don't factor in a time cost, just like I don't factor in time to the cost when I'm budgeting for a dinner made from scratch (Although I often do dishes or something while making the detergent, so it's very little time dedicated to just that). For someone who has free time and wants to save some cash, it's a good deal.
As for your calculations- my recipe makes 2 gallons of half-cup uses, or one gallon of quarter-cup uses- total of 64 uses.
I was just about to write something very similar about the prices, inmissouri. Though we just melt the grated soap with water to cover. mix a cup of washing soda and 1/2 cup of borax in to clean 5 gallon bucket. pour soap in the five gallon bucket mix well. keep adding really hot water till half way keep mixing. and warm water till mix and 5 gallon bucket is full. cover and let sit over night. stir in morning and as needed. I tend to buy all natural soap and discount places or on sale and just stock up. it is about a 1.00 worth of soap for a 5 gallon bucket. I find I do more than 64 loads with the stuff. and I am not put plastic bottle after plastic bottle in the garbage.
How do you make laundry soap? Can you message me back, please.
Do what I do and use coupons in conjunction with sales and the Tide will be free; no stealing necessary. Idiots.
But stealing is just so much easier......
Looks like the Wall St occupiers decided to do laundry. I also heard razors and deodorant are big shoplifting items.
Hey genius, people steal things that have value and can easily be sold for cash. razors, Tide, deodorant all fit that bill. As does jewelry. Do only the 1% steal jewelry?
Is that the voice of experience? Jobs have value. Why don't the lazy, smelly occupiers steal one of them? They are now paying $85 to $100 an hour for piping, electrical and mechanical designers with competer-aided design experience. You don't even need a college degree.
Maybe if Tide lowered the cost people could afford it and not have to steal it. I always bought Tide, but then it go so expensive I couldn't justify the cost. It's good, but it isn't THAT good.
Well, you can at least feel good about the fact that Procter & Gamble pays their production employees really, REALLY well. U.S. jobs at a nice living wage, so support them if you can afford to.
Some how, some way the Repubs will blame Obama for this.
No, the dems are still blaming Bush. Obama, the annointed one can do no wrong and long after he is gone all the negative things that happened during his admin. will still be Bush's fault.
"Out of the entire retail industry, grocery stores and supermarkets have been the hardest hit by theft in recent years, said Joseph LaRocca, senior advisor/asset protection with the National Retail Federation."
The only thing that makes this statement true, is the first 6 words. If not for those words, the hardest hit by theft, would be the people being stolen from by the retail industry along with the oil industry.
P&G took advantage of high fuel prices several years ago to really jack up its prices claiming it had to do so because gasoline was so expensive. It's disingenuous of P&G to pretend like it doesn't understand why its products are popular with thieves.
What kills me is P&G still gives out 25-cent coupons for things like Bounty which can easily cost $15-$20 for a multi-pack. Gee, P&G, how generous.
I'd like to know how the price of Tide laundry detergent and Bounty paper towels has gone up over the past 10-20 years and how it compares to the supposed rate of inflation. Come on consumer reporters, give us the dirt on how prices for the most popular consumer items have changed over time.
Everybody took advantage of high fuel prices to stick it to the consumers, not just P&G.
In my post above, I mentioned that P&G pays their production employees exceptionally well (approximately $20 an hour for a machine operator with only 1 - 2 years of service with the company). Presumably that high pay scale goes all the way up the ladder, but I was only enlightened as to what hourly employees made. The plant that I worked at employed approximately 200 people. Roughly 100 of those were production workers and the rest of the staff was management.
Do the math there and I think it may become apparent as to why Tide costs $15 bucks a bottle.
To clarify, the P&G plant that I worked for did not make Tide.
There a 100's of choices to use other than Tide. Tide loves the publicity but give me a freaking break. I make decent money but will not spend 20 bucks for soap with a 6 dollar bottle will do.
You can't slip 20 jugs of tide in your jacket.. they are breaking in at night? I would think if that is the case there are more attractive items.
Interesting seeing as this is news, right along with another story on this site titled:
"Retail sales post best gain in 5 months"...
Who is stealing from whom?
So are we now going to have to get on a National Registry and show ID to buy Tide detergent?
That's what happened when CRIMINALS were stealing Decongestant pills.
Instead of HAMMERING the CRIMINALS, they screwed over all the LAW ABIDING citizens.
Now it's easier to buy 1,000 rounds of ammunition than it is to get something for my allergies.
I'm glad I'm not the only person who feels that way about buying Sudafed.
It's comming folks, just like in Russia long lines for detergent.