Retail anti-theft devices are traditionally considered for use on merchandise and rightfully so, but a recent incident involving the loss of keys at the store where my daughter works brought to mind another use of Alpha Cable Locks. As a Loss Prevention Manager for many years, I had to deal with a number of situations very similar to the one at my daughter’s location. Manager’s losing store keys, employees losing keys to showcases for specialty areas like electronics or jewelry and even front end supervisors losing keys for registers were not unheard of events. Sometimes the situation involved an employee forgetting they took keys home with them and they would have to return to the store and turn them in. Alpha Security products do stop shoplifting but sometimes we limit ourselves and fail to look at other protections they can provide.
Before I continue I want to tell my readers a little more about Alpha Cable Locks. These are strong, steel cables connected by a durable, plastic housing that contains electronic article surveillance technology. This means that they send out a radio frequency signal that can be picked up by an electronic article surveillance antenna, causing the antenna to activate its’ alarm when a tag is carried into the detection range. The antenna alarm is both very loud and very bright as flashing LED lights warn a breach is taking place. Cable locks can be cinched closed so they are adjustable when applied to products. These retail anti-theft devices come in an Alpha 2 alarm and Alpha 3alarm style giving owners choices in the types of locks he/she is buying. What is the difference in the Alpha 2 Alarm and Alpha 3 alarm Alpha Security products? The 2 alarm Alpha Cable Lock has a tamper alarm that activates if someone attempts to cut a wire and it activates the EAS antennas as described previously. The Alpha 3 Alarm devices contain tamper protection, EAS antenna protection AND they have a self -alarm that sounds from the anti-theft device if it gets carried past the antenna and out the door. There is a lot of protection built into one product!
Returning to the issue of lost keys, store owners and managers may get upset if a set of keys is lost. I have seen people get reprimanded for losing sets of keys but that does nothing to fix the problem created by the loss. It is possible a set of keys gets lost and if found by a criminal outside a store, they would have no idea what the keys go to anyways so no harm is done. Supposing someone finds a set of keys and CAN identify their use, what happens then? For example, I know that there were people who got their hands on detachment keys for anti-theft devices and used them in our store. There were also traveling groups that had stolen cash register keys and traveled up and down the east coast stealing cash from stores that had the same registers. I worked in a store that was hit by one of these groups and we lost a couple of hundred dollars in the process. I can’t recall the number of times I had to call someone from our store that had gone home with a set of department keys and I asked them to return them. Alpha Security retail anti-theft devices like the Alpha Cable Lock could have been attached to key chains and would have activated an alarm if anyone had walked out of the store with a set of keys.
While losing merchandise to theft is frustrating, losing a set of keys puts a lot more at risk than just one or two items. Losing keys puts entire sections of a store at risk, sometimes it is a front end of registers and wrap stands, it may be display cases of locked up jewelry or electronics or even stock rooms and employee office areas. Whatever the situation, stores can prevent keys sets from being lost or stolen by using Alpha 2 Alarm and Alpha 3 Alarm cable locks to keep keys where they belong…in the store.
Need information on Alpha Cable Locks? Give us a call at 1.770.426.0547 now.
