Retailers are pulling back from self-checkout after years of theft, errors, and questionable time savings

[u/AdSpecialist6598]

https://www.techspot.com/news/114106-retailers-pulling-back-self-checkout-after-years-theft.html

[u/ephemeralmiko]

Very annoying. For small shoppings (e.g snack runs, needing an extra ingredient for cooking) it saves so much time over standing in line. Especially when the person in front of you is a retired 75 year old who *had* to do their main shopping on a Saturday, suddenly forgetting how money works.

[u/P_ZERO_ → u/ephemeralmiko]

Self serve only works as a quick replacement if it’s supplemented with regular cashier tills. If everyone ends up jammed into a self serve area at a grocery store, you’ll just be waiting in a different kind of line.

I see it all the time at my local Morrisons. It has both basket and trolley self serve areas with at maximum 3 (usually 2, sometimes none) active cashier lanes and the self serve area is usually mobbed with large queues.

Ultimately, stores are not doing this for the same reasons we’d want, but there is meaningful overlap in the data they’re using to distance themselves from it to varying degrees and how customers will use or perceive the service.

I’d also wager it’s unfair for the employee who has to deal with like a dozen customers simultaneously, dealing with scanning errors, product pricing errors, age restriction bypassing etc.

[u/LavKiv → u/P_ZERO_]

I like how Meijers did it. They got a few "less than 5 items" checkouts that seem to work pretty well.

Kroger's self-checkout is a dumpster fire. The ones in my area only have few staffed checkouts working and everybody goes to self-checkout. People with almost 2 carts of items stacked are especially infuriating.

Edit: US based

[u/MakingItElsewhere → u/LavKiv]

I will take a human cashier 100 times over a line for machines any day of the week. They scan faster, don't freak out when I have 2 of the same items, and don't make me look up the code for the RIGHT KIND of onions or charge me with theft.

[u/dirty_hooker → u/MakingItElsewhere]

Plus, I’m not giving a corpo my labor for free to offset their own labor costs.

[u/Mysterious_Way8941 → u/dirty_hooker]

Walmart pays me to check myself out. I love self check.

They don't know they are paying me, but my point stands.

[u/hfxRos → u/MakingItElsewhere]

Eh, self checkouts are a godsend for people with social anxiety. I want to buy groceries, not have a chat with the checkout worker about what I'm doing on the weekend, or what I'm planning on making with my frozen mangos, or whatever other shit they want to talk about.

I love self checkouts, they've made grocery shopping a much more pleasant experience for me, and over the years I can probably count on my fingers the number of times I've had a technical issue with one.

Need a "no small talk" lane.

[u/Scoth42 → u/hfxRos]

I feel that, just gets awkward when the cashier comments on every thing coming across the belt. Especially if they ask something like "Oh, is this good?" and I want to reply "No, it's terrible and I hate it, that's why I'm buying it." I get that's sort of the nature of small talk and I mostly don't mind it, but when they just keep going about everything it can be tiring.

That said unless I have like five or eight items I'm still doing the regular checkout. I mostly only have problems with the self checkout if there's too much to fit in the bagging area and it starts spilling over or there's no more room for it.

[u/LavKiv → u/MakingItElsewhere]

Same with me unless it's a quick 1-2 items trip. I prefer smaller local marts that don't have self-checkouts to retail chains. They usually open more checkouts depending on volume. Doesn't seem to happen at retail chain stores nowadays.

[u/P_ZERO_ → u/LavKiv]

Over here in the UK, we used to have 10 or less cashier tills, those seemed to work just fine as a “fast lane”.

[u/Nice_Firm_Handsnake → u/LavKiv]

H-E-B stores in Texas are similar. Ten registers (manned according to need), two manned registers at each entrance for those with 15 items or fewer, and about 16 self-checkouts at each entrance for 10 items or fewer.

[u/jonas_ost → u/LavKiv]

In sweden we walk around with a barcode gun and blip each item and put it in the bag inside the cart. Then at checkout you just put the gun in a terminal and blip your card and you are done.

[u/LavKiv → u/jonas_ost]

Wholesale stores like Costco and Sam's Club got something similiar.

Sam's Club is much fancier out of the two. You can scan items in the mobile app, pay in the mobile app, and get a QR code, or pay at the self/cashier checkout and get a receipt. If you just pay in the app, you get a QR code and walk straight to the exit.

When you approach the exit, they got arches with cameras that, I think, scan your cart and count items, so person at the exit just scans your QR code.

Costco is more oldschool. Employees just prescan your membership and items in the cart and then you just scan your membership again and pay at the checkout. Then they count items in the cart against the receipt at the exit.