Self-serve store checkouts--a failure?

[QUOTE=AnachronismUnfortunately the store in my neighborhood is one of the few that does not have them, there are a lot of older people in my neighborhood which I am sure is the reason.[/QUOTE]

I guess I’m one of the “older people”. I hate the damn things. I go to the line with a real human cashier whenever possible. They are much faster than I am. They know where the UPC is located, and what code to type in for a potato. This is their full-time job.

In the automated line, I often find the next customer’s groceries are zipping down the conveyor belt while I’m still trying to finish bagging my order.

Perhaps it’s time to look for a nice ice floe.

The only self-serve system I use is the one at Weis. They have a conveyor belt, which is much easier to use than the small platform of the earlier versions. Plus, they seem to be less touchy. I hate being yelled at by a machine when I have spent plenty of time running a register.

Just the other day I went to pick up some items at my local grocery store. Now, to be fair, it was 7pm on a Friday, so every line was long. In the self checkout lanes there were two people buying alcohol(which needs to have the cashier check the id and type into their computer) several full carts, anfd one group of four people with THREE FULL carts of stuff. As well as a few people with fresh produce.

That said, I do love the self-checkouts, but I notice most people go to one because they think it’ll be faster, and completely ignore the short line on the regular caah register with only two people in it.

      • Self-checkouts are coming, make no mistake. One cashier can watch over three or more self-checkouts. The main factor holding them back right now is the lack of RFID tags in regular consumer item packaging. RFID tag implementation has been stalled due to (first) privacy issues and (second) technical difficulties, but once it is done, items won’t need to be manually “scanned”, just carted through a scanning gate. The exact number of everything will be counted, correctly, nearly instantly, every time. And your credit cards will also have their own RFID tags on them too, so all you may need to do (for a credit card purchase) is select which card to put the bill on. Spendaholics, escape now while you can.
  • The privacy issue stems from the fact that some clothing manufacturers initially planned on sewing RFID tags into the hems of their clothing, as a theft deterrent–but currently-available models of RFID tags have no way of "“disabling” themselves, short of physically crushing them. They are tiny, “about the size of a grain of rice” is the common expression used. The Mobil Speedpass ID keytag is an RFID device, but most of what you see is a plastic cylinder–the functional part is inside, and quite small.

  • Wal-Mart wanted its main suppliers to begin using RFID tags in product cases only in early 2005. That was postponed, as too many simply couldn’t meed that deadline–but it is coming, believe it. Wal-Mart led the way with requiring their suppliers to use product barcodes and now everything has them. And FWIW, I work at a grocery store now and so hear bits of this news from that source, and I interned for my CIS degree at a place that sold/wrote ERP software (warehouse/logistics management), and they were gearing up for these features as well. I have heard from the store I work at that within a couple years, they want 20% of their business to be conducted through the self-checkouts.
    General RFID Googlage: http://www.google.com/search?q=rfid+tag&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=
    ~

My 64-year-old technophobic mother uses self-checkout whenever she can, and loves it. She says that it’s usually faster than the regular lines. And within the past year, my grocery store has installed them. I don’t use it often because I prefer to pay cash, but there always seems to be someone going through. So they’re hardly on the decline.

You can use cash at the self-service checkouts at my grocery store. They have bill slots like on most vending machines now that can tell which bills have been inserted.

We’ll get the self-scan aisles because it saves the stores money by reducing the number of cashiers they have to keep on the payroll.

If they pay me for working for them (E.G. discounts on self-scanned items), I’d probably use them. As it is, I see no advantage to stealing a job I don’t want from a highschool student who could probably use the money more than I could.

Sorry, I don’t work here.

I freakin’ HATE! those things, they have never worked smoothly for me and by the time the Cashier gets to me and solves the problem it would have been faster to go to a “real” checkout lane.
When they try to entice me to use the Self-Checkout I ask them how much of a discount I get for cutting the stores Labor cost, I am paying for the checkout service and I want the freakin’ service!!!

Unclviny (who must be old before his time)

They recently opened a big new 24-hour Sobeys on the Queensway near my place. It has a self-scan checkout… but the self-scan is not open during the late evening or overnight, which is when I am likely to use the store.

I have used it once though. I was disappointed to find that the system would not accept the bin number of the bulk candy I had. Oh well… back to the manual checkout.

I don’t remember it having a slot for banknotes, but that may have been there. Most people use debit or credit anyways.

Purely anecdotal. Several discount stores in my area gave up and closed the lanes down.

Today at my local supermarket the lanes were closed. Don’t know if there was a problem or something else.

I’ve only encountered one store that had them. I liked that I didn’t have to wait in line. I question the statement that 95% of stores will have them by 2006 unless there’s a sudden upsurge in adoption.

I think they’re only stopgap right now and RFID tags will completely change the way we shop and the number of humans necessary to accomodate shoppers.

Just had to mention that around my little corner of Joisey, we have several brand new supermarkets that opened in the past year or so and they all installed self checkout lanes. I love it!

The only place where I avoid them is Whole Foods Market, simply because they have thousands of different kinds of produce, in both organic and “conventional” varieties, and I never seem to find the obscure type of banana or mango I have purchased in their pages of pictures – so much easier to let a professional handle it.

I am one o fthose 20-something educated folks, and I LOVE these self scanners.

At the new grocery store in town, you don’t have to bag stuff as you go. You put it on a belt and it gets moved down to the end of the lane - that belt also weighs the product. The cashier running the lanes usually has all my stuff bagged and in a cart by the time i’m done paying.

The one at the old grocery store, which was installed after the new store came to town, is the type that is a screen and a bagging table and that is HORRIBLE. Buy anything big and bulky and you’re screwed. That one is a pain in the ass (i still use it when I go to that store, infrequently)

I buy alot of produce and never have a problem finding my item quickly on their produce lookup. I just make sure I note the exact name of the product when I pick it up.

I don’t know if it’s ACTUALLY quicker, but it feels quicker to me. Seems like not having to deal with cashier chit-chat or money changeover or price checks is the biggest draw for me.

The self-checkout lanes that I use accept cash, and it’s pretty quick to do so.

I’m not a twentysomething type (I’m 43), and I use them all the time. I can get in and out in record time - when I check out, it’s typical that none of the other three lane users will beat me out the door, although they all started first. The only time I’m slowed down is when I have my kids with me, and they want to scan the items and push the touchscreen buttons.

They have them at Sainsbury’s in the UK; they appear to be quite sophisticated - there’s a touch screen that gives contextual instructions/options and is also used for selecting produce to be self-weighed etc. For the most part though, the self-checkout aisles are ignored - last time I went in the store, there was a member of staff standing there forlornly, waiting to assist customers with a group of 4 self-checkout tills. Sort of defeats the object.

I try not to use them at places that have store discount cards (e.g., Kroger). I refuse to get one by surrenduring my personal data – I give them enough of that by simply using my credit card, and mostly I get enough junk mail. Why do I want the real lanes? Because invariably they’ll use the “store card” to give me the discount, which the manual lanes won’t accommodate.

My local Home Depot has four self-check lanes and they are usually all busy. My only complaint is that if I set my purse down on the “bagging area” the irritating woman’s voice the computer uses says “unexpected item in bagging area; please remove it” but there’s no place else to put it…and when buying garden seed the scale on the “bagging area” couldn’t sense that I put the seeds down, since they were way way too light, so the stupid woman kept on saying “place item in bagging area; please place item in bagging area.” Otherwise it’s way quicker and I don’t have to deal with some pimply ingrate who takes my money and never says thank you. At least that irritating computerized woman says thank you at the end of the transaction…repeatedly.

I chose to use them for the first time a few weeks ago, my wife and I each had different carts her’s with about triple the items as mine. Being her’s where being paid for with cash and mine with the credit card I decided to try the self checkout at a Super WalMart.

Her line had 2-3 carts in front of her, my line had 1 person with 2 cases of soda, long story short by time I was done, I had one 40$ item for free they had three checkout ladies come over to give me a hand (Most of my items where larger items diapers, stand up electric heater) and my wife waiting for me by time I was done going to customer service paying for the heater and spending twice the time had I just went into a normal checkout.

Now that might just be beginners suck, but I have not went back through the self checkout since.

I hate them, and I’m no Luddite. The one I suffered through had a scale on the bag rack, so every time I tried to place something in the bag, I got a warning that the weight didn’t match what was expected. When I pulled the item back out of the bag (I didn’t know what it wanted me to do…) I got a different warning that the number of items scanned did not match the number of items in my bag (or something to this effect). So I had to delete the item, re-scan, try again.

As for shoplifting, there was a video camera recording the entire fiasco. Not that I am going to steal groceries, but I had seen this issue addressed above.

I was on my lunch break, so I thought I could save some time. I went to pay by check, so I still had to go to the cashier to do that.

I feel I’m competent enough to scan and bag groceries, but I was foiled by the safeguards built in to foil shoplifters. I found it to be a greater hassle and no time savings in my experience. I will add that people were using them, but I didn’t ask them if they were having as much trouble as I was.

In Chicago, the Jewel foodstore on Western just north of Belmont has been a trial site for a self scan system. You are provided with a handheld scanner and scan items as you go through the store. Produce is self-weighed within the produce section with scales that produce a barcoded sticker that then gets scanned like any other item. When done, you “scan” a “Finished shopping” placard at the front of the store. The info is then downloaded from the scanner to the store’s network. You then scan your “Preferred card” at a kiosk followed by a credit card swipe - and you’re done. No waiting in line. I love it.

Occaisionally, you get selected for a random audit where a cashier will scan a few items in your bag to make sure you had scanned them as well. The system does rely primarily on the honor system, as it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to drop extra items in your bag without scanning them.