where is this?
I assume nothing is universal after reading this thread and also noting the local Fred Meyer (curse their name) change their SCO all the time. I use it but it’s annoying. I really prefer bagging my own groceries
The store employee does stand inside the corral next to the exit at all times.
Not all machines work the same way, but on the one Wal-Mart uses locally, there is an option to delete the last item right next to it. And the list can be scrolled up/down just like a smartphone.
I doubt if the customer has total control over these functions; there are probably some safeguards in place to avoid abuse, but I haven’t tried to challenge the system. If I need assistance and there’s no clerk nearby, I’m not adverse to waving my arms and yelling for help if necessary.
I steer clear of self-checkouts because I’m afraid I’ll inadvertently miss scan an item, and the store’s surveillance team springs into action. They’re huddled around the monitors, whispering dramatically:
Surveillance Guy 1: “Subject at self-checkout, aisle 3. Suspected Preparation H theft.”
Surveillance Guy 2: “Roger that. Deploy the SWAT team.”
And there I am, sweating bullets, clutching my hemorrhoid cream like it’s a high-stakes negotiation. The SWAT team bursts through the doors, laser sights dancing on my forehead. I raise my trembling hand.
“Sir, step away from the Preparation H. Slowly.”
I just don’t need that kind of aggravation.
Possibly due to theft, or to encourage customers to pay an additional $98 annual Walmart+ membership
When can we expect surge pricing?
I used to use the self checkout, but much less since the two big supermarkets here have started to put the shopper on the screen. There is a camera in the scanner, at head height, and the output from the camera is displayed on the checkout screen, next to the items and prices. So you are forced to watch a blurry and unflattering video feed of your own face as you scan your groceries. That’s just too awkward for me.
Target has a screen that sometimes shows that I’m on camera, but I know that I’m not cheating so I ignore it.
IMO, part of the point of Scan & Go SHOULD be speeding the process up. I use that function, and have STILL had to wait 20 minutes at checkout. I totally support having ONE self-check designated as the functional equivalent of an express lane. “Got your act together enough to have all your stuff scanned? We’ll reward you with a faster way to get your payment done.”
Can’t say I blame you; that sounds like a total pain in the ass
You should be more prepared. What’s Plan G?
(Plan G: get piles… of other stuff.)
Can you explain why it takes longer?
I scan as I shop and it’s no faster or slower than the average shopper who picks up an item and places it in their trolley. Where I win, is that all my shopping is neatly stowed in bags and will not need to be handled again until I take it out at home.
I work in retail finance & analytics. Have for 20+ years. Have looked at scan as you go several times at several supermarket chains.
Scan as you go has a very small but passionate segment of supporters. Hasn’t changed much in 20+ years since this was introduced. I don’t believe any large retailer has cracked 2% adoption, but I haven’t looked in the last seven years.
Scan as you go customers are loyal, affluent and less price sensitive. So supermarkets cater to them. Regular users are more organized about their shopping behavior, know the layout of the store better than the average customer, are less likely to have a service order at deli, meat or seafood counters, etc.
If you forced the average customer to use scan as you go, it would definitely slow them down. This is the #1 reason why 90+% of everyone who tries scan as you go 1-5 times abandons it and never uses it again. It doesn’t help that new users are more likely to get audited, and until you’ve passed a few audits, your chances of being audited remain high. Which of course totally ruins the experience, because it takes forever, and seems like FOREVER to the kind of person who uses scan as you go. But once you’ve been white listed you could go for years without being audited.
To make it work, one does need a “loyalty” card which also allows significant discounts on many items. I cannot accept that my fellow shoppers are any less price-sensitive than anyone else who shops at Tesco. If they were, they would probably be doing their shopping at M&S or Waitrose.
According to “The Grocer” somewhere between 30 and 50% of Tesco shoppers use scan as you shop. This is a big increase from the 15% or so before COVID.
Sorry bob_2. I was being hopelessly US-centric.
We are dumber here on this side of the pond. I still get paper weekly sale circulars from five supermarket chains delivered to my home. Each of them is 8-12 pages, and they drive enough sales from enough people to be worthwhile spending a million a week to produce and distribute for each large regional chain. Say Vons in Southern California.
It’s completely different in the UK and Western Europe. Both in terms of how “digitally engaged” customers are and how expensive labor is compared to the budget of the shopper.
Your supermarket doesn’t have this? I use self-scan and there’s a dedicated section of six self service tills just for self scan customers, plus you can use any other tils (self service and non) so you have more choice of checkout than any other customers in the store. It’s easily the fastest way to shop.
To be fair, I only did it a handful of times (See the high percentage of “tried it, hated it”, so I never got proficient at it.
“Regular” (cashier-led) purchasing involves doing a similar task in bulk at one time.
- Shop (which involves going down the aisles, ideally in the correct order)
- Dump everything onto the belt as fast as you can.
- Cashier scans everything, and bags (or if you’re lucky, cashier scans, bagger bags).
The cashier can put things aside for bagging later, e.g. if you send the bread down the cart first, s/he can set that aside to toss on the top at the end.
When shopping scan-as-you-go, each item is:
- Find on shelf
- Grab and scan
- Decide which bag to put it in.
- Reorganize if needed (e.g. you got the bread first, and large canned goods are near the end).
- Repeat for the next item.
The store I tried this at had the handheld units you grab on the way in, and that would also show you “NIFTY THING RELATED TO WHAT YOU JUST GOT” which required, at the least, a quick “no thanks” swipe, and at worst, might have triggered additional purchases.
They’ve long since gotten rid of the handheld scanners - and not all their locations had them to begin with.
I agree that, when I’m done, checkout (unless I get audited) is super-fast and yeah, everything is already bagged.
I seem to have heard that some stores now let you scan using an app on your phone. That would still pose some of the same delays - plus, if you’re using a shopping app. switching between the shopping app and the scanning app. If the store has a usable shopping list function built into its app, and that is adequately coordinated with the scanning function, that might not be too bad.
I used to use an Android app called ToMarket. With that one, you could build up profiles of as many stores as you liked, and input aisles for an item in each store. Canned beans are in aisle 3 at the nearby Safeway, aisle 7 at the nearby Kroger, aisle 5 at Giant, and so on. So I could add stuff to my list, then when I shopped, select the store I was at and the list would be sorted by aisle. Made a huge difference in shopping time. Yes, if aisles changed, we’d have to update the item, and of course if it was something we’d never purchased before, we’d have to add its aisle, but as we built up our list over a couple of years, it got to be pretty darned comprehensive.
NOBODY makes an app like that any more. ToMarket is no longer supported, it never ran on IOS, and it had no multiuser capability, so it no longer worked for us. Instead, we use the store’s app so everyone in the household can add what they need, then whomever shops has that. The Wegman’s app actually sorts that by aisle (mostly; “dairy” is the whole back of the store, for example); Giant has a similar app but it’s sorted by groups, so you’ll see “Dairy”, “Canned Vegetables” and so on.
Which is a bit of a diversion from the main topic of the thread, but since the topic of shopping efficiently / by aisle came up, I got inspired to vent.
I just did a search for scan and pay apps, and Wegman’s had it but got rid of it due to too much shoplifting.
There are a lot of concerns over the risk of being accused of shoplifting at self checkout. I’ve never worried too much; since I’m usually only doing it when getting a handful of items, it’s relatively easy to be careful to scan / bag everything.
Funnily enough, the two times I HAVE taken something out of the store without paying for it both involved human cashiers. Once, I had my daughter’s baby carrier in the cart, and a few things piled up in front of her, and a bottle of PediaLyte behind her. I forgot to load that onto the belt, went out to the car, loaded everything into the car, and realized what I’d done.
The other time, I was heading out of a store with a small cart full of things, including a 4-pack of hard cider which had been on the lower shelf of the cart. I looked at it, realized I did not remember putting it on the belt, checked my receipt - and yep, I’d just stolen it.
In both cases, I went back in and paid for the missing item. I was tempted NOT to, the first time, as I had the baby in the car and hauling her seat inside was a hassle, but I did it. Otherwise I might have gone back the next day to deal with it.
I have sometimes wondered why it is that Europe in general is so far ahead in terms of digital take-up. My only suggestion is that North America has not suffered the devastation of a modern bombing war.
I remember how Germany’s telephones used to be far ahead of the UK and this was the direct result of post WW2 rebuilding. I guess that having large swathes of your major cities flattened has a lot of consequences apart from the obvious. Compared to European countries, the USA is huge, and inertia is a known feature of massive organisations.
Of course, the UK has its fair share of Luddites and technophobes. I have a relative (not elderly) who, uniquely among my acquaintances, does not use Internet banking and still uses cheques. Despite the convenience of scanning, the majority of Tesco’s customers still prefer to queue for one of the diminishing number of checkout operators.
As an aside, there are now five different options for checking out: traditional manned tills, a couple of ten-items-or fewer tills, two self-service scan-and-pay - one for trollies and one for baskets, and one for the scan-as-you-go customers. As an alternative one can “click-and-collect” (ie, create an online list and then collect it) or “click-and-deliver”.
I love scan and go, and I’m always surprised that not more people do it. I get ‘audited’, if that’s the term, maybe 10% of the time, and probably half those times there’s something I forgot to scan. The checkout person just scans it and adds it to my total. They don’t care at all. The audit person is the same person that looks after the self check-outs, so it doesn’t take any longer to wait for them than if you have a self-checkout screw-up. But most of the time, I don’t have to wait.
I think there are a lot of cameras, or some kind of scanners that watch you when you scan and go. I have never walked out of scan and go without paying for something, which I have done by accident on both self checkouts and manned checkouts. One time when I got stopped, the guy seemed to be looking for something, and gave a satisfied ‘ah’ when he found the pumpkin, so maybe a camera had seen something orange go in my bags. Also, if I have groceries from another store, I will often get pulled over.
I have 4 bags that stand on their own, set up in the trolley, and just add the item to the right bag. Swapping between apps, or rearranging bags if I have to (watermelon can be difficult to manage) doesn’t bother me at all. But I am also the kind of person that struggles with the self-checkout, and have to constantly remind myself to be very ordered and robotic with the machine or else I get a lot of errors. Scan and go being more freeform is easier for me.
I bought some clothes at Uniqlo the other day, and you just drop them all in a bucket at the checkout, and it reads all the labels and rings them up in one go. The guy there said there was something in the tags. It would be very handy for groceries, but very wasteful to have to put tags on everything.
Shop and scanned today but needed to bag so went to self checkout where I scanned the QR code on the screen with my Meijer app. It downloaded my cart and alerted for an attendant to check my honesty. He came right over sullen teenager that he was cleared me out, hey wait I need you to take the tag thing off my bottle of makers mark. He grabbed it and took off. I just about finished bagging, no scanning remember I already shopped and scanned he came back with the bottle and asked is this yours? I mean come on try harder to be of service dude.