HD to require tool activation before use

[Jersey Drew]

Air tools will rule again!!

 

[The Cobbler]

I will keep all of my old corded & pneumatic tools .

 

[gatewaysysop]

I feel like the "march of progress" in the consumer world is to turn goods into services. I don't like that.

This will be reverse-engineered and neutralized within a week. Meanwhile everyone else gets to pay more for a less reliable tool.

Couldn't agree more.

I will keep all of my old corded & pneumatic tools .

I have nothing against cordless tools, but I will admit to having a soft spot for my corded drills and even a corded 1/2" impact that my old man gave me when he packed up his shop and moved out of state. They're all keepers.

 

[neophyte]

In the old days, to prevent theft, tools were kept behind the counter, with a tool board, or display case, or countertop demo unit, and when you wanted the item, the clerk would grab the item from a drawer or shelf behind the display case or counter and drop it off with the guy at the register.
If you needed a bunch of the item, someone would go to the back to get more.
Small really cheap stuff might be on the shelves, and really big stuff, but most other stuff had to be asked for.
Some stores like this still exist, particularly for specialty tools, but also some old fashion hardware stores.
It usually works and the stores usually have a wider variety of certain types of tools like pliers.

As for a subscription model, Hilti sort of already does that.
Software in many cases is doing it, and it’s annoying(Adobe).
As far as theft goes, stores are scared shitless by internal theft, possibly more than shoplifters.

 

[FMB4]

Internal thieves can usually be stopped if noticed during the act. Shoplifters with loaded carts and flatbeds can not, in many cases, be stopped (again, this is due store policies of not allowing employees to interfer with shoplifters).

 

[Al Borland]

I don't think this will really solve much. It will be a minor inconvenience for like 2 weeks until the thieves either:

A) Figure out a workaround or just simply brute force their way in and hack the device electronically
B) China just creates a cheap clone switch/driver assembly for $10 that takes a few minutes to swap.

I'm on board with the others that think this will lead to more nefarious things. You want more torque on your impact? Gotta pay the $10 unlock fee. You want to use the LED light without turning the tool itself on? That's $5 please. I suspect the end-game will really be a subscription service. The tool and batteries will be near free or cheap, and you'll pay a monthly fee for the right to use them. Stop paying and the tool and batteries stop working. I'm sure the Milwaukee Legion will come up with a way to spin how paying $15/month for the rest of your life to use your tools is somehow better than buying them

Get Vaccinated or your tools stop working...
Commit a "ThoughtCrime" and your sawzall lops your arm off... "DoublePlusUngood!!!"
Time to mess with some "Conspiracy Theorists"...

 

[Norcal]

Apparently some power tools now need to be activated at the register or no workie

ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

The $950 limit is Statewide not just for SF, there are issues there that just make it worse for retailers, it has led to a lot of products being behind locked doors & having to ask for products across the State. This just adds to the cost of goods for honest people, companies do not stay in business by not passing costs on to customers, "shrinkage" to taxes.

 

[Meursault74]

I think this is already being discussed here:

HD to require tool activation before use

Sounds like HD is going to require electrical tools to be "activated" at the checkout before they will be able to be used. Interesting idea. Allegedly it will reduce theft from the store (and possibly the jobsite) but I can see this opening a whole can of worms if they can turn the tools off...

www.garagejournal.com

 

[dnschmidt]

I think this is much ado about nothing. The way I look at it what's the difference between this and them scanning something over whatever it is they scan, you know that little white plastic sticker, so that the alarm doesn't go off. If they would hire some security that should help solve the problem as well as somebody pointing a 9mm Glock at me would make me think twice but then again I'm not a tweeker.

 

[LXCam]

You say that now Denny, but just you wait till your social credit score only allows you the slow speed setting on your screw gun.

You’ll be singing a different tune buddy.

 

[KnurledNut]

We tackled one lady and had to drag her back in the store. She never came back to my knowledge. Of course, she was incarcerated for a while.
That seemed to work wonders...

 

[zendriver]

This will be reverse-engineered and neutralized within a week.

Yep, this guy will do it.

 

[bumperbozo]

you have to activate a credit card before you use it. but in this case, by reducing store shrink, this extra step could reduce the price you have to pay for the tool by like 20%. I just spent $600 on a rotary hammer. Would I have spent 2 minutes entering a code on a website to save $120 bucks? hell yeah i would have.

 

[sabinoerc]

I don’t know anything about the specifics of what they are thinking of implementing but generally there is a direct relationship between how easy something like this is to defeat/hack and the complexity of the solution. That is, if something at point of sale has to communicate with some logic in the tool to say it’s ok to turn on, the strength of that step is the problem. Make it too robust, hard to hack and you end up bricking tools or not being able to get tools to be enabled. Make it less complex and it’s easier to hack. We live with this all the time with credit cards, mobile phones, logging into websites - but it’s one thing to call for a new credit card when the card/authentication gets screwed up vs a tool not working due to something failing related to the security/authentication and/or logic in the tool to enable it working. Sounds like some tech company sales pitch to HF management as a silver bullet vs investing in more traditional retail theft control.

 

[dnschmidt]

You say that now Denny, but just you wait till your social credit score only allows you the slow speed setting on your screw gun.

You’ll be singing a different tune buddy.

Cam my SOCIAL credit score is likely zero as I hate people. What would you expect from a person who spent his entire career in a Class 1 cleanroom dressed in a bunny suit. However, my MONEY credit score is far higher which I think they will find more important.